Voron kit comparison - need some help

[Coffee4day]

Hi, guys, I've been struggling to choose between different kits these days. Decided to create a comparison table to showcase their differences, which I believe could also be helpful for others facing a similar dilemma. After several days of research, finally managed to put it together this morning. I create a github repo for this, https://github.com/Coffee4day/Voron-Kit-Comparison

Some of the content is quite challenging, especially since some suppliers haven't provided detailed BOMs. This is particularly true for Formbot and Siboor, whose BOMs seem to be nothing more than what's available for download on vorondesign.com.

	LDO	MPX CBT	Formbot	Fysetc	Siboor	Note
Frame	LDO OEM, Colorful	MPX OEM	Formbot OEM	Fysetc OEM	Misumi NFS?	Siboor listed as Misumi NFSB, pic with "Mismi NFS"
Steppers	LDO Steppers	MOONS MS17HD6P4200	MOONS MS17HD6P420I	Fysetc OEM	Stepperonline
Linear Rails	Stainless Steel	Black, optional Stainless Steel	Stainless Steel	Normal	Normal + Hiwin MGN12H
Pulleys	Gates	Normal, optional Gates	Normal	Normal	Normal
Belt	Gates RF	Gates RF	Gates (RF?)	Gates (RF?)	Gates RF	Formbot and Fysetc mentioned Gates, but not sure it's RF or not
Buildplate	10mm 5083 Cast Aluminum	8mm 5083 Cast Aluminum	MIC 6 ?	MIC 6 ?	MIC 6 ?	Formbot, Fysetc, Siboor mentioned MIC 6, But I believe it isn't.
Heater	Full-size, extra buildplate thermistor	Full-size, extra buildplate thermistor	Normal	Normal ?	Normal	Fysetc has full-size listed in Ali, but not mentioned in BOM
SSR	Omron	Omron	Omron	Omron	Delixi
Fans	LDO	GDSTime	Random	Random	Random
Wires	Pre-made,PTFE	Pre-made,PTFE	Pre-made,PTFE	Pre-made	Pre-made
Toolboard	Hartk styled PCB and Breakout PCB	Canbus EBB SB2209	No	Hartk styled PCB	Hartk styled PCB
Probe	Omron + Klicky	Tap	PL08N	Omron + Klicky？	Omron + Klicky？
Hotend	E3D Revo Hotend	Dragon HF, optional others	E3D V6, optional others	E3D V6	Dragon HF
Board	Bigtreetech Octopus	Bigtreetech M8P	Bigtreetech Octopus	FYSETC Spider	FYSETC Spider
Raspberry	-	CB1	No	No	Orangepi Zero2
Display	4.3 Capacitive Display	Mini 12864	Mini 12864	Mini 12864	Mini 12864
Chamber Thermistor	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Panels	Acrylic	PC+ABS	Acrylic+ACM	Acrylic	PC
Tool	Input shaper kit, insert tool, etc.	Insert tool	No	No	Yes
LED	Yes	Optional Disco Stick	No	No	No
Nevermore	Yes	Yes	No	Yes, with filter cotton	No
Online Docs	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Price (no shipping)	No official price	$699	$839	$916	$819
Price (To US)	$1,499	$949	$939	$916	$1,019	*If have remote warehouse, it's the price from local warehouse
Price (To EU)	$1,694	$949	$939	€1,040	€939	*If have remote warehouse, it's the price from local warehouse
Remote Warehouse	Yes, resellers	No	Yes	Yes	No
Note	Incl. E3D Revo	Need to pay VAT, incl. Dragon HF	EU no VAT, incl. E3D V6	EU no VAT, incl. E3D V6	Need to pay VAT, incl. Dragon HF

As you can see, there is some incomplete or entirely incorrect content in the table. If you happen to know any missing or incorrect information, I would be grateful, and will add your name to the Github repository.

Currently, there is only information for the 2.4 kit. If you are interested in contributing information for V0 and Trident kits, you can submit a PR.

In addition, any feedback on any kits are welcome! Negative reviews on their website/store may be deleted, but they won't be deleted here.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Buurman]

I only have extensive experience with the formbot one and know it inside out, im on my 13th kit now.
So I can tell yu only what I know about that kit.. not the others, but do love the comparisement table!!!

Formbot kit, would give it a 8+.

Pro:

• Good rails! The vevendino rails is good, grease channels are real, good stainless steel. not drenched in oil! clean it with a rag, and grease it.
• Now with stealthburner parts fans/leds/screws
• Ok gears (BMG) cant see differences between originals and Formbot ones.
• Power wires 110/220V are good in kit, good length and connectors.
• BED! Havent had a crooked bed, always under 0.01 which is great!
• Good PEI sheet (2 sided raw/smooth)
• Take it with the Dragon HF, shipped separately from china (in europe), but is fast delivered.
• Frame is A+, for me, never had a frame that was off... or bent, or short.. or damaged even.
• Octopus board, its just great with a lot of connections and functionality on it.
• Good quality screws stainless.
• Moons! I think they are the best, like them more even than LDO, no experience with Stepperonline ones, what may be a step (pun intended) higher even.

