Let's build a VORON Trident
jonashietala.se
jonashietala.se
The Voron community is incredible and the Vorons themselves are incredible, there's so much scope (and precedent) for amazing modifications; i.e. my 2.4 kit came with Afterburner and some lower spec parts, but I built it from the get-go with Stealthburner and umbilical (CAN Bus) with an upgrade from the rubbish, V60 clone it came with to a Phaetus Dragon HF and a bunch of other modifications and upgrades.
It took me about two-month's worth of evenings, taking my time to build it (much of the reason for choosing it was that I enjoy building things).
Before that, I spent about a month upgrading my Ender 3 v2 so it could print ABS for all of the parts the Voron would need and building an enclosure out of IKEA tables, it was a pretty impressive bed-slinger, running Klipper by the time I was done, putting the stock E3v2 to shame. It still sits beside the Voron for emergencies, but it hasn't printed anything in quite a while now.
Start printing with a properly tuned Voron, at speed, for the first time though, after having spent all that time building it, and you'll be grinning ear to ear.
I've since upgraded with with a klicky probe, then removed that and went Tap. I'm looking at replacing the Stealthburner with something with better cooling as it's definitely not good enough, even after replacing the fan that came with my LDO kit with an even better fan.
I built mine in about a week while my wife was out of town with a friend, though. :D
I have had a lot of problems getting it to be reliable, though. I've replaced a lot of parts and did a lot of upgrades. I'm finally at a point where the only thing I might "fix" would be to replace the belts because I'm pretty sure they're stretching little by little still, even after months.
That said, it was more "reliable" out of the box than my 2 TronXY printers. It's just that I want it to be less stressful.
I've seriously considered a Bambu because of that, but at this point I think mine is a match for them, so it's only the multi-color capability that has me interested in them now.
I've been there, I've told my Ender 3 Pro (plus lots of upgrades) that if it Fs up ONE MORE TIME I'm getting a Bambu. BUT... A friend of mine recently got a Bambu, partly because of my saying this, and he's been having problems with it: the LiDAR is having issues and support is being unsupportive.
In the mean time my E3 has been super reliable and I've finally gotten it really dialed in (only took 4 years). I took a nearly year long side quest, replacing my original Sprite extruder/hot end with a second unit, until I could get the giant clump of plastic removed after a failed print, and apparently that second Sprite shipped with a bad nozzle. I finally happened on replacing the nozzle and things got instantly better.
I've always wanted to build a Voron, but this set of problems tuning my E3 have left me burned out.
On the Bambu front: my buddy wants to print primarily carbon fiber parts, so his use of it is more demanding than what mine would be, but it really gave me pause about my plan of getting a Bambu.
3D printing is entirely a hobby for me, though I do find I'm able to make practical prints for around the house now I can print ABS, Nylon, ASA, etc; A Bambu would be the exact opposite of what I wanted in a hobby / something to tinker with.
As for multi-colour, I've considered building an Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder for (up to 9-colour/material) printing on my Voron; It's relatively inexpensive to build, but I expect it'll require a fair bit of tinkering to get right, and since I only really print functional prints, the colour change is less desirable than material-change for me, so I can combine materials, or use dissolvable supports etc.
In terms of Stealthburner cooling, perhaps we just print different things, but 90% of my ABS prints, I print with the cooling off entirely, or at 10-30%; I've been called insane more than once for it, but it's been great and means I get excellent layer adhesion. I don't do any crazy bridging, usually stick to less than about 2cm, but when I do I've found that cooling to 70-100% has been fine. I swapped out all of the kit supplied fans for higher-quality Delta fans which might have made a difference, but that was mostly for my sanity because of the whining of the cheaper kit fans, and the Voron sits in my home office.
I printed everything in ASA for it. And I re-adjusted it so many time. I thought it would eventually stop warping up and down, but it never did.
I think the Tap does indeed make it so one of my axes is noisier, but I don't have to worry about docking, there's no offset for the nozzle, and I don't have to have the z-calibration step for the klicky probe.
I expect them to eventually come up with a better Tap and I'll upgrade then, but I'm happen until that point.
I print almost exclusively PLA, so I need the cooling. ASA would be fine, I'm sure.
