Ender 5 Plus Conversion - Mercury One AWD with Hydra - Kinda Voron Trident style

[mvdveer]

Been a while since I posted a build. Have two Ender5's (Plus and a pro) gathering dust in storage under the house. 

Decided it was time to do something about it and show them some love. But what to do? Initial thoughts were to build a Mercury One with the Lineux tool changer setup. Converted the Ender 5 Plus to a Mercury AWD and started building the Lineux Toolchanger. Ran into an issue with the DB Toolhead, reached out on Discord and was informed that the DB toolhead was obsolete and the Lineux One is the one (pun intended) to go for. Thus had a whole container of printer parts that were discarded. 

Printed six toolhead all with Rapido ACE hotends in the Lineux One style. But kept running into obstacles. No mount for Beacon/Cartographer, no support for CPAP cooling. (why have a AWD is speed is going to be limited by cooling?) Could not mount 6 toolheads on the Plus, tried the clicky PCB probe instead of beacon, but that did not work with the dock mounts. Also kept breaking and reprinting the nozzle cleaner components. Felt the toolhead was not stable enough and was advised to do the tetra mod - that meant reprinting 6 new carriages and toolhead plates - in the end was just too much and I gave up. And for me to do that takes a lot (well probably 4- 6 weeks of frustration)

Some pics of the Lineux attempt:

Carriage:                                                                              Toolheads:

            

Sherpa Micro and Rapido ACE hotend:                                   Completed Toolheads (Lineux DB)

                    

Toolheads (Lineux One) mounted:

       

 

Thus - the Mercury One Plus AWD with Hydra bed mounts. (And now I have 6 toolheads consisting of Sherpa Mini extruder, Rapido Ace hotends and printed parts for 6 Lineux DB hotends - sure I'll find a home for them. )

Next: The Build.................................

[mvdveer]

Out comes the Ender_5_Plus  - already heavily modified (Dragon Burner Tollhead, linear rails, Klipper on a SKR 1.4 board and enclosed) ....... but unused for about 2 years:

        

If you look closely you will see the rust on the linear rails. Well, let's strip her, clean her up and rebirth her in a AWD Mercury One Plus!

Frame: Stripped and Squared it all up                                 Removed the linear rails but initially kept  the bed, Z axis (at this point was not going to do the hydra mod)    

                                 

X-Axis: Originally was going to build a standard mercury one , but as is a norm for me, I changed my mind and decided on a AWD. They meant I had to rebuild the X- axis. (All part of the fun). This is the build with the original Ender_5_Plus bed. Since been replaced with a Mic6 370x370 bed with a full sized heater pad

                                  

Before I forget - cleaned and lubed the rails - no more rust:

More to come

[Penatr8tor]

Awesome projects.

Looking forward to these.

[mvdveer]

Printed the parts for the AWD conversion in Carbon Fibre PC. First time I printed in Carbon Fibre and learned a valuable lesson. When they say dry the filament it means dry the filament to the manufacturer's recommendation. I initially put the filament in a dryer and dried at 60deg (max for dryer) overnight. Prints were suboptimal to say the least. Read the recommendations - 100 deg for 8 hours. Well if you say so........ What a difference it made.

                   

 

It was at this point that I messed around with the Lineux tool changer for weeks before abandoning the project.

Had some steppers online Nema motors that has not been used (I always have spares) and installed the AWD system for the Mercury one project after cleaning and lubing the linear rails. Installed the Hydra mod which basically gives the Z-Axis a trident mechanism.

            

Next replaced the Ender_5_Plus bed with a Mic6 6mm 370 x 370 Alu plate and a 750W heater pad. (Overkill for a printer that will be used for PLA, but who knows - I may enclose this thing at some point. So printer print dimensions ended up as 370x370 x 420(h).

                    

To be continued..........

 

[mvdveer]

Electronics compartment:

Decided on TMC5160 drivers. Pro for the X/Y axis (48V) and v1.3 for Z-Axis (24V). As I like the Trident Inverted electronics setup as well as the VZBot rear electronic setup, it was a toss between the two. As this machine is so big, adding a further 150mm to the rear was not an option. Thus inverted we go.

24V and 48V power supplies                                                    CPAP Fan in the electronics bay

                     

Toolhead:

Took a page out of @Penatr8tor's playbook and ordered an OrbitoolOS2 board (has a USB extension plug) and a Orbiter Filament runout sensor. Had plenty of Orbiter 2 extruders on hand. Mounted  the beacon probe similar to that on the VZBot. Decided as this will be a printer for predominantly PLA, a CPAP cooling system is needed to keep up with the Phaetus Rapido UHF v2 hotend.

      

Need to tidy up the wiring in the electronics bay as well as the toolhead.

Machine started without magic smoke and the initial tests completed, but not without incident. Kept getting GSTAT - temp errors on the TM5160 Z-Drivers, especially when I insert the lower panel that covers the electronics. Cooling the drivers resolved this. Currently printing a more permanent solution to mount 3 x 40mm fans on the Octopus board to cool the drivers.

[mvdveer]

Tuning:

Followed the Ellis guide and tuned the printer. Used the orbitool accelerometer rather than the beacon to tune Resonance, just to try it out I guess. Spoilt for choice.

Have to revisit the X- axis - belt path, loose bolts, squaring, etc but for a fist go and at those accelerations, I cannot complain too much

X-Axis

Y-Axis

[mvdveer]

Build complete.

If interested - serial video of printer printing.

@bdejong11129 - here is a very condensed build diary, but happy to answer any questions you or your son may have.

[prettyboyfpv]

Dude i love it!!

[Anoahnator]

On 7/25/2025 at 5:59 PM, mvdveer said:

Did you ever try the multiple toolheads again?

 

[mvdveer]

4 hours ago, Anoahnator said:

On 7/26/2025 at 8:59 AM, mvdveer said:

Did you ever try the multiple toolheads again?

Nope - abandoned the Lineux project altogether. Revisiting the Tridex concept