Would you rather upgrade (2) Anycubic Vyper (new hotend, extruder, etc) or buy a new printer?
I mean I would need to know what the problems were with my printer. When I had an Ender3 v1 and I was debating upgrade or switching. I went with switching since the machine had fundamental issues which couldn’t be fixed or the solution was not guaranteed to fix it.
I’m sorry, but it’s shameful so many people are telling you to spend $1,200 on a printer because of the brand when you can get an identical or even superior feature set for half that or less. They have fallen so far behind and the loyalists just cannot admit it.
True, I knew that my Voron would work out to be more expensive than the leading competitor, but I also highly value the open source ethos and saw it as an opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. No regrets and I’m happy to champion it, but I do try to present other options on the field.
My broke college student days aren’t that far behind me and I can appreciate the hell out of a value option. I’m very curious what route you have in mind.
spoiler
The closest I can think of is maybe the Sovol SV-08, which gets you pretty close to a v2.4, but apparently not without it’s faults (comment). I’ll own seeing the budget and immediately thinking “you could build a Voron with that”.
Alternatively, maybe doing a variation of the Ender 3 NG conversion, but I’m not sure how much traction/ review coverage that project has just yet.
In either case, it’s hard to recommend something you’ve heard of, but haven’t personally used (experience bias and all). Happy to change my mind in the face of new evidence though!
I wasn’t really speaking on a voron as it’s far superior to another recommendation people are making, and honestly ALWAYS make when people are considering a purchase.
I’d buy a printer. If you’re looking for something easy, an assembled Prusa Core One. If you want something more expandable/project-like then probably a Voron.
Edit: a letter
So I’ve never considered a Voron before. I’m looking at it now and I went through the configurator. I have a spreadsheet of parts and links to the supplier. Do you just order all these parts from the supplier and then I put it together myself? Do I have to solder? I suck at it.
I’ve considered a Prusa. Definitely one of the best (if not the best on the market). I was sort of hoping for a larger print bed.
There are a ton of great printers under $1000 these days. If I needed a larger bed I’d get a Qidi Max 3. I got an Anycubic s1 with an ams that dries for $600.
Or you buy a kit from a reputable brand
You have four paths to get parts for a Voron:
- self source all the parts individually
- get kits for the things you want and self source what you want to be picky on. For example, here’s a motion kit
- configure a kit from someone like West3D
- buy a BOM in a box. There are a couple of brands that do this
I personally went the West3D route. It seems like the LDO and formbot BOM-in-a-box options are popular. If you live near a microcenter they offer smaller kits if you want to mix and match or use a brick and mortar. Self sourcing tends to be expensive due to our collective tendancy to buy higher quality than necessary parts and shipping.
Yes, you will be building the thing from a ton of parts. Yes, it will take you a while. If you’re comfortable building things there’s nothing particular hard about it. You absolutely will not need to solder. Most kits come with premade wiring harness and there’s plenty of complete wiring options available even if you buy components. Depending on your goals, you might need to customize your wiring some. This means crimping, which isn’t hard per say but you’ll probably need to buy a crimper or two and dial in the right amount of squish for your terminal and wire gauge combination. Too much force and you’ll wind up severing the wires. Too little and the terminal will come off the wire. Again, not hard but you’ll probably need to do it a few times before you develop a feel and get consistent.
I see their kit, very cool. I’m alright if I have to solder. My neighbor can help out, they have a complete workbench setup for electronics and I believe they even have the crimpers I would need.
I’m going to go for the 350mm bed. I’m tired of being limited on the build plate of the Vyper. Are there any suggestions for bumping up the base kit? I see there are a lot of options for this kit.
I replied to another post with a list of mods, so take a look at the other comments in the post for some out of box mods.
As a 350 owner, be aware of two things.
First, big bed = big chamber = heat soak takes a while and you have a lot more surface area to lose heat from. If you want to print big ABS/ASA parts you’re going to want ACM panels, a better sealed/insulated front door, and potentially a radiant layer inside the printer.
Second, the big printer limits your rate of acceleration some compared to a smaller CoreXY. IMO if you have a big printer to print big things you’re probably not going to have small/finely detailed parts that often. Those are the kinds of parts that will go a touch slower. But honestly 5k acceleration is orders of magnitude faster than most bed slingers can achieve and 10-15k is only a 2-3x increase so you’re not giving up that much.
Other than than, no regrets about the 350.
I wouldn’t look for voron stuff at Microcenter unless you feel like there’s no better option. The few times I’ve seen the stuff they sell it all looks like older outdated versions of the parts.
