Is EVERBODY building a Voron now?

It seems like a huge community is building a Voron now. It is really hard to get the parts.

I had ordered some parts from Fermio Labs, like the print bed, the LDI stepper motor for the Afterburner hope-end and the IGUS® cable chains.

Then a few days later some more parts where available and I ordered them. Unfortunately I did not pick the frame kit in black from LDO, that was then sold out in 2 days. But I got the LDO stepper motors for X any Y axis (0.9°) and picked the wire harness.

I have could make it by myself. But if you do the math. The complete harness costs me 114,90€. If I buy a 100 meter roll of the Helukabel Heluflon®-fep-6 in 0.25 mm² it cost me around 50€. The sourcing guide says you need 250 feet (or around 77 meters). Then I need the 0.5 mm² also, plus the JST and Molex connectors (just few cents) and the work I have to spent. They advertise that the connectors are properly labeled. If you don't have the tools(I got them) you would also need to spent a fair amount of money on proper tools for the Molex and JST connectors.

Well, I will report about the quality once I receive the harness. But that seem to be a fair deal to me.

The motors for the Z axis was nowhere to find, but then I stumbled across the hobby-store.pl . The had the LDO motors and I also ordered the steel shafts as they were cheap. I am not sure if I will use them as I also have a 5mm stainless steel rod here that I wanted to use. But cutting and grinding stainless steel is a pain.

I got the screws for my Voron as well. I try to use stainless steel bolts and nuts when possible and usually order them in larger quantities by 100, 500 or even 1000. So I spent round about 100€ for the bolts and nuts.

Some small parts arrived from Chine as well. The self tapping M2 x10, the JST connector set, the magnets and the Z inductive probe sensor.

I got the Mean Well power supplies both from Amazon for a good price.

I ordered the spring steel sheets from Energetic3D store. I am happy with the ones he provided for my Prusa clones and the Elegoo Mars 2 Pro printers.

So for know I can only wait for the resining parts like the frame, the heat mat and some others to become available again. 

Then I still wait for more parts to arrive from China, like the Bigtreetech SKS V1.4 turbo boards, the fans, the nuts for the extrusion profiles and the bearings. 

There are some electrical parts missing as well. But I plan to use proper circuit breakers and ground fault circuit interrupter for this printer. I am also thinking about some LED lights and some gadgets.

One would be a nozzle camera. 

First Voron parts are coming in, best tools for threaded inserts

 So I have started to print the Voron parts from eSUN ABS+. After a little bit of fiddling I got the ABS+ to print fine on my Prusa clones.

I have also started to melt in the threaded inserts. Therefore I bought a cheap soldering iron for 8,99€ only on Amazon.

I doubt it is any good for any soldering applications, but the tip design and the low energy made it the right tool for my purpose.

So bought this set of special tips for threaded inserts on Amazon for 9,99€ that perfectly fit to this soldering iron.

With the soldering iron set to the lowest power (200°C) it is just enough to gently melt in the threaded inserts into the print. You don´t want this to be too hot, as then the plastic will melt like butter and it will be hard to get a good and strong bond between the insert and the plastic part.

The other parts that came in where the linear rails I ended up ordering directly from robotdigg.com. Ordering was easy and shipping including tax was cheap.

I am still struggling to the get stepper motors from LDO that I want. But I did order the build plate in 300x300x8mm, the IGUS® cable chains, the extruder stepper motor. So that I can at least build the Afterburner extruder.

The frame is also a problem. I cannot get it from a local shop like Fermio Labs as it is always sold out like the stepper motors. If I could figure out if the LDO frame kit is similar in the dimensions as the Mitsumi kit, I would have ordered this one. But the problem with cheap rails is often that the surface for the linear rails is much smaller as the linear rails touches the extrusion profile just on the edges of the linear rails.

Voron is coming !

 I have quite a range of Prusa MK3(s) clones now. I did not bother to build a Prusa Mini yet, as I don't have a use case for it. An advantage would be the smaller plate, as a lot of parts I print would fit and I would not have to wast so much energy to heat up a large bed. But on the other hand the design does not look sturdy to me and I don't like bowden extruders.  Honestly I still have 3 Ender 2 from Creality, that are very similar.

As many other I was waiting for a Prusa Core XY design, but I have lost hope on that. I guess it would be at least 2000€ if it every comes.

So I looked around for a nice Core XY design over the last months and found that the Voron Design has a lot of support. From CAD files to parts lists and even a sourcing guide. You can decide on the build volume, I choose to go with 300mm on all axis. What I really like is the approach to go with reasonably parts. They don't always recommend the most expensive option. They have a lot of parts from Aliexpress.

For example on the linear rails. For sure Hiwin makes good quality, if you manage to get original ones. But they recommend to buy from Robodigg. why? Because it is a 3D printer, not a CNC milling machine. I have seen a lot of Prusa modded MK3 with Hiwin rails and I always ask myself WHY? Why would you spend so much money for those expensive part if the rest of the printer cannot keep up with it?

Then of course there is the question why people buy Prusa printers in the first place if they anyway are going to replace the frame(Bear Mod), the linear rails, the hot-end etc. Why not simply get the parts and build a clone from the start like I did now many times?

Ok, but back to the Voron. I was looking for a printer that can print fast, but with high quality. Some of the videos I have seen on the Voron where quite impressive. I also looked into the HevORT, but that seemed to me like a lot of wasted money. Maybe good for someone who needs a huge build volume.

So my estimated budget for the Voron 2.4 is 1200€, this is what I have spent so far.

For Pulleys, idlers in anodized black and some timing belts I spent around 110€

For 6mm & 9mm GT2 belts and BMG Extruder parts from Triangle Labs I spent 80€

24V Fans for Hotend and Printcooling 15€

Washers, screws and magnets about 30€

Robodigg black Linear Rails  120€ 

MeanWell 5v and 24V Power Supplies 52€

2x BIGTREETECH SKR V1.4 Turbo 32Bit  86,79€

LP08 inductive sensor 5,82€

MINI12864 v 1,2 LCD Display 9,63€

I have problem to source some parts like the stepper motors. I want some quality from LDO, not the usual crap you get on aliexpress.

If you wonder about the quality of the printed parts. This is eSUN ABS+ printed on an original Prusa MK3 in an IKEA enclosure. There was no profile for ABS+ and all profiles for ABS did not work, but I got only ugly warped parts So I had to come up with something on my own to get started.

But in the end I got it running. I used the ABS profile as a base. Then I changed those values and got some good result

print fan to 15% min and 30% max, on all time and 

nozzle temp 240°C first Layer all other 235°C

bed temp 100°C first layer 95°C for all other layers

I change the extrusion with to 0.5 for the first layer.