I do still have a stockpile though, so any time I print anything non-functional, or for my children, I use the PLA, which I have in a plethora of colours.
Klicky can certainly be a bit tricky, I've got mine pretty well configured now so that if it does ping off somewhere, everything stops so we don't get the head ramming into the bed or anything. Again, much of that advanced configuration came with the help of the amazing people in the Voron community. I've only destroyed one bed so far, and smashed one Stealthburner mount by ramming it into the endstop from the side (luckily I printed a spare).
Edit: Just noticed that I'd already starred it on Github, so I guess I had, but had decided against it. I wonder if it was labeled as in-progress at that point?
Anyhow, seems like it's worth pursuing. Thanks!
With Ender 3's, you have the option of simple tent enclosures, they're ugly, but work well. This will help keep the enclosure warm, improving the reliability of ABS printing by both reducing warping (although this also comes down to the quality of filament) and improving bed adhesion.
The activated carbon filter will keep the fumes under control. I use a Bentobox filter, which uses both activated carbon and a HEPA filter, but Nevermore filters are also very popular.
That said, if you haven't bought it already, I'd recommend considering ASA instead of ABS. I recently tried ASA for the first time, and it is so much more of a pleasant experience compared to ABS, haven't seen any warping yet and produces far less fumes.
My Trident has a Nevermore V5 Duo for VOCs only. I picked up a nice big Honeywell air clearer with a monster HEPA filter in it that turns over the air like crazy to deal with microparticles. As a bonus, I can use the Honeywell for those times like forest fire season when the air quality is bad.
> They claim that around 90% of particles sized 0.3 microns are larger [for a MERV] are eliminated in a single pass. That’s good, but not totally reassuring. The question is, does it remove 99% in two passes? If 90% of the particles in the ambient air were large and the filter only catches large particles, then additional passes would never get rid of the most dangerous small particles. This is why I trust HEPA filters a bit more: since they remove almost all particles in one pass, I’m confident they should remove almost all particles eventually.
Also, there is the idea that HEPA filters act like a sieve. They don't. This article from the same guy is a great read [1]. So basically, multiple passes for the win.
> Air filters easily catch both large and small particles. It’s the intermediate regime where things are hard. The size where the filter performs worst is called the Most Penetrating Particle Size (MPPS). Typically this is around 0.15 microns.
[0] https://dynomight.net/2020/12/15/some-real-data-on-a-DIY-box...
The big change is the enclosure, doesn't have to be fancy, mine is a couple of IKEA LACK tables with some acrylic duct taped on and a door duct- taped on only one side.
I upgraded from Marlin to Kipper and tuned for resonance which lets you achieve much better speeds and quality than a stock E3v2
- if applicable, swap the default, white Bowden tube by one that's heat resistant (Capricorn comes often as a recommendation), that's for your health
- get a PEI sheet, ABS will have a tendency to detach/warp over long prints that PEI mitigates slightly
- draft being the main cause for warping and failed/dimensionally inaccurate ABS prints, you need an enclosure. A cardboard box is enough, but then you need to refrain from looking inside (which is difficult for complex and long prints), having a transparent side could help
- pre-hear enclosed, give it time, and tune your z offset accordingly
- dry your filament
Capricorn makes great bowden tubes, but even they're quite explicit about the risks of using any PTFE tubing--theirs included--inside a hot end at ABS temperatures.[0]
The health risks come from toxic PTFE off-gassing above the normal temperatures for PLA (though it starts off-gassing in small amounts at around 200°C). It's nasty shit, and you don't want to be breathing it in. Heat resistant bowden tubing doesn't do anything about that off-gassing; it's just meant to help mitigate deformation of the tubing at higher temperatures.
You're infinitely better off just tossing the PTFE-lined hot end and upgrading to an all-metal one. That anyone--cough, cough Creality and others in the inexpensive intro printer market--is shipping them on any of their printers in 2023 is just insane.
When everything is working right there should be no difference, but when things go wrong, not having plastic stuck to the heat break makes it more likely that a beginner can fix their own problem.
If you just want to print stuff (like if the printer is to support another hobby, or you have a business) get a P1S/X1C or a Prusa MK4. I wouldn't personally bother with an AMS until down the line when you're sure you need it.