I got CNC parts from microcenter. They had the chaotic labs kit in a differently branded box for significantly less $$ than available on the web. The QR code for documentation inside the box went straight to chaotic labs and the parts look to be identical.
As with anything, do some level of research before you buy.
I wish the Prusa Core One had a larger print bed. I’m looking over the specs on their website and it is a nice setup.
That’ll get me a new Prusa with some to spare for filament. Unless there’s a clear and specific use-case on my plate that a Core One or mk4 can’t do, I’d get a new printer.
The new printer, hands down (unless your goal is to push the viper beyond its limits). That kind of budget puts you far beyond entry level machines, and usually comes with marked improvements in quality, reliability, and speed. For example, with 1.5k you could probably swing one of the big Vorons 2.4 kits on sale (+printed parts), a Trident kit at retail (also with printed parts), or go the out of the box route and comfortably pick up the Core One (or go Bambu if that’s your jam).
For context, I can run prints on my 2.4 what would take something in the neighborhood of 4 times as long on my old ender 3.
I’m looking at the Vorons now. I like that I can build it to spec.
For context, I can run prints on my 2.4 what would take something in the neighborhood of 4 times as long on my old ender 3.
I would put the difference even higher between my 2.4 and my old i3 clone, but I’m also running a 0.6mm nozzle and print with 0.9mm extrusion width / 2 walls and 0.3mm layer heights. My limiting factor is volumetric flow, which I’ve found to vary between materials (ASA = way easier to print fast than PETG).
How fast are you printing? I’m very close to finally pulling the trigger on a 2.4, and would love a bump in speed. my current printer (Anycubic bedslinger with klipper) is printing PLA/ASA at 200mm/s with 6000mm/s2 accelerations and 300mm/s travel while retaining pretty good quality.
My biggest annoyances with my current printer is that despite the probed bedmesh (inductive probe) it doesn’t compensate properly on the first layer across the entire bed. There’s a 0.1mm difference between highest and lowest probed points, i would think this could easily be compensated for since it’s decently flat. But it always ends up with bad sections where it’s clearly not compensating correctly while others are perfect. I also always need to tweak Z-offset between powerdowns, which is a bit annoying since i usually need to restart the first print of the day at least once. How consistent and close to “set and forget” is your voron?
Speed
Print duration is dependent on two components:
- How fast is your print head moving? I run velocities/accelerations similar to you partially because I have a 350 which is pushing the limits of 2020 extrusion and 6mm a/b belts as well as…
- How much filament you’re laying as the print head moves. This is influenced by your nozzle diameter, which in turn influences what kind of line width and layer height you can expect. It’s also influenced your extruder’s ability to melt plastic (eg volumetric flow). For ASA/ABS I limit volumetric flow to 35 mm^3/sec, or PLA I limit to 25 mm^3/sec, and for PETG I limit to 20 mm^3/sec
My print speed is often limited by volumetric flow - not the actual speed of my print head, so I haven’t bothered chasing higher ceilings. Granted, tend to print I print large/chunky/functional things so my goal is to lay down as much material as possible. If you’re chasing lots of fine detail, a smaller Voron can go faster than what I have but isn’t going to be that much faster than where you are now.
Print Quality
Thanks to a combination of CoreXY (rigidity) and Klipper (pressure advance, input shaping), I have basically zero ringing/ghosting show up in prints. It is worth talking about quality expectations though. Harsh lighting can reveal that layer lines are not perfectly aligned layer to layer. Not sure if this is a Voron thing or is it’s just more obvious now that my layers are a lot more noise free.
First layer
Automated gantry leveling (Klipper will get the bed and gantry to be ‘perfectly’ in plane thanks to 2.4s being able to mechanically move the four corners of the gantry independently - trident does similar, but moves the bed instead), a klicky probe and a Z calibration macro, and bed mesh make my first layers extremely consistent print to print.
One caveat: because the printer is enclosed and big (if you go for a 350), if you print sequential objects without letting the printer fully heat soak, the first layer will progressively get a touch higher and higher between prints as the printer expands in the z-axis.
Do you have any suggestions for upgrading the base kit? There are so many options.
I assume you mean “what mods do I recommend out of the box”?
- Klicky. I personally think tap adds too much mass and klicky is great
- Magnetic panel clips to make it way easier/faster to get the panels on/off
- An under bed filter with carbon. I’m using “the filter”. Even if you’re not going to print ASA/ABS the extra chamber heat helps eliminate warping on large PETG parts s
- If you’re going to be going to be building a larger printer and print ASA/ABS skip to ACM panels. Also do #5
- The fridge door is so much nicer than the stock double doors, but isn’t something you need to do out of the box
- You’re probably going to run into wire breaks in the cable chains - especially the x and y chains. An umbilical makes that much more unlikely. You don’t have to have to USB or CAN to do this
… Off the top of my head, those are the big ones
I believe the official Voron recommendation is to build the printer stock first and then upgrade/ mod from there. Which is solid advice, the stock machines are very competent and don’t need upgrades to print well.
