The Full Frontal Gantry mod for all models of Rat Rig V-Core 3 and 4 printers, other than IDEX.
Compatibility:
V Core 3 and 3.1 (MFBS hybrid upgrade)
V-Core 3.2h (Rat Rig's hybrid upgrade)
V-Core 4
V-Core 4 hybrid
OneBox and
Enclosure 2
All Ultralight print heads.
Current Ultralight print heads released:
Dragon Ace
Rapido 2
Rapido 1
More coming….
Please note the Ultralight FFG tool heads have now been moved to their own listing on Printables.
Click on the image below to go to the Ultralight print heads:
Please note testing of this mod has now been completed and I am EXTREMELY pleased with the results.
I am achieving 40K accelerations on an otherwise near stock V-Core 300 with zero ringing visible. Videos of this have been posted in the Rat Rig Discord.
This is mod is fully compatible with both the V-Core 3 hybrid and V-core 4 hybrid. If you have a V-core 3 or 3.1 and want to upgrade it to hybrid please click here for the that, but use these XY joiners instead.
Why
The Full Frontal Gantry mod dramatically reduces the distance of the nozzle from the Centre of Rotation of the MGN12 carriage in the Y and Z dimensions. reducing nozzle movement due to play/flex in the carriage rail mounting interface to increase printing precision.
The The Full frontal mod also dramatically reduces the distance from the belt attachment points from the Centre of Rotation of the MGN12 carriage in both the Y and Z dimensions, reducing the moment of torque applied by the belts to the Centre of Rotaion of the MGN12 carrigage to increase printing precision.
The Ultralight core mounting plate template will provide a simple fixutre for a variety of print tools. Print tools could be things like the upcoming Bondtech INDA a pen a drag knife, etc.
Coffee fund
If you download and print this design or get a thrid party such as PCBway to print these parts for you I receive no compensation for my design work or my cost for the CAD software I have to pay an annual license for.
If you decide to make a donation to my coffee fund (which keeps me up late at night doing more of this stuff) I would appreciate it. There is absolutely no obligation for you to do this. My PayPal account is [email protected]
Please remember to post feed back as it is always valuable to me for future iterations.
Many thanks.
Liam Venter
MFBS Design
Full Metal XY joiners
While all parts of this design have a non commercial license, I may offer a license to one manufacturer (yet to be selected) to offer these for sale as per the XY joiners for my previous V-Core 3 hybrid upgrade.
If you want the alternative XY joiners that are designed to be CNC machined rather than the ones in the files here that are designed to be aluminium 3D printed, please click on this link.
https://www.printables.com/model/1430210-full-frontal-gantry-cnc-version-of-xy-joiners
Both the printable ones and the CNC ones have exactly the same bearing offsets and both work really well. Both use the exact same Build of Materials (BOM).
XY joiners BOM
2 x M5 x 28 Flat Head Cap screws. (Ganty retaining top)
2 x M5 x 10mm Socket Head Cap screws. (Gantry retaining bottom)
7 x M3 x 8mm flat head cap screws (bearing stack retaining)
1 x M3 x 6 mm flat hed cap screw for (bearing stack retaining)
4 x Aluminium threaded spindles 14 x 50D x 3mm ID (centre of bearing stack).
Assembly.
Only the XY joiners and the Ultralight Cores are 3D designed to be 3D printed from aluminium. All other parts should be printed from your favourite plastic.
When fitting on a V-Core 3or 3.1 it is necessary to shorten each end of the linear rail by 5 mm with an angle grinder fitted with a cutting disk. Takes about 20 seconds per end. This is not necessary on a V-Core 4.
Aluminium 3D printable version of XY Joiners:
I currently use these versions on my printer.
The two of the bearing stacks installed in the shorter clevis's must be installed before the gantry is fitted. They can not be installed after the gantry is fitted. These will only fit into place if installed from behind the XY joiners. It is not possible to access the rear of the XY joiners once the gantry is intalled.
The other two bearing stacks can be fitted before or after the gantry is installed.
These XY joiners use two plain bearing spindles in each joiner.
Alternative aluminium CNC machinable version of XY Joiners:
Machining the XY tuners will be more dimensionally precise than printing them. These machined ones are just 1~2 grams heavier than the 3D printed ones.
All bearing stacks can be installed and removed once the gantry is fitted.
These XY joiners use one plain bearing tube and one stepped bearing spindle in each joiner.
If you are using a Titanium X tube:
Several of us have discovered that the Titanium X tubes available are often very slightly oversized. Instead of being exactly 20 x 20 mm you might get one that is something like 20.1 x 20.3 mm and these may not fit standard sized 20 x 20 mm XY joiners, like these.
No problem. Using a small flat fine toothed file of say 18 mm width (Sometimes sold as a 'lathe' file, you can file out your joiners, with them held in a vice in about 20 minutes to fit.
To prevent the jaws of your vice marking your nicely anodized joiners you can use some leather cut from your spouses pants between the jaws of the vice and the joiners. To ensure a nice close sliding fit between the tube and XY joiners use some prussian blue (engineers blue) to indicate the high spots. I like a very slight interference fit that requires a couple of LIGHT taps to fit the joiners on the tube.
Updates:
08/Sept/2025 Increased clearances on XY joiners for belts.
14/Sept/2025 further increased the clearances on the XY joiners for the belts.
25th/ Feb/2026 move Ultralight print heads to their own listing on printables.
The terms FFG and Full Frontal Gantry are copyrighted by MFBS Design.
The author marked this model as their own original creation.