Mercury One.1 Inside Frame Tension Blocks & Front Cross Brace Delete

These tensioner blocks have been designed to do four things:

1. Bring the tensioner blocks entirely within the frame of the printer so that the printer can be enclosed with large, flat panels.
2. Delete the front crossbar for easy access to the build plate.
3. Increase rigidity vs other crossbar deletes and tensioner blocks by utilising a total of three mounting points. If your extrusions have 5mm through holes you can run a longer bolt down the block, through the horizontal extrusion and down into the vertical extrusion for even more rigidity.
4. Eliminate the “sliding block tensioners” since when you move the steppers within the frame (for enclosures) you need to move the linear rails and you lose a lot of movement for the sliding blocks. It only leaves a few mm of travel for tensioning.

These are part of an ongoing project to completely enclose my Mercury One.1 without weird workarounds. Photos will be updated when the printer is completely enclosed.

- Print Settings -

Print out of ASA/ABS using standard Mercury One.1 print settings. No supports required.

- Files & BOM -

There are two variants of the blocks and sliders.

Blocks are as follows:

• Rigid: Uses a total of three mounting points. A long bolt goes down through the slider into a T Nut and is tightened into the frame.
  Requires 2 * M5 x 60 SHCS (5mm shank versions preferable) and 2 * M5 T Nuts.
• Nut: Only utilises two mounting points but is more likely to be able to be assembled with parts you have laying around. A long bolt goes down through the slider into an M5 Hex Nut on the underside of the block.
  Requires 2 * M5 x 50 SHCS and 2 * M5 Hex Nuts

Sliders are as follows:

• Heatset: Requires 2 * M3 x 4.5 D x 5 L Heatset Inserts
• Nut: Requires 2 * M3 Hex Nuts

BOM for full install is:

• 4 * M5 x 8 SHCS
• 8 * M5 washer
• 2 * M3 washer (OD no larger than 7mm)
• 2 * M3 x 16 SHCS
• 4 * F695RS bearings

Tolerances between the block and slider are tight (.05mm on each side) so might require a small amount of post-processing if your printer has some tolerance issues.

I'm not very good at photos and my printer doesn't print ASA particularly nicely (on account of not being enclosed).
If you get some nice photos please share them as Makes.