Cons:

• Panels are basic, but as @mvdveer also found, they can bend from heat, for me only the bottom does that till now. (and I sometimes upgrade to aluminium layer panels (Fermio))
• can throw away two things, the mini display and the probe. all my build have the 5" BTT piTFT and Klicky or TAP.
• No nevermore, but who cares, make it yourself or use a FEVACH filer in the back...
• Wires! default wires will break eventually in the bending/moving parts towards the hotend. canbus or upgrade the wires to teflon.

All in all, I like the kit, and its a good price/quality product.

[Demosth]

This is great! Thanks so much for putting it together and for sharing it!

[SuperBoppy]

If any of these kit vendors say they are giving you Hiwin rails they are lying. True Hiwins alone would cost as much as the kit they are selling you. The rails may say "Hiwin" on them, but they are imitations. Great job on your table, BTW. 

[VoronManiac]

@Coffee4day Thanks for putting together this list.  A lot of work.

 

@Buurman good observations on the Formbot.  Done 3 kits.  Have to rate it a solid 7.5.  I'd highly recommend Formbot for a first build, but struggling to decide if will self source my next one.

Pros:

• Vivendo Rails good quality,but need to sort and pick the best ones for the Y axis.  Lower quality used for Z.  Very small grease ports needing fine syringe/needle.
• Moons  steppers very much on par with LDO
• Aluminum beds have been flat.  Just no issues.
• Screws/HW packet well organized & good quality
• Nicely cut panels.  Lower bed acrylic panel warping is not an issue if properly supported and sealed around edges.  Can also insulate with cork which helps chamber retain heat.  Stay away from aluminum bed panel if you want to retain chamber heat.  There are better solutions than the under bed Nevermore filter.

Cons

• Primary wiring is good but toss the rest of the wires going into the cable chain and go with PTFE. CANbus if you are so inclined.  Extruder Stepper and signal wires were oversized.  Doesn't support Toolhead PCB.  Supplied wire is 19 strand but seemed overly stiff and NOT PTFE. 
• Dragon HF is great for ABS, but steer away from it for printing TPU.  Heat break barrel diameter is 1.90 compared to even a E3D V6 2.0.mm. TPU is very sensitive to any changes in back pressure/binding because of its springiness and 1.90mm doesn't provide enough room to accommodate any wiggles and non uniformity that can cause slight binds for common TPU brands. Dragon HF will print 95A TPU, just not going to get great quality.
• Frame squareness was not too bad against a precision machinists square, but experienced twisted and bowed 2020 X & Y rails. 
• Inductive probe is a throw away.  Use Klicky or TAP.
• 5" BTT piTFT would be nice but a fancy display is not needed.  Included LCD is good enough.  Use cell phone Mainsail interface.

An interesting source for Rails is CNCMANS on Amazon.  So far excellent quality. On a par or slightly better than LDO (mileage may vary).  And its Amazon, so if you get a bad rail, free returns with Prime.  I have gotten burned by cheap AliExprss rails that were absolute junk.  CNCMANS costs maybe 25% more that bottom tier AliExpress.  Seems like a no brainer.  From reviews good support, but mine had no issues.

There's no good solution for twisted 2020 sections and was a real pain to diagnose.  However I was able to compensate the bowing on X & Y rails.  The worst was out by ~0.3-ish mm. Find a flat counter top surface to use as a gauge and shine a light from behind the rail.  It's not going to be a 0.002mm precision flat, but can be good enough.  Sight the interface between the 2020 and countertop.  Flip the 2020 in 90 degree increments.  If you see a bow-in for one orientation, you should see a bow-out when flipped 180 degrees.  You can often get scraps from counter top installers for next to nothing. Alternatively can slide a dial indicator on a heavy base to indicate the 2020 deflection.  Place a paper shim between the 2020 and the counter top and press on the raised sections of the 2020 to preload it while tightening the linear rail attach screws.  The 2020 will spring back slightly when the preload is removed so will take a bit of trial and error.  Aluminum foil is about 1/3 as thick as a piece of paper and finer resolution shim.  I found that just tightening a rail to a straight piece of 2020 can induce a bow, and the order of tightening can make a difference. Use an electric screw driver with torque limit.  I doubt the slight preload of the 2020 will make any difference as the chamber heat soaks - the  rail/2020 assembly will bow no matter what.

[SuperBoppy]

A box of PTFE hookup wire, enough to wire one printer, is going to cost around $100 https://www.remingtonindustries.com/hook-up-wire/hook-up-wire-20-awg-ptfe-stranded-kit-2-color-sets-2-spool-sizes-available/ I would be surprised if the kits, other than LDO, that is priced much higher than the other kits, come with PTFE. Maybe they do, but that would be an important item to look at on Coffee4day's comparison list when choosing a kit.

 

Edited April 10, 2023 by SuperBoppy

[VoronManiac]

Quick search ebay 10meters 20 awg PTPE ~$14 https://www.ebay.com/itm/164260822143

PTFE 26AWG wire is available on ebay and other surplus sources for $0.10-0.20/ft and can be used for most signals except the +24V and E-heater return.

