Guide Rod Covers with Flags - Remix

Guide Rod Covers with Flags - Remix

This is a remix of...

ELEGOO CENTAURI CARBON Z ROD SHAFT HOLE COVER

...posted by mikemakesthings on October 09, 2025 at...

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:7166970

The Elegoo Centauri Carbon printer, and I suspect others of the CoreXY style, has large gaps around the bottom end of the three Z guide rods. The Z belt mechanism and most of the electronics live down there and bits of PLA poop, dropped screws and other foreign objects finding their way into that basement may not be an entirely beneficial thing.

The OP's model printed and fit well, closing the gaps with an easily installed and easily removed set of interlocking half-plugs.

As Murphy observed, however, every solution creates a new problem. I began to notice that the guide rod bushings and housings protrude about 25 mm below the bottom of the bed (see images). When the bed moves all the way down, those protruding bits have to enter the cavities around the guide rods. Having something already in the holes it going to lead to the dreaded "unpredictable results". It seems fairly likely that whatever happens might a little noisy and exciting.

I also noticed that at the end of a print the bed automatically moves down about another 100 mm. By some rough measurements, it seems that any print more than about 150 mm high is going to put the printer in the danger zone for a collision between the Z-rod bushings and any hole plugs.

I didn't want to eliminate the plugs so decided to make them more visible, with a warning to remove them when printing tall models, hopefully reminding me and avoiding disaster. Thus this project.

I maintained the OP's original design for the plug portion but added a warning flag. There are individual models for the left, center and right. Those differ only in the orientation of the text. My remix does no more than the originals, just offers a little more visibility to remind me of the potential for a problem.

I printed them face down in red, switching to white when the first layer with no text holes began to print. The text is 1 mm deep in the face of the part. In my case it was at the beginning of layer 7 where I had to make the switch (0.2 mm first layer, 0.15 mm subsequent layers). I was able to see easily in the slicer where the filament swap needed to occur.

Print one each of the left, center and right flags and three of the keepers.

Print Details:

Material: PLA

Walls: 0.4 mm

Shells: 2

Layer Height: 0.15 mm

Infill: 10%

Supports: No