2.4 upgrades/replacements for Formbot as a 1st time Voron buyer.

[Warrenzo]

Ok, so I’m going to pull the trigger on the Formbot 2.4 350mm next month, but I’m just wondering what ever thinks would be a good upgrade/replacement to purchase to use instead of the stock part???
So far I’ve decided on the following….

* Cartographer
* Possibly the full CNC parts from either Chaoticlabs or Biqu
*Monolith AWD gantry

I mostly print PLA/PETG, but def looking to print with ABS too.

So what do you guys think I should go with and why?

P.S. I'm coming from the Creality CR-10s Pro and the CR10-Max, both of which I upgraded myself, so I'm no stranger to building/upgrading/modding.

 

[Mark Norris]

Ok, so I’m going to pull the trigger on the Formbot 2.4 350mm next month, but I’m just wondering what ever thinks would be a good upgrade/replacement to purchase to use instead of the stock part???
So far I’ve decided on the following….

* Cartographer
* Possibly the full CNC parts from either Chaoticlabs or Biqu
*Monolith AWD gantry

I mostly print PLA/PETG, but def looking to print with ABS too.

So what do you guys think I should go with and why?

P.S. I'm coming from the Creality CR-10s Pro and the CR10-Max, both of which I upgraded myself, so I'm no stranger to building/upgrading/modding.

if this is your first voron, we always recommend building stock, and get it running reliably before throwing a bunch of third party mods at it

it's much easier for us to diagnose issues on a stock voron rather than trying to work out if one of the mods is causing issues

once you're up-and-running with a reliable voron, you can mod it to your hearts content

 

[Warrenzo]

if this is your first voron, we always recommend building stock, and get it running reliably before throwing a bunch of third party mods at it

it's much easier for us to diagnose issues on a stock voron rather than trying to work out if one of the mods is causing issues

once you're up-and-running with a reliable voron, you can mod it to your hearts content

It is indeed.

Yeah I was going to probably run it for 6 months or so as stock to get a feel for it before adding any, but just wanted to get opinions on what people have done and would suggest as a good future upgrade/mod. That being said though, I recon I might skip the printed parts in favour of the CNC parts to save a bit in the long run

 

[endstop]

Hope you've made up your mind in the meantime...
If not, Cartographer works very well (I've got the latest version, be sure to understand which one you get).

A CNC shuttle with carto mount could make sense.
I built a Stealthchanger myself with full CNC kit, finding there is no documentation but a single build video on the CNC parts. It was "interesting"...
I'm not convinced that most of the aluminium parts provide a real advantage in operation but they might be more robust against abuse e.g. if one side of the gantry jams in positive Z against the umbilical and the other half continues moving upwards. A few Stealthchanger printed parts already took damage in accidents (typically: trying to dock after layer shift during print). In that sense, I'm glad CNC parts, especially the Stealthchanger shuttle are more robust (going through calibration for all heads after breaking that one would be a serious PITA).
That said, I wouldn't find the motivation to rebuild replacing printed against CNC so I may have made the correct choice. It's gardening tools not rocket science, right?

 

[twblalock]

I just finished my build of the same kit. I actually restored it to stock because I dislike almost all of the non-BOM choices Formbot made:

• Replace Manta M8P board with Octopus 1.1
• Add an authentic Raspberry Pi 4b
• Used proper length DIN rails with the stock orientation
• Revo Voron hotend
• 5V PSU for the Pi

That got me to a stock BOM except for the display and the probe. The included display is a BTT HDMI5 which is a good one, and the included Tap PCB works with a printed Tap carriage and seems to be reliable so far. I don't think the stock inductive probe is as good as Tap.

The main quality of life upgrade I've done so far is using a toolhead board, but I ditched CANBUS and used an LDO Nitehawk SB. A single cable connects the toolhead to the electronics bay and it is plug-and-play USB. If I wanted to run all the wires individually, as in the manual, I would have needed to buy more cable chains because Formbot only provided a Z chain.

After all of this I still paid less than an LDO 350 kit, and the LDO kit also includes some parts I would have replaced.

I'm not going to even think about CNC parts or expensive probing solutions until I run into a problem with the stock build. One of the benefits of this (other than saving money) is that a stock printer.cfg works pretty much out of the box and I have a good foundation for upgrading later on.