Be careful not to oversize the wire to the StealthBurner. Oversized wire adds stiffness & weight.  Speculation - wire fatigue will decrease with finer strands relative to the bending radius.  I stay clear of 7 strand and only use 19 strand PTFE.   Pay close attention to strand count when purchasing.

The +24V wire has a worst case current draw at ~3A, 2A of which would go to driving a 48W extruder.  Other than chamber lighting, there is nothing on +24 that is sensitive to noise; only fans and the e-heater (Hope nope one is still using an inductive probe).  With a wire run of 2m on a 350, we get 0.068 ohms or 204mV of switching noise at 3A.  Insignificant. If using +24V chamber lighting, run the e-heater PWM at 100Hz or faster  My preference might be to use two 22AWG wires instead of a 20AWG for the +24V.  The e-heater return would be fine with 22AWG.

The E-stepper on a SB can't be configured to draw more than 400mA without melting down.  26AWG wire is more than adequate to handle the E-stepper connections with an IR drop of ~212mV.

Don't combine analog and digital ground as recommended by some blogs.

[Thoralt]

I got my Formbot Voron 0.1 yesterday and enthusiastically started building. When the frame was nearly finished, no single corner was square, the whole thing tilted back and forth on a flat surface. So I disassembled everything and checked the aluminium extrusions - wow, did they screw up ... (see attached images, angle is way off after carefully tightening the screws).

From the 16 long profiles, only two (!) were cut square acceptably. No way this printer is ever going to print. If only two or three of the profiles had been slanted, I would have worked around it.

Not sure if this is a general Formbot problem, but I thought you might be interested.

[Buurman]

Wow, thats shockingly bad, im sure they send you new ones if reported.

I hate these little ones anyhow, the 2020's never had a badly cut one, always square, but im sure, you can have bad luck, maybe next kit for me too, but I am sure they will resend. But sure.. this is WAY off... not usable.

[nickpeck47]

I'm kind of late to this party, but I just built my first Voron last week and enjoyed it.  I bought the 300mm 2.4 r2 rev-c LDO kit from Fabreeko and LOVE it.  Having all of the wires pre-cut and labeled really helped me get everything installed correctly the first time.

I have been printing for around a decade, and have only built x2 Prusa MK3's, so I guess that counts a bit lol.  I have modified a handful of printers over the years as well, so I have some experience, but not as much as many around here.  I'm good at running and maintaining them for sure, but now I really enjoy building as well.

I can only grade it from my experience obviously, but everything worked, was easy to work with and the only change I made was building with TAP instead of the klicky mod.  It came very well packaged and labeled which was nice.  Because of this kit I will definitely get another LDO as it was very positive.  Solid 9 from me, I'm really happy with it so far and my first high speed prints on it are looking damn good.

For what it's worth anyways

[claudermilk]

Better late than never! Building a Prusa definitely counts! I built a Mini+ then jumped straight to a Trident. 

[nickpeck47]

3 minutes ago, claudermilk said:

Better late than never! Building a Prusa definitely counts! I built a Mini+ then jumped straight to a Trident. 

Nice.   Yah, I have the bug now and want to do a Trident next lol!

[Perkeo]

I was very happy with my Formbot V0.2r1 kit + parts and build and am slowly looking at getting a Voron V2.4 kit and print the parts myself on my V0.2 

Easiest choice could be to go for the Formbot V2.4 but Formbot 300x300 with Dragon HF and free shipping comes to USD 939, the same as the standard Magic Phoenix 300x300 with Dragen HF USD 679 + a whopping UDS 250 shipping, also USD 939 total.

The Magic Phoenix is a CBT version which I understand from their website stands for Canbus + Tap.  Also the Nevermore hardware is included but stainless steel comes at UDS 83 price extra in the Magix Phoenix. The Formbot kit at the other hand has the same parts and stainless steel rails but but not the CAN boards which probably will set you back USD 30-40 as well.

Fombot from Czech Republic warehouse will be a very fast delivery against Magic Phoenix ships within 20 days + transport so will take a lot longer. Time is not of the essence for this purchase but feels a bit uncomfortable.

Any thoughts on either the well known Formbot kit against the for me bit more unknown Magic Phoenix that show very good reviews from the few reviews I could find?

 

[mvdveer]

On 9/21/2023 at 2:56 AM, Perkeo said:

Any thoughts on either the well known Formbot kit against the for me bit more unknown Magic Phoenix

I have build 3 x Forgot  Formbot kits now and aside from the wiring harness cannot complain. Canbus boards are not that expensive - I use Mellow Fly SB2040 or SHT36, depending on the extruder. Don't know Magic Phoenix at all.

[claudermilk]

A Forgot kit @mvdveer? What'd they forget? 

[Penatr8tor]

1 hour ago, claudermilk said:

A Forgot kit @mvdveer? What'd they forget? 

Wait, how could he remember if they're FORGOT kits... 

Something strange going on here. Hmmmmm 

[mvdveer]

6 hours ago, Penatr8tor said:

 if they're FORGOT kits..

I don't like to use this word, BUT 

I HATE autocorrect!!