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by jeroen79 834 days ago
Looks like a nice printer, but the kits seems damn expensive.

Are there kits that just include all metal parts and that are cheaper?

2 comments

You actually don't want all metal parts for how voron printers are designed. A lot of parts on the gantry rely on the flex of the plastic to be able to do self calibration and leveling. Metal would be more likely to fatigue and undergo plastic deformation that would bring it out out of spec or into a complete failure mode.

there are CNCd parts available from various vendors, but they usually have design alterations to account for the aforementioned increase flex tolerance and also to make them more economical (or just possible) to machine.

Those parts usually are heavier as well and can have a negative effect on the resonance and inertia of the gantries reducing print speed.

There's been a lot of discussion on this at various points in the voron design discord (serious discoverability problem compared to forums and the such :P ) about this.

In terms of price, electronics and motions components are just expensive, especially if you want reliable parts. Metal parts would also increase the price because machining is more expensive than printing by quite a bit.

Another advantage of printed parts is it's easy to use alternative part designs. There are lots of variants on the standard parts that you most likely will start replacing stock parts with as soon as you get addicted.
Well i meant i just want to buy all parts that have to be metal in one kit, and print all i can myself.
Most kits are like that.

Even the expensive LDO kit requires you to source the printed parts yourself, I'd say the kits that provide printed parts are in the minority.

There are cheaper kits that might make more sense for you, but I don't have any experience with them.

The LDO kits are the top end of the price bracket.

A friend is building up one of these and is fairly happy with it: https://magicphoenix.xyz/product/voron-v2-4-customized-kit/

They also have Trident kits. I've also built a Siboor V0.2 kit and was happy with it for the money.