Voron as a second printer?

[elkloso]

Hi together,
I am thinking about building a Voron V2 to backup my old printer.

This would be my 3rd DYI printer. I have never had an out of the box printer and would only buy a resin printer. The rest can be built well in my opinion. I started with a DIY printer from a German forum in 2017 and then cannibalized it in 2018 and converted it to a HEVO (Hypercube Evolution).

My HEVO is hardly a HEVO anymore and has the following mods:
- Orbiter V2
- Volcano with 0.4mm nozzle or 0.8mm nozzle
- Belt drive Z-axis with two rods each
- Duet3 WIFI
- BL Touch
- Heated, finely milled aluminum plate with textured PEI

I'm currently considering whether to convert to CANBUS to make the hotend lighter. I print PETG at 100mm/s and 0.2mm layer height, which is a pretty good print.

What would appeal to me now would be
- Canbus
- Larger build room (at the moment 230x230mm)
- 24V
- Linear rails
- Tool changer
- Closed installation space with filter for ABS


Now I could convert the HEVO. However, I still have the risk that if something breaks, the printer will stop and I will need parts from someone else. Instead of converting the HEVO, the idea would be to leave it as it is and build a Voron without any time pressure. I just think that the Voron will then become my main printer and the HEVO might just stand around at some point. Or I might like the linear rails and Canbus so much that I convert the HEVO too and then have two very good printers standing around.

I usually just print technical pars I need for projects. I do not print figures or commercial orders.

How would you handle that?

 

[claudermilk]

Sounds like a Voron could be right up your alley. Canbus is being actively used and improved in the community, volumes are 250, 300, and 350, All the motion systems use linear rails (well, except Legacy, but that's a weird one). Vorons are all designed to be enclosed for ABS printing. And finally, there's toolchanger projects for both Trident and V2 that I have seen.

 

[Oliver1975]

Hi together,
I am thinking about building a Voron V2 to backup my old printer.

This would be my 3rd DYI printer. I have never had an out of the box printer and would only buy a resin printer. The rest can be built well in my opinion. I started with a DIY printer from a German forum in 2017 and then cannibalized it in 2018 and converted it to a HEVO (Hypercube Evolution).

My HEVO is hardly a HEVO anymore and has the following mods:
- Orbiter V2
- Volcano with 0.4mm nozzle or 0.8mm nozzle
- Belt drive Z-axis with two rods each
- Duet3 WIFI
- BL Touch
- Heated, finely milled aluminum plate with textured PEI

I'm currently considering whether to convert to CANBUS to make the hotend lighter. I print PETG at 100mm/s and 0.2mm layer height, which is a pretty good print.

What would appeal to me now would be
- Canbus
- Larger build room (at the moment 230x230mm)
- 24V
- Linear rails
- Tool changer
- Closed installation space with filter for ABS


Now I could convert the HEVO. However, I still have the risk that if something breaks, the printer will stop and I will need parts from someone else. Instead of converting the HEVO, the idea would be to leave it as it is and build a Voron without any time pressure. I just think that the Voron will then become my main printer and the HEVO might just stand around at some point. Or I might like the linear rails and Canbus so much that I convert the HEVO too and then have two very good printers standing around.

I usually just print technical pars I need for projects. I do not print figures or commercial orders.

How would you handle that?

First off, a Voron, Trident or 2.4r2 is perfectly good to meet your needs; as long as you choose a size you desire. Note that the Trident is actually newer which is why they renamed it (partly) from v1 to the voron Trident, so don't think that you're getting a lesser printer than a V2 just because of the number.

(I have a Trident 350, heavily modded). If you want to print parts that require reasonable chamber temps, up to around 79.9C then a Voron is your goto IMHO.

Regarding kits, the BEST is LDO, though I would swap out the motherboard for e.g. an Octopus Pro for upgradeablity to e.g. 48V later on if you so desire; if you're not bothered about upgradeability then the supplied motherboard is fine. Next up, in terms of quality is Formbot. Fystec is slowly catching up in terms of kit quality as well. After that you have a long way down the list; all the other kit vendors. All of these kits can be found on aliexpress which I trust since I use paypal to pay on there and paypal supports the purchaser more than the vendor in 99% of cases. Another choice might be to source your own parts based on the BOM in VoronDesign.com, or buy a custom kit from a local vendor.

