An accidental clee day
I noticed that, because of Clee Day on the Voron Discord, West3D had a deal on titanium backers and a kinematics mount. So I was planning on getting steel backers and the kinematics mount later, but I guess we’ll have those on the way now.
Siboor Trident R1 vs Formbot Trident Pro
This came out after I’d ordered my Formbot Trident. It’s interesting! I look forward to people’s build logs.
Neither printer is going to have a taller Z-axis, you need LDO or MagicPhoenix CBT Pro to get that.
Using Cartographer instead of TAP is interesting. I wonder if there’s going to be a usable mode for some sort of Z-tap mode on the Cartographer in the same way as the Beacon has to make nozzle change and different print surface thickness a problem of the past.
The CNC components are interesting. The plus side is that they won’t break and they let you reach Forbidden temperatures. On the other hand, a lot of folks have spent a lot of time explaining why they don’t really improve your in any useful fashion, although the AWD mod is designed for CNC instead of printed parts… so maybe that’ll be better?
This one has the Manta v2.0 instead of the v1.1 on my Formbot. I think there was like 1 or 2 things that annoyed me about the 1.1 that made me want the 2.0 but I am presently forgetting.
I am glad that everybody’s putting in filters these days, although overall I am more a fan of the overkill StealthMax than the included Fume Pack or the smaller Nevermore Micro.
And, dono, I was probably going to do the Monolith Gantry at some point for mine, the sheet cooler was a thought, etc. The only thing that feels supremely wild is the beefy motors that may or may not make a useful difference to speed or print quality but definitely might score you drinks at the super-secret Voron cabal meetings.
My big concern about most of these kits is that we don’t have an organized fashion for kit-makers to communicate how they have deviated from stock, nor is the manual well-constructed to make it easy for deviated printers. The problem is that if Siboor doesn’t provide adequate support and self-help resources for their modded printers, it’s going to end up being an unfair drag on the Voron community. And this is really the same concern I have with the printer I actually purchased, it’s just that the Siboor one goes farther off.
Obviously, most people build a Voron only because they are prepared to actually go all of the way and, furthermore, an unmodded Voron is kind of a sad Voron. Also, if we’re looking at the kits people tend to get, there’s presumably a lot of Siboor kits out there.
Ugh wrists
So I’m pretty sure I strained a tendon in my right wrist while I was building the zero. SO I looked at the Project Farm and Torque Test videos and decided that the Skil Twist 2.0 looked the most reasonable for something to reduce the wrist-stress. I already have a set of reasonably good Makita metric drill bits and accessories but I did pick up some Ball-End Hex bits and a flexible shaft from McMaster Carr.
The problem is that blind joints need to fit inside of the blind joint hole and these won’t, so it’s not useful for the frame itself. Otherwise, it’s nice and most other things don’t use a wrench hole.
Linear Rail prep
I couldn’t print a bathtub for the rails so I ended up using a 2.5 gallon ziploc bag, which was kind of a mess because the bag leaked. But the rail lubing was a lot easier the second time around.
Component prep
Pg 13 on the manual and the BOM generator both suck and there is already a bug report. For my 300mm bed size build, I was able to spot the A extrusions (there’s 9 of them) and then the B extrusions (there’s 4 of them, with the particular set of holes). The C and F extrusions are the same length, the difference is that the C extrusion is tapped and the F is not. Then you end up with a pile of short extrusions. For the 300mm bed size, the H is the shortest, the G is only 2mm longer, the D is a bit longer, F is longer, then the rest. If you are building the even larger 350mm bed size Trident, the same sorting order should apply.
Ideally the kit-maker should just label the darn things. However, the BOM generator should show the letters of the extrusions and the manual should contain a better phrased of what I just wrote.
I got the sorting order wrong, so I’m not sure what the right way is to sort this out.
Frame
Misumi makes an HCJ5 screw joint for 2020 extrusions that contains an BHCS M5 screw but has this little metal bit that makes the alignment process just a bit easier. Presumably a kit-maker could make some cut-rate version of this part and bundle this as a real pro feature. Or, I dono, you can always just buy a bunch of them, at $1.93 each for I think 21 of them?
The frame was a fairly quick assembly, it’s just that it’s a lot bigger than a Zero, so I ended up needing to get it to it’s designated spot on the shelf. And I used my 1-2-3 blocks and clamps to square all of the joints up. Basically, 1-2-3 blocks are supposed to be very square and if you get a pair or a set of four, they should be square in exactly the same way and dimensioned exactly the same. You could also use an engineer’s square but the nice part about 1-2-3 blocks is that they are heavy chonky things that are easy to clamp to and presumably more square than a cheap cast 90 degree clamp.
I ended up using a set of calipers to measure things to get the two middle A extrusions at the right height because using the extrusion as a reference only works with the 250mm version and I don’t quite trust the printed spacers.
Oh, and a note about my shelving unit: I designed it to replace an IKEA wire shelving unit that used to live there and it turns out that a shelving unit a smidgen bigger than 24 in × 24 in was about the right size, so I built it out of 2020 extrusion because that way it’s sturdy yet flexible. I assumed that I’d eventually replace my Ender 3v2 with something bigger, so I ended up looking at the size for a 300mm × 300mm × 300mm Voron 2.4 or a Jubilee printer or maybe just a CR-10, took the largest dimension of any of the three of them and used that to make a reference cube for the shelving design. So it was no surprise that it fits, but it’s good that it really does.
So, yes, I’ve got a 2020-extrusion based printer sitting in a 2020-based shelving unit.
A/B Drive and Idler
- The included shims on the Trident kit are a lot less variable than the Zero’s. I still decided to use the shims I got from McMaster-Carr.
- Also, I wanted to start the printer on an auspicious day in my spouse’s faith but wasn’t ready to actually order the kit, so I got some F695 bearings and some hammerhead M3 nuts. I’m using the F695’s I got on the auspicious day for the set of bearings on the idlers.
- The cPIF parts in bags with labels make it a lot easier to find stuff than the intricately packed foam sheets.
Y Axis: blocked by bad nuts
I was going to stop at the A/B Drive and Idler step, but I noticed the next step needed the roll-in nuts and I might as well see how well they fit… and yep, both the M3 and M5 roll-in nuts are the bad batch.
This is a bit easier for me to critique because I’ve got some genuine Misumi roll-in nuts, which I use to mount things on the shelving unit. You can see one of my Mismui nuts to the left side of the picture, with the supplied nuts on the right side. And the supplied nuts, they work as pre-assembly nuts if you want to do your Trident build the way you’d build a Zero with all of the nuts pre-loaded or you can kinda maybe sometimes crunch it down such that it acts as it’s supposed to, except not very well. Because the Mismui nuts work, it’s clear that someone just didn’t quite make it to the right tolerance.
So I decided that this was enough for this weekend and sent a message to the support address instead of fighting with it. I’m just savoring the irony that I got a bag of hammerhead nuts instead of a bag of roll-in spring nuts.
Conclusion
Considering that I did the Zero first now a Trident, everything feels absurdly giant! And it feels weird to not have a laundry list of things to preload ahead of time, it feels like I’m screwing up.