Drilled the rest of the way through the Z-axis knob, moved it lower, and… tada!
I have about 10" of Z-Axis travel which I haven’t been using. However, the rotary requires almost all of the Z-travel, and turning the knob by hand was tiresome.
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Where can I find a free drill? 
I said the mod was free; drilling through the knob. I didn’t say the drill was free. 
Man, the things some people will do to get their power tool fix… LOL
Nice hack thats thinking outside the box.
My hack was exactly the same. Using the rotary was tiresome but the drill works great.
I my change mine some and just weld a nut to the top of the knob so I can use my drill with a socket or still do it by hand without the shaft sticking up.
I’ve seen guys get one of the short spinner extensions and a coupler. The it’s just a 1/4" adapter for the drill.
UPDATE: Did some searching. They are called ratchet spinners. Some results will have the little mini ratchets, others will be a stubby extension with the knurled ring.
A $10 stepper and some belt, a basic $3 stepper driver, a switch, some wire, an hour.
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A$40 stepper and a $40 driver… Not going to use cheap stuff that will die or catch on fire.
I am looking at how I’ll replace the idler wheel on the Z-belt with a 15mm geared pulley and mount the stepper.
You can’t just “flip a switch” with a stepper driver. It needs a controlled pulse train, which the Ruida provides.
This was a quick and easy solution for large movement of the bed.
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And yet, that’s exactly what’s in most motorised tables.
A three-way switch which sends 5V DC to the stepper driver in one of two polarities. Really simple. Unlikely to catch fire in any situation where fire isn’t externally applied.
And yet, that’s exactly what’s in most motorised tables.
Nope. They just have a DC motor. Not a stepper.
A three-way switch which sends 5V DC to the stepper driver in one of two polarities. Really simple. Unlikely to catch fire in any situation where fire isn’t externally applied.
That’s not how stepper drivers work.
Doh! What a dope. Thanks.
I’m so used to writing ‘stepper’ and 'driver; for motion control I mentally transposed them to the DC motor and power step-down from the 40V supply most machines have.
Nothing to see here… move along.
That being said, when using your Ruida, you will need a stepper and driver. Out of the hundreds of machines I’ve serviced, only a small handful had auto-height adjust. 99% just have a motor and a switch.
At least you two are low voltage, Mine has a 110V Z drive motor.
Mine’s 12V. Probably a car winder. 
Has anyone put together a tutorial on how to build a Z motor mod that I missed somewhere?
Not that I know of. You have three variations on Z drive. You have the truly manual with a knob. Many do something like this with an additional gear or a cordless drill adapter. but it’s on one of the shafts. You have the high or low voltage motors with up / down buttons, and finally the ones operated through the controller with stepper motors.
Personally I have a high voltage reversible motor set up. When I first got my machine I was obsessed with converting it to a stepper system. But except for calibration / alignment times, I don’t move the bed more than 50mm and a fair amount of that is for changing the cutting bed under the material.
If the controller was capable of active Z control during a cut and not just between layers I’d switch to a stepper Z in a heartbeat to do work on curved surfaces. But since it’s not, I have no problem in setting my nozzle to work via the two little buttons.
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