Hello,
I was interested in building a high end printer, mostly for the fun of it and learning what goes into it. I’ve been looking at the Voron and on the page looks really nice; however, I’ve been unable to find a lot of actual print quality, speed, and capability comparisons.
Does anybody here have experience or recommendations of other high end, self build, printer designs?
I’d be using my customized printer based on the ender 3 max platform.
Really, looking to improve in a few areas:
- proper enclosure and venting so I don’t continue to poison myself when printing abs.
- elimination of ringing caused by that heavy bed swinging around at high speed
- ability to ramp up the print speed past 50mm/s
I’d also love the ability to play with multi-matrtial printing, but not high on the list.
Thanks all
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A 2.4 will be better than an Ender 3, but there are better options out there. The flying gantry is a solution in search of a problem, the gantry is heavy and not particularly rigid, Voron toolheads don’t cool particularly well, the rigid bed mounting is a recipe for bed taco, etc.
Which isn’t to say that V2s are bad printers – they can turn out great prints. But if you’re starting fresh today, I’d seriously consider any number of printers over it.
If you want to stay within the Voron ecosystem for whatever reason, the Trident’s a better design. It still lacks things like kinematic bed mounting that are standard fair on other designs today, though. I’d stay away from Tap on any of them – I’m still baffled that thing gets promoted as being a good idea.
In terms of bang for your buck, it’s incredibly difficult to beat the VzBot kits. It’ll be a less expensive and more capable machine than a V2.4. There are panels available to enclose it. I don’t love the Z stage on it, but I can overlook it given the value the rest of the printer gets you.
The Annex K3 is an absolutely killer little machine, but is only 180x180 build volume. The small build volume is free rigidity, though, and K3s can be made true high temp capable with less relative effort than a lot of printers. I’m not as big a fan of the larger Annex printers (K1/K2), personally.
The Rat Rig v-Core was probably the best value CoreXY before the VzBot kits came around. Enclosing them is more of a challenge due to all the PETG parts, though. The EVA toolhead provides a ton of flexibility for mixing and matching parts, if that’s your thing.
In terms of take it out of the box and print, nothing beats the Bambu X1 and P1P. They’re great units. They’re a closed ecosystem though, and not modification friendly if that’s what you want.
My main workhorse printer’s a Railcore II. Great machine, but the design’s aging and I generally wouldn’t recommend a new build today outside of a few very specific applications. It was cutting edge when the design was released in 2018, but, as with the 2.4, the wider community has learned a lot since then about fundamental printer design and there are better options now.
I have experience with the Voron 2.4. I built mine a little over a year ago and absolutely love it.
The V2.4 crew pride themselves on print quality. I mean, just look at what is required to be part of the PIF (PrintItForward) program. I can personally attest that print quality is amazing, and I have printed ABS, ASA, PLA, and PETG and had success with all. The enclosure can be built with easily removable clips so you can change from one setup to another.
There are also tons of mods out, like the Nevermore, which would help reduce those bad air particles from printing ABS.
I’ve heard of V2.4 printers reaching 300mm/sec print speeds. I usually run everyday prints around 80-150.
If you want to eventually try multi-material printing, then you will want to check out the ERCF project.
You should know that the Voron build process is maybe 1% of your work on this thing. You will be tinkering with ini scripts and print settings for years after your first benchy. For example, you’ll probably want to install the Klicky mod (or some other Z probe mod) and Auto-Z leveling. With QGL and Auto-Z your prints will start within roughly 0.02mm of the perfect first layer every time. But all this will take time to setup and configure.
On top of all that, the Voron discord community is amazing. If you need help with a print issue, someone will help you.
If you have any other questions, lemme know!
TL;DR: Don’t buy multi-material as a beginner.
Long answer: Regarding Multimaterial: It’s not what you expect.
Tried multiple systems in the past and they all had one common issue: Software.
With bambulabs AMS popularity things might change but it’s janky at best. Mosaic pushed a head but in the process had to built their own slicer and as such breaking compatibility to other “experimental” parts/modifications.
The crone could be toolchanger with one mixing hotend tool: Removing the burden of mixing hot ends while keeping the benefit. Neither do common slicer make good use of mixing hotends. Neither do CAD packages allow you to take advantage of mixing hot ends. They are historically built for subtractive manufacturing with additive features being added within the last 10 years. They still aren’t made for dynamically mixing multi-materials (one might call these software-defined materials) and given how bugged Autodesk Inventor already is this probably can’t be added at all. Building a new CAD package from the ground up is cost prohibitive. Meaning all the nice demos people show of are either specialized purpose-built software for exactly this product/shape or a clusterfuck.
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Let’s talk fiction/future: E3D toolchanger and Prusa XL can do 5 tools. Let’s say 0,25 mm nozzle, 0.8mm nozzle, mixing hotend, DIN 562 (square nut) pick & place and milling spindle. As backend a filament bus-matrix (similar to what the AHB is for MCUs) with two pallet mosaic units within the path (and bypassed for e.g. flexible material) so any filament can be “routed” to any tool. This combined with a good toolchain could be a game changer. The one more thing.
Truth is this is years if not decades into the future. Assuming it will turn into reality which would be a miracle. Slicer being able to automatically optimize for multiple nozzle diameters would be a first step. From there it should be simpler (2.5D CAM could be a roadblock). Once such a machine and toolchain exists adding a 4th and 5th axis would be the next step but that adds even more complexity to it.
Worst case would be yet another round of patents blocking innovation/development of this technology for decades to come. Just like the initial Stratasys FDM patent had to expire before 3D-printing took off.
Thanks! I hadn’t considered the slicers. I don’t have a driving need multi-matrtial – mostly considering that if I’m going to invest in building a printer, I’d want it to be capable in all ways.
Awesome. Thank you for the reply. Sounds like it is time to start printing and collecting parts.
Did you read the PIF article you linked? Does not sound too great.
Fair, but it is worth pointing out that the PIF program aims for better quality. Boggles my mind why they shipped this set if it has such clear issues.
I dont have experience with vorons, but seen a lot of good examples. Deffo something Id consider if I ever decide to build another printer.
3D printers are slow by default and then if you add dual extruder its even slower. Bigger printer requires bigger cross-section of all HW (frame, rods, etc) and that adds weight and then you have to lower your accelerations. On the other hand, if you build bigger size printer with same components you will have to reduce accelerations due to decreased rigidity.
You want speed? Get smaller printer and dont get multi-material printer (and yeah avoid bed slingers, but 50 mm/s should be doable with any printer). Your printer cant go above 50 mm/s? Get bigger nozzle and print thicker layers and line width (cheap and easy upgrade that speeds up 12h print to 8h). Just my 2c
Thanks. My main speed issue, I think, is the size of the bed. My base unit was an ender 3 max with a 300x300 bed. On a fast print that bed swings with enough energy to actual move the printer.
I say likely is that I haven’t attempted to solve the issue yet – I don’t need the speed, I simply enjoy tinkering and this is one are I havent.
Having said that, from the original post, while I want to build one from scratch, I’ll probably continue tinkering on my custom printer as well.
I’ve played with up to a 1.0mm nozzle – haven’t had results yet.
I just build my Voron 2.4 last month as an upgrade to my riced out Ender 3, and I absolutely love it. Highly recommend the build and printer. I went through magic phoenix for a kit, and picked up a couple extra things I wanted along the way, but they weren’t necessary. Took about 24 days to arrive after placing the order with DHL shipping.
I printed all the parts myself in ASA on the ender. In hindsight, someone else with a better printer would have done a better job, but only marginally. I was surprised how well my ender did on that much ASA.
I’m still tuning the voron, but the defaults in orca slicer have been doing well so far, and it’s fast, I mean really fast. Right now mine has a bit of over extrusion, but that just needs to be tuned a bit more. I’ve seen people on line pump out some amazing prints on the v2.4.
I imagine everything you’re looking for will be satisfied by the Voron, either 2.4 or trident. I wanted a 350^3 tho, so I went with the 2.4
I’ve got 4 Vorons, a 2.4r2, trident, switchwire, and a 0.2. The 2.4 and trident are amazing printers. I’d recommend the trident as your first Voron. Any issues you run into, the Voron community is very helpful and will guide you. As far as kit vendors, the LDO kits are significantly better than the cheap ones like formbot. Don’t go with the cheaper option if you can afford the LDO kit. It will make the build a lot easier and more enjoyable. The wiring is the worst part of the build, and LDO gives you all the wiring pre crimped, and they have a lot of extra PCBs that make the wiring even easier.
The Voron community is a bit like a cult. Do everything by their book and you will have a good printer and many friends. But do not start to ask too many whys or modify your machine in an unapproved way.
I reccomend to keep your printer, install klipper and keep on tinkering.
So, I bought myself a rpi4 and installed Klipper. Very cool firmware quite enjoying it. Still tuning but i’ve got my speed up 3x from my Marlin based firmware. I think I’ll continue looking at the options here recommended and build one – mostly because I want to – not because I am solving a problem. Thanks for putting me onto Klipper.