The only real day-1 upgrade I’d recommend is called the Klicky switch (or the PCB variant so that you don’t have to do any soldering, just crimping). The stock BoM calls for an inductive probe, which works, but is prone to thermal drift (it gets less accurate as the printer heats up, so you have to do your bed mesh at the same temperature every time). Klicky replaces it with a limit switch- generally more reliable and accurate regardless of temperature.
I might also recommend a belt tension gauge (totally not needed, but more convenient than trying to measure the sound frequency). I use a remix of this one (assembled, kit), but realistically, anything repeatable will do the trick.
Everything beyond that is going to depend heavily on your kit, printer, and needs. For example, the LDO kits actually come with the mechanical parts for the Klicky switch among other nice to haves. Or alternatively, if you’re doing a 350 2.4 and planning on long running enclosed prints (ABS/ASA),
extensionextrusion backers for the flying gantry may be a good idea (the steel linear rails and aluminum have different rates of thermal expansion, which can cause them to bend as the internal volume of the printer warms up), but they’re not especially necessary if you have a smaller printer or only ever work with PLA (which you can leave the door open/ panels off for).The official Voron discord is also a phenomenal resource. Plus most vendors run their own discord servers for help/ questions (I’m partial to Fabreeko, because their customer service is above and beyond, but West3D is also really good).
Thanks for the great info! I have a bunch of questions -
So the Klicky Switch is the probe? I see there is a Clicky Clack door kit. Don’t want to confuse them.
Also, the belt tension gauge. I see some one Amazon, is any one good enough. They seem to be about $30
I don’t see anything about a extension rails for a flying gantry. I do see LDO rails, but when I pick that option it tells me “Includes 6 MGN9 rails and 1 MGN12 (recommended) - Option to choose 8x MGN9s.”
Are these kits CoreXY and self leveling?
Also the kit has options for the controller board and display, which is Octopus and Mini123864 (matched w/brand of board). That means I don’t need to order a Raspberry PI?
I was thinking about upgrading the extruder to an Orbiter 2.5, and the hotend to a Mosquito Magnum, heater to Slice 50w, Thermistor cartridge to Slice PT1000.
I know you said the default setup is perfectly fine, but I’ve been eyeing the Slice products for a while now. I’m willing to pay the extra money and go above the $1500 to have them. Do you find this overkill?
Sure, happy to help! (Plus, I’d feel really bad recommending a Voron build and then just leaving you in the dark to figure everything out). Sorry in advance for the long post though…
Yes, Klicky Switch is the probe. Mechanically, it’s pretty similar to a BL-Touch, but is way cheaper (bonus points for also being harder to break and easier to fix) since it’s just a switch and some magnets.*
Clicky Clack is a replacement for the stock door (acrylic and some VHB tape), it makes a better seal with the printer frame. Nice to have (especially if you’re trying to keep fumes down), but by no means necessary.
Belt gauges are most handy for 2.4 builds, since they run 4 belts instead of lead screws (plus 2 for the Core XY platform) that you want to have all tensioned the same, so that every motor is moving it’s corner the same amount. Technically, you can do this by plucking the belt and using the mic on your phone to measure the frequency. (More info here). The gauge is mostly just to make it easier to compare the belts against each other rather than an empirical measurement tool. Again not a need, just a nice to have. I’ve never used the Amazon gauges since I went the kit route since it was “cheaper” (I’m also reasonably sure most of the gauges on Amazon are just modified tire depth gauges, which can be had for way cheaper and with a bit of quick modeling could be relatively easily be converted into belt gauges (or maybe someone’s already done that somewhere). There’s also printed models like this or maybe this that seve the same function. In short, haven’t tried them, but anything that can give you the same measurements repeatedly should do just fine (you can always sound tension one belt, measure it and make the others match the measurement).
Whoops typo, sorry extrusion backers. These guys: steel, titanium
Not super sure about the Tridents being self leveling, I think they are, but it would kinda depend on how they’re wired up (3 independent motors vs all 3 driven off the same control). The 2.4’s are absolutely self leveling though- they do a probe of each corner and adjust the gantry to be as parallel to the bed as you specify( example). From there, they’ll also probe a bed mesh, just to help deal with any deviations in the bed/ plate.
