3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

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Netpackrat
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

Post by Netpackrat »

HTRN wrote: Sun Feb 05, 2023 11:18 am If it does warp, perhaps replacing it with a piece of sheet aluminum form the likes of big blue saw, it it needs precision holes? Otherwise just order it oversize and cut it down. :ugeek:
I have heard of builders using what sounds like an aluminum backed honeycomb material. Further research seems to indicate thatthe youtuber who had his warp was running without the cooling fans or skirts around the base, but he's not the only one it has happened to. Still looking into it.
And "eyedler"?! Shouldn't that be "Idler"?
Look at the picture of it again. I gave serious consideration to painting the button heads of the screws white.
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Netpackrat
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

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Made lots of progress the last few days, some of which I even remembered to take pictures of. Here's a few of the filter and insulation, with more of the gantry to come later.

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Here is the completed "Nevermore" filter (Voron is apparently Russian for "raven").

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This shows how the halves are separated, with just magnets to hold them together. This is working much better with the 2nd set of parts I printed. The original parts I put the magnets too far into the holes, so they couldn't actually contact each other when the halves met. The back half is the plenum which houses the fans, and the front half is the cartridge which gets filled with activated carbon pellets to absorb VOCs generated by printing. This is mostly only an issue with ABS/ASA, and less so with the PLA or PETG that I usually print on the other printers.

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The original design called for a connector which snaps into a rectangular hole here. The parts included with the LDO kit just has you hang a pigtail out of the hole with no grommet or anything. I used some silicone RTV to fill in the gap.

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Here is the filter assembly installed in the printer, along with the insulation on top of the deck panel. This should prevent the warping of that panel that some other users have reported, help to retain heat in the build chamber, and also help keep it out of the electronics bay (directly under the deck) to some extent. The latter isn't super important since the area under the deck has fans to actively cool it.

The LDO kit comes with the wires already pre-terminated, so I just had to find the one for the filter and run it along one of the extrusions and down through the hole to the electronics bay. Since the Nevermore replaces the standard exhaust filter on the back of the machine, I will now need to come up with a blanking plate for that, which I think I saw in the .stl files, so it should be just a matter of printing it out.
Cognosce teipsum et disce pati

"People come and go in our lives, especially the online ones. Some leave a fond memory, and some a bad taste." -Aesop
Cobar
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

Post by Cobar »

I thought that one of the big reasons to use ASA over ASB was less VOCs. Is it is still enough to worry about ventilation?
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Netpackrat
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

Post by Netpackrat »

ASA is better for fumes but they are still noticeable when I open the enclosure I have been using with the Prusa to print the parts for the Voron.

I just finished installing the belts for the X and Y axes, which are a bit of a goat rope. Didn't get as much done on the printer as I would have liked because I spent several hours watching different installation videos just to get a handle on what I needed to do. The next step will be to start assembling the extruder. I am going to be kind of limited in how far I can get with that because I think I threw my extruder stepper motor away by accident.... The vendor had thrown the motor for the latest version of the extruder in the box with the kit for free, which was awesome, and I had left it packed in the loose bubble wrap they had put it in.

Fast forward a couple months to the time when I am actually building the printer, and I couldn't find the motor anywhere in the box of parts last night. Spent a couple hours hunting for it before I realized that I had probably thrown out all the loose bubble wrap (along with the motor) when I dug back into the kit to actually start building. Trash day having come and gone since then, nothing else to do besides order another one, which was not quite a $30 mistake with shipping. Doubly frustrating since I had ordered some other stuff from the same place a couple weeks ago. The kit did include the motor for the old version and I still have that, but I would rather build the upgrade into it now, rather than tear into it again later, which would also mean messing with the belts again since the X carriage is different.
Cognosce teipsum et disce pati

"People come and go in our lives, especially the online ones. Some leave a fond memory, and some a bad taste." -Aesop
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Netpackrat
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

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AAAAND I found the missing motor plus the box of upgrade parts for the new extruder that I thought I remembered coming with the kit. Not sure why I put them where I did.... Could have gone several more weeks without finding them had I not needed a tool from that shelf. :oops:
Cognosce teipsum et disce pati

"People come and go in our lives, especially the online ones. Some leave a fond memory, and some a bad taste." -Aesop
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Netpackrat
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

Post by Netpackrat »

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The assembled gantry, upside down and ready to go into the printer. I should have taken some pictures of the A/B drives as I put them together since they are fairly interesting.

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Gantry installed in the frame and supported by the Z belts.

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A little more detail of how the belts are retained, and how the gantry connects to the vertical rails. With the belts removed, there's actually just one bolt at each corner holding the gantry to the printer.

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Belts A/B installed along with the X carriage. Belt nomenclature is technically not X/Y because in the CoreXY motion system, any X/Y move involves both belts and motors, unlike my other printers which have an X belt and a Y belt. The CoreXY belt paths are pretty convoluted, but that doesn't show up well here due to the dark belts running along the black frame. The long belt paths are why the biggest Voron printer recommended is the 350mm cubed V2.4 (mine is 300mm).
Cognosce teipsum et disce pati

"People come and go in our lives, especially the online ones. Some leave a fond memory, and some a bad taste." -Aesop
Cobar
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

Post by Cobar »

This thread is making me want to build a Voron again. The Ender 3 I have does everything I have wanted so far but you know how nice it is to get new equipment. I talked myself out of spending the money twice. Now to start arguing with myself again. :lol:

I've already made a note about the magnet depth. Thanks for that information.
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Netpackrat
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

Post by Netpackrat »

As a point of interest, here is one of the better demonstrations I have seen of how the CoreXY motion system works without getting bogged down in math and complicated explanations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdTB0t-0FW8
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Netpackrat
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

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I finished the mechanical portion of the build last night, by completing and installing the print head, which I have been somewhat erroneously been referring to as simply the extruder. On the Prusa that would be correct since it's all one unit, but on the Voron the print head is actually made up of the extruder (the part containing the motor and gears that push the plastic), and the toolhead/cooling unit. The latter contains the hot end where the filament is melted, and the fans for cooling the hot end and for part cooling.