VORONs are fantastic if you want a fun and very well documented robot building project, and at the end you get something pretty comparable to a Bambu. It can be a frustrating process at times but you'll learn a lot about a variety of interesting stuff. The printers are also massively hackable and moddable, and they have larger build plate options (although ~250mm^2 is realistically enough for most home users). Bambu is the exact opposite mentality, fully closed source, they work incredibly well but are effectively a black box. Think Linux vs Mac.
Another option would be to see if you have a local maker/hackerspace, they will usually have at least one decent printer.
If the Prusa XL wasn't so expensive for 5 toolheads I'd get that since its' much faster for filament switches and the minimal amount of waste it generates.
If the parent comment plans to print a lot of large parts, AMS will be useful. You can load multiple spools of the same filament, and a Bambu printer will switch spools when it runs out and continue printing without any intervention needed...
It has since proved its worth many times over, and the auto-refill is as much the reason as multiple colors/support filaments. I'm only holding off getting a second because I want to wait for a larger-format bed printer first.
- Bambu is for people that like 3D printing.
- Voron is for people that like 3D printers.
If you want a box to arrive at your door that you can plug in and start printing, the Bambu is for you. If you want a printer you can call your own and tweak to your heart's content thanks to its wide open design, get a Voron. The price delta between the two is unlikely to be the deciding factor, especially when you look at kits other than LDO that maintain high quality but will cost you less. I went with Magic Phoenix and it has been great.
If you think you'll enjoy the experience of putting together a printer, get a prusa mk4 kit.
I got the MK3s kit, and spent a week of evenings putting it together. And I understood a lot about the printer, and was able to debug it.
Both have a modding community if that's your thing, but the reality is that both the bambu and the prusa mk4s will work out of the box, and have similar quality.
- It's amazing.
- I'm using it for a lot more (mostly just fun, not functional) things than I had originally expected.
- The kids aren't as interested in printing stuff out as I had expected. A little interest in the beginning but now it's mostly just my thing (as expected?).
- Printing terrain models is super fun & easy. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DRiqX20-68)
- I wish I had just buckled down and gotten the P1S from the get-go. (mostly because of noise and just general "cleanliness"). My upgrade kit arrives tomorrow.
- As best as I can tell, anything less than the P1P/P1S (Ender3 etc) requires a lot of tweaking/tuning/fussing to get nice prints. I get amazing looking prints with little/no effort.
- Friends bought one of these ~$300 "toybox" printers and it was so bad they couldn't get it to print anything reasonable and returned it. I've printed some STL files for them without issue.
I think plenty of printers cheaper than the P1P/P1S have caught up. I like the Kingroon KP3S Pro V2 for a cheaper printer myself. Even Bambu have their A1 mini that's less than a P1P.
The Ender 3 was popular for the time, but it's outdated now and is just coasting on its popularity and outdated recommendations. It's a fast moving market so it's hard to know what's new and good outside of what's popular.
You can do it a lot cheaper if you select another kit apart from LDO, but then you'd have to be a bit more knowledgeable on how to tell if a part isn't up to par.
Those printers are really how 3D printing should be.
After owning different printers I really believe that Bambulab is for printing and all other brands for tinkering.
And now I’m printing the parts for a 2.4, using the 0.2.
I am interested in building one of the Annex-Engineering medium format printers, but haven't found the time.
I'm heavily modding my Kingroon KLP1 to print with 65°C chamber temperature for ASA, and building a The 100 for ultra high speed printing.
There's ever-escalating material printing capability you can desire, necessitating higher and higher chamber temperatures, with requisite engineering challenges (matched thermal expansion coefficients, kinematic mounts for the bed, part and hotend cooling, keeping motors cool, bearing lifespan...)
In my experience, ASA and even PC does fine even with a much easier to maintain 40C.
BTW the part cooling fan looks to be similarly shaped to the KLP1 one: https://kingroon.com/collections/kingroon-klp1-3d-printer-re...
https://github.com/Esoterical/PrinterMods/tree/main/Embiggen...
If you just wanna print and get on with your life get a Bambu.
If you want to play with printers, build a voron, modify an ender 3..
I have an X1C with AMS (local wifi only) and I literally treat it like a traditional A4 paper printer. Press print and leave the room. And the AMS is great for printing supports that snap easily..
