3 hours in and no one’s brought up VoronDesign? You can’t buy their priners or parts directly, you either have to self source or buy some variant or “BOM in a box” from a third party. I’ve had mine for two (three?) years and although the build was long it was very well documented, via a 240+ page lego-like build manual. It’s a great printer and community.
As someone who got the “Kit” version, I must add something that drove me nuts.
The Voron Documentation is extremely good, while I had some instances in which I would have liked more detail, the instructions are easy to follow.
However, the LDO documentation is abysmal and missing quite a bit of stuff. They do have a wiki that lists things to skip but the replacement instructions are very short and barely understandable. They don’t even mention things that you might need to print in addition to what the Voron needs. A specific example of this is the exhaust, the “Voron way” would be to print a cap that goes on the top at the back of the printer with a fan and a HEPA filter but the LDO kit doesn’t have that because it should come with the Nevermore filter. But this isn’t really mentioned there in the documentation and you need to dig through the wiki and the github project to find the right files for what needs to be printed.
I also had some trouble with the cables on the stepper motor that controls the X axis, they seem to be loose inside or don’t make full contact which means that, depending on the wires position, could make the stepper motor not work that well.
Lastly, I am currently building the Box Turtle AFC (automatic filament changer) System also from LDO and, from what I can find, there is absolutely NO documentation about it. I was in the beginning of ordering some TPU spools because the build instructions of the Box Turtle say that you need some before I saw that they provide those in the Kit.
With that being said, would I source the stuff all by myself? Hell no.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I do hesitate on projects like this for this rreason, it’s always the small stuff that seems to get in the way of a streamlined experience. That said, I feel like building one rather than buying off the shelf would give me a lot more know-how about how to troubleshoot and maintain the system I am using, plus I prefer to support Open Source initiatives when I can over walled gardens.
You know, as an aside, this kind of part kitting is one of those things that I think LLMs might actually make a meaningful change in very shortly. No one wants to individually order all the parts on a BOM right now because it is a bunch of labor, but do it once with an activity log of your purchasing behavior and the sites/vendors used and there is no reason it cant be fully automated and shareable as simply as the BOM itself. Add in a function to check pricing and inventory against other related vendors and it could get quite good.
3 hours in and no one’s brought up VoronDesign? You can’t buy their priners or parts directly, you either have to self source or buy some variant or “BOM in a box” from a third party. I’ve had mine for two (three?) years and although the build was long it was very well documented, via a 240+ page lego-like build manual. It’s a great printer and community.
As someone who got the “Kit” version, I must add something that drove me nuts.
The Voron Documentation is extremely good, while I had some instances in which I would have liked more detail, the instructions are easy to follow.
However, the LDO documentation is abysmal and missing quite a bit of stuff. They do have a wiki that lists things to skip but the replacement instructions are very short and barely understandable. They don’t even mention things that you might need to print in addition to what the Voron needs. A specific example of this is the exhaust, the “Voron way” would be to print a cap that goes on the top at the back of the printer with a fan and a HEPA filter but the LDO kit doesn’t have that because it should come with the Nevermore filter. But this isn’t really mentioned there in the documentation and you need to dig through the wiki and the github project to find the right files for what needs to be printed.
I also had some trouble with the cables on the stepper motor that controls the X axis, they seem to be loose inside or don’t make full contact which means that, depending on the wires position, could make the stepper motor not work that well.
Lastly, I am currently building the Box Turtle AFC (automatic filament changer) System also from LDO and, from what I can find, there is absolutely NO documentation about it. I was in the beginning of ordering some TPU spools because the build instructions of the Box Turtle say that you need some before I saw that they provide those in the Kit.
With that being said, would I source the stuff all by myself? Hell no.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I do hesitate on projects like this for this rreason, it’s always the small stuff that seems to get in the way of a streamlined experience. That said, I feel like building one rather than buying off the shelf would give me a lot more know-how about how to troubleshoot and maintain the system I am using, plus I prefer to support Open Source initiatives when I can over walled gardens.
You know, as an aside, this kind of part kitting is one of those things that I think LLMs might actually make a meaningful change in very shortly. No one wants to individually order all the parts on a BOM right now because it is a bunch of labor, but do it once with an activity log of your purchasing behavior and the sites/vendors used and there is no reason it cant be fully automated and shareable as simply as the BOM itself. Add in a function to check pricing and inventory against other related vendors and it could get quite good.
Nice, there was one other mention but good to see a full vouch for Voron, definitely the kind of projected I had in mind.