The LDO kit that I purchased was intended for building an older version of these components... The extruder is known officially by Voron as Clockwork and the older toolhead/cooling unit known as Afterburner. The current version of the extruder is Clockwork 2, and Afterburner has been replaced by Stealthburner, although colloquially the whole print head is generally referred to as just Afterburner or Stealthburner. Stealthburner is supposed to provide improved part cooling over Afterburner, and they also incorporated LEDs into it for lighting the nozzle (useful if you are remote monitoring it via camera) and also the Voron logo will light up.

As I mentioned above, there was an upgrade kit for Stealthburner and CW2 included with my kit, so I will be using this version with some minor changes to accommodate some of the older version parts in the kit. Mostly this consists of a handful of altered printed parts to use the one piece toolhead PCB which simplifies the process of wiring. The toolhead PCB mod for Stealthburner uses a slightly different 2 piece PCB so LDO published altered .stls for a few of the parts along with build notes to allow use of the 1 piece PCB.

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Here is the Clockwork 2 extruder assembled on the bench. The cabling cover hinges open for wiring access, as shown.

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The E3D Revo Micro hot end being installed in the quick change tool head. There is a Voron specific version of this hot end which attaches with 4 M3 screws at the top, as opposed to the single M12 thread and nut that the micro uses. I went with the more generic hot end in case I decide to switch to a different hot end on the Voron; I can more readily use the Revo Micro on one of my other printers (upcoming Bear Exxa 2.0 uses the Micro). Performance should be the same either way. The only real disadvantage of the Revo right now (besides the proprietary nozzles) is it's a standard flow hot end, but they are supposedly coming out with a high flow version for even more print speed.

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Assembled toolhead cartridge, ready to be installed. This can be swapped out of the printhead by removing 2 screws, loosening 2 others, and unplugging the wiring. This is in sharp contrast with the Prusas, which are a real pain to change anything out on the print head because usually you have to disassemble the whole thing.

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Completed Stealthburner cooling unit/front cover; you can see the tool head LEDs here. The square fan is for cooling the hot end, and the other fan is for part cooling (i.e. to solidify the plastic as it is extruded onto the part). The part cooling fan you have to remove half of the housing, and grind down the mounting tabs for it to fit in the Stealthburner. The Voron development team has looked into getting a dedicated fan made, but it's apparently a lot cheaper to just modify a generic one.

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Front view.

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CW2 extruder and tool head installed on the X carriage.

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Print head completed other than wiring connections. The next step on the build is to start installing the electronics components.

Edited to add; if somebody looks at these pictures who actually understands what they are looking at, they'll probably notice that I have the bed too far back here. Once I got the print head on it became obvious I had it in the wrong position, and I had somehow skipped the page that gave the dimension for locating the bed in relation to the frame. That's fixed now.
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Netpackrat
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Re: 3d Uber-Printer Build (Voron 2.4)

Post by Netpackrat »

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Mounted electronics, pretty much ready for wiring. Because what's the worst thing that could happen? :shock:

As HTRN mentioned in one of the other threads, the main feature of the Voron website is the bill of materials generator. You tell it what printer you want to build, what size you want it to be, and it spits out a BOM of everything you need to build, less printed parts. In the early days you had to self source everything, and people still do that, but I think most are buying one of the kits now.

When you buy a Voron kit, what you are getting is somebody else's take on the BOM, for good or bad. Not all kits are created equal. The LDO motors kit I bought has a better reputation for quality components compared to most of the others, and for that you'll pay a commensurately higher price.

LDO incorporated a lot of labor saving features into their kit; most of the wiring is pre-terminated and their economies of scale allow them to extensively incorporate purpose made parts (rather than the generic off the shelf stuff the printer is designed to be built with) such as the terminal PCBs that are used all over the wiring to keep the connections neat and simple. The downside of that is that there re significant differences in how the kit is built compared to what the Voron manual shows. This leads to a lot of jumping around between the manual and the various LDO build guides, and has caused multiple trips to the Voron Discord looking for more information. Many of the printed parts are slightly different from the standard ones too, and it isn't always clear what should be printed. This has led to a growing pile of parts that I printed but ended up not needing.

At the same time, despite all those nice touches and special parts, when you buy the LDO kit, you are still very much just getting everything on a bill of materials. It's not like the Prusa kit where everything is tested, and the build manual holds your hand all the way though, and Prusa Support is always there in case you need extra help. You are getting a piie of parts that were not necessarily designed or intended by their manufacturers to become a printer together, and especially where the electronics are concerned, you can't take anything for granted. Case in point, the mainboard. After taking it out of the package, I had to move or remove pretty much every jumper on the board to achieve the right configuration. Then install all 7 stepper drivers, and their heatsinks. The thing with the jumpers was a little nerve wracking, given that a mistake there could cause the smoke to be let out of the board pretty easily.

Anyway, enough rambling for now.
Cognosce teipsum et disce pati

"People come and go in our lives, especially the online ones. Some leave a fond memory, and some a bad taste." -Aesop
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