Well, I made a commitment today. After a couple of years on an Ender 3 Pro which is totally a ship of Theseus now, I’m building a #Voron 2.4 r2. Wish me luck! It was either that or a Switch and some games.
This is the next (big) step into getting a little more serious about project work with my kids. I hope it pays off for us 😅
I commented in your other thread, but post progress here! At least a few of us lurk here.
Saw your cable chain comment. I’ll be working from a formbot kit so hopefully the chain included with the rest of the BOM works out.
One bit of fun is that I’m going to try printing all my own parts in eSun ABS+ on my ender 3 pro. I have an enclosure for it, and it runs micro Swiss direct drive / all metal hot end. Will unplug all fans. I’ve never brought the bed to 100 but I’m using spring steel / PEI and I can’t see an obvious reason for concern. I have good dry boxes and the printer is pretty well tuned, so I think it should be up to the challenge.
If I can’t turn out good parts after a few tries and some tuning, I’m not too proud to admit defeat and run back to PIF but I’m remaining optimistic for now… I didn’t choose the project life because it’s easy. :)
I’m considering reading ahead and going Klicky / pinned m5 right out of the gate based on what I’ve been reading. Any thoughts on that? QoL mods I will regret not doing during initial build?
For background, I’ve modded nearly all my ender, and the only jobs that really sucked were those (like the dual Z and SKR mini) that involve basically disassembling the machine to rewire the harness or move motors around. Not terrible, but those kinds of core projects I’d rather build in initially than take a working unit offline for a day to rejigger. If I can get in front of those with the Voron build I think it will be a much happier outcome. Camera. Lighting.
I printed all my parts on the grandfather of your Ender - a Monoprice branded Wanhao I3 plus. It has a microswiss hot end, but other than that it’s largely stock. I did have to reprint my cooling duct and bed thumbweels since the non-stock PETG parts were deforming. 100C on an ultrabase bed and a cardboard box enclosure worked well assuming everything was level (one of my z-motors likes to misstep sometimes…). I used ASA for my parts at 245. It was my first time printing anything at a higher temp. My first print didn’t turn out that great due to hot end temp fluctuations, but a PID tune sorted that out. I didn’t do any tuning beyond some on the fly adjustments of the extrusion multiplier.
I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about tap vs klicky and went the klicky route. Tap is nice in that it lets your printer detect nozzle crashes, but it might add some resonance and I honestly didn’t spend much time researching pros/cons.
As for quality of life parts, I suggest going sex bolt for the z-end stop. The stock option involves a section of metal rod that will fall out when you flip your printer over. I found the stock hinges for the front door hard to print with my lack of tuning on my i3, so I used these instead. If you’re going to be removing your panels often magnetic panel mounts are a good idea. I’m planning on building the filter instead of a nevermore for a combination of bed fan and filter. I suspect I’m going to end up with a different spool holder in the future, but don’t know what it will be yet. If you’re going to be printing tall parts, a top hat can buy you somewhere between 20-40mm, but I personally didn’t bother. I’m also building a 350mm, so 300mm in z is probably ok for now.