Regarding lots of resources, CANBUS etc and other stuff, I highly recommend importing my bookmarks/favourites into your browser of choice from here: https://github.com/oernster/3D-printing-info/tree/main/browser-bookmarks

Furthermore, you will find lots of other useful 3D printing information relating to Voron and other printers in my general 3D printing repository here: https://github.com/oernster/3D-printing-info/

Take a look around the repo and the extensively maintained bookmark list - I've curated both over a period of about 5 years and hope it's of use to the 3D printing community.

Have fun!

 

[elkloso]

Thank you!

I'm aware of at least one CANBUS and one tool changer project. I'll definitely check your bookmarks.

I'll source my own parts. That's part of the fun for me and I've a lot of spare parts from my old projects which I can use. I also like changing this or that. Especially if I want to go with Orbiter, Volcano and maybe Duet (because I'm known to this parts). I also have all tools e.g. for doing blind joints by myself which saves some money compared to ordering the frame with holes (e.g. 1€ per hole at my aluminum supplier)

I'm just unsure about Trident vs V2.4. But I would rather chose the the V2.4 for the fixed Z-Axis. My HEVO is more similar to the Trident from the base construction and I'm not completely sure if I want another printer with moveable Z-Axis

 

[claudermilk]

Trident and V2 are very similar, the main difference being does the bed move (Trident) or does the gantry move (V2). Many parts are similar or the same and many mods work on both, some with minor changes. I have a self-sourced Trident with an Octopus board and it's a workhorse. I upgraded to the Galileo2 extruder recently and am very happy with it. If going with Duet be aware there's very few that have built Vorons on that board, so not as much community knowledge, but it has been done.

 

[keamer#5485]

Built a Formbot V2 last year and am very happy with it. Of course did some mods and have a few left to do, but these are great machines. I like the low centre of gravity for the stability I feel it gives (not sure if it gives better results with input shaping). Self sourcing, if you are well organized and have the patience is IMO still a good option because invariably the kits have stuff you end up upgrading anyways, and rather than getting just the quantity you need, you can get 50 of this or that screw for not much more cost and have the peace of mind knowing you have spares. I'd bite the bullet and get a set of wire crimpers. With self sourcing you may find this component or that doesn't fit exactly as you expected from the specs in the BOM, so I would definitely avoid converting your good printer now, as you may need to reprint some parts along the way. You could use the new Voron to print what you need for your HEVO later on.

As for what I would do if doing it over again from scratch, I would skip a few steps when it comes to mods. If you are doing Canbus (which I did and really appreciate the cleaner wiring), consider a BTT Manta M8 board with a CB1/CB2/Pie Compute module that mounts on board -- eliminated a 5V converter and has a decent built-in Canbus, so also no need for an external CAN board. CAN is among my favourite few mods.

Other mods I'd jump straight to are Beefy Z idlers and Beefy front Idlers, as well as the PINs mod for all the motion parts (M5 pins/shafts rather than threaded M5 screws to mount the pulleys). I'd use the version that embeds the Y end stop into the A-drive piece, since the A and B motors and X and Y end stops are the only remaining non-can bus wires to worry about. Tap has to be my favourite mod so far. My first layers went from inconsistent and requiring frequent re-tuning of the Z distance to darn near perfect every time. Combine Tap with Klipper's KAMP and Exclude Object and the whole printing process is so much more reliable and less frustrating. I chose the Chaotic Labs CNC Tap and am pleased with the results. It has a nice mount for the X end stop.

For the enclosure, I would also recommend the Printable Snap Latches and RockNRoll. I also like the GE5C Z-joints -- It feels like a more compliant way to allow the four joints to pivot than the base design. I added a wire brush nozzle cleaner, but am thinking the adaptive purge (part of KAMP) might work better.

All of the part mods I mentioned (except maybe the brush) are on the Voron Mods site (https://mods.vorondesign.com/) and can be done on a first build, saving yourself the need to print many of the standard parts.

My machine is now reliably doing such good quality that I am confidently starting prints from another room without constantly hanging out as the first layers print. I'm about to add some LED stip lights and a web cam to give me even more reason to just let the machine print.

Anyways, that's my 2 cents! Welcome to the Voron community!

 

[elkloso]

Thank you!
That are some good advice. I will dig into these topics.

Reliability is really important for me. I like that I can start my current printer and I'm sure that it works without any re-leveling or monitoring.