Voron build instructions sort of have an implied "Step 0" which is "Have a working 3d printer."
I first jumped into 3d printing by doing something equally insane -- I scratch built a delta printer (not from a kit or plans). TBH I would not recommend this type of approach whatsoever. It would have been much wiser and more productive to have started with a basic working machine first. Given the cost and performance of entry level machines today, there's really not any good rationale to do otherwise unless you are a self-loathing masochist.
Or just someone who likes building, breaking, trying, testing, failing, going again, and learning through and enjoying the process. Like, I don't know... most hackers and builders I know.
While I obviously identify with your sentiment, I will add that none of those makers are out there are starting out by whittling and grinding their own screwdriver set before they get to work. If you want to be able to properly and efficiently design and build a 3d printer, you will need to be capable of manufacturing a complex part. You /can/ bootstrap the whole mess, but after having done it, again I will suggest that it is not optimal, even if your objective is to learn and experience everything possible.
Anyway as every proper 3d printing enthusiast can attest, one of the earliest tools that you will find extremely useful is another printer. Save the pain and go ahead and pick up that $99 bed slinger that's on sale. You can still suffer through as much of the other pain as you desire, and wont lose any geek cred, I promise.
You always need 2 printers anyway, so you can print parts for your other printer when they break. I broke my Prusa mk3 and had to duct tape it together enough to print the broken part. Very scary ;)
You do have to be a masochist. I remember tuning my bed leveling routine, and then the printer just decided to break the tip off. It's really amazing what kind of problems you can cause yourself with an extra 0 in some gcode somewhere.
This just isn't true, as proven by OP. You do need printed parts, but the VORON print-it-forward program is great and I think it's a great way to get started.
Also I am curious if you happen to have a Voron, do you have any other printers?
(I've ordered a VORON 0 now though.)
I rest my case :) Enjoy your printers!
The print-it-forward program was months in arrears when I looked at it, and it was very expensive to pay someone else to print them without the print-it-forward. I could have bought an Ender 3 and printed it myself cheaper.
Technically that cheap printer still works, but my 2 Vorons are so much better than I don't even consider using it.
I'm like the author of this article. Just built my very first printer - a Voron Trident. I ordered my kit (Magic Phoenix, which I'd highly recommend) with a full set of printed parts. Between that, the high quality Voron documentation, and the incredibly helpful Voron Discord, I now have an amazing machine putting out high quality prints beyond my expectations. It has been a fantastic learning experience and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Historically, many of the high performance designs and kits available for corexy Voron/RatRig type machines were absolutely not beginner friendly and would have been very difficult to complete without some foreknowledge about 3d printing and access to another printer. I'm pleased to be corrected.
As I posted elsewhere though, a $99 bed slinger on sale is still a great tool to have; for the kind of person who will build and use a Voron, a second printer is almost a foregone conclusion. How long since you completed your Trident? Do you have another printer yet?
Are there kits that just include all metal parts and that are cheaper?
there are CNCd parts available from various vendors, but they usually have design alterations to account for the aforementioned increase flex tolerance and also to make them more economical (or just possible) to machine.
Those parts usually are heavier as well and can have a negative effect on the resonance and inertia of the gantries reducing print speed.
There's been a lot of discussion on this at various points in the voron design discord (serious discoverability problem compared to forums and the such :P ) about this.
In terms of price, electronics and motions components are just expensive, especially if you want reliable parts. Metal parts would also increase the price because machining is more expensive than printing by quite a bit.
Even the expensive LDO kit requires you to source the printed parts yourself, I'd say the kits that provide printed parts are in the minority.
There are cheaper kits that might make more sense for you, but I don't have any experience with them.
A friend is building up one of these and is fairly happy with it: https://magicphoenix.xyz/product/voron-v2-4-customized-kit/
They also have Trident kits. I've also built a Siboor V0.2 kit and was happy with it for the money.
I swore I wouldn't do that. I didn't keep the vow, but didn't break it quite as thoroughly as I expected - though I did do several other upgrades to it in addition (commercial parts).
I use it quite a bit; it can be infuriating when it's being temperamental, but enormously satisfying when something I designed from scratch works out well. I've had quite a few requests from my wife for miscellaneous bits and pieces too, so everyone's happy.