Octopus is the main control board, I think they were used for commonly for a while, but I’m not sure if they’ve been superseded by something else. Plus, I don’t have one and can’t speak to it. Mini123864 looks to be the display screen (used for Klipper Screen). You’d probably want to check the kit contents to see if a Pi is included, but based on those two alone, I’d say probably not.
(Personally, it’s a big part of why I went with the LDO kit, (this is the one I bought. More expensive, but came with high quality parts, minor upgrades, and everything short of the printed parts in the box, plus Fabreeko was running a sale when I bought mine (Voron folks like to Celebrate Clee day (was 5/25 last year) in honor of one of the outstanding community members/ Voron team members (?)/ I’m not actually entirely sure))
Uhh… Slice is not particularly well liked in Voron circles. They are very litigious with their patents, which doesn’t sit well with a crowd that is open source, well, everything (previous comment of mine with more info/ links). I think remember reading somewhere that there might be some bad blood between the Voron team and Slice, but I don’t have a link/ hard proof (beyond the fact that mounts for Slice hotends aren’t officially published with the toolhead files. If your deadset, user mods exist (and slice also sells parts)). Personally, I wasn’t all that impressed with my Mosquito Magnum, especially after I managed to irrecoverably jam the heatbreak (probably my fault. the cooling fan unplugged and heatcreap took care of the rest). Online reviews so Slices customer service was mixed, but generally skewed negative so I pretty much swore them off and wrote the hot end off as a loss (also managed to strip one of the tiny ass m2 screws that hold the thing together trying to take it apart after the aforementioned heatcreap incident). The heater and thermistor were fine- I stuffed them in a Phaetus Dragonfly though (less flow, but a solidly reliable hot end, especially on an Ender 3), and decommissioned them when I noticed that the insulation had worn though on the heater.
On the Voron, I’ve been pretty happy with the Revo High Flow that came with my Kit. Well, other than the fact that nozzle clogs are a nightmare, the cost for replacements, and general lack of availability (they exist, but my go-to vendors are almost always sold out). I haven’t decided to yet (because I don’t particularly want to recalibrate everything), but I have a Phaetus neXt G as a standby if I ever get fed up with the Revo. The Phaetus Rapido is also a popular option.
Haven’t used the Orbiter either. I don’t think I had any major issues with the stock Clockwork (it’s also been a while). I think I mostly swapped in a Galileo 2 (G2E) as a way to keep a spare extruder around in case of emergency. Overall, G2E has been pretty good- prints fine, just a bit annoying to service in the rare event of a jam (I was playing with TPU), and not known to play well with the Box Turtle MMU project that I’m working on, but that’s a problem from future me (after I get it built)…
* I can’t personally vouch for it, but in the spirit of overkill, I should probably also mention the Beacon probe, which is a stupid fast Eddy current sensor (more info here) (replaces the Klicky switch/ inductive probe)
Realistically, a good sale probably keeps you on budget (all in, after tax), but if we’re fudging that a bit in the name of upgrades, this is about the route I would go if I had to do my machine over (take this with a massive grain of salt since everyone’s goals are slightly different (and also since I bought mostly of my stuff before the tarrif nonsense started)):
Fabreeko:
- LDO 2.4 350 kit
- Backers, mostly for the discount with machine purchase, but also because I print mostly ABS lately and like not having to worry about heat soaking my machine (warm it up in advance so that any warping gets calibrated out) before each print.
- Printed parts, I tried to get the ender to print Voron parts, I really did (and was somewhat successful), but I ended up spending more time and money trying. If you don’t have a reliable source for ABS parts it’s absolutely worth the $150
- Aluminum carriage mount, significantly easier to work with the AB belts and get even lengths and tensions. Plus including in the initial build means that you don’t have the re-do the belts to install it (totally doable, just annoying).
- Nevermore Carbon, not really a mod, but a consumable that you probably don’t just have on hand. Helps cut ABS fumes (when in a filter like the included Nevermore or The Filter) and won’t corroded the nice new rails.
Pre-tax, MSRP: $1,713.21 (ideally on sale for a lower price (the kits don’t tend to get much of a discount, but sometimes they throw in free printed parts or other discounts) and maybe the Clicky Clack door + acrylic if it’s a really good sale)
AliExpress:
- PCB Klicky, x2 to put it over the free shipping limit and for spare parts
total ~$20
To answer your question, Slice stuff off the bat is probably unnecessary (if you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket, there’s better value to be had in other mods). The nice part about Vorons is that everything can be upgraded pretty easily down the road, hopefully because you’ve identified a specific need or reason to upgrade.
I would not.
For that price I can get 3-4 Ender-3s and the same number of Raspberry Pi and make my own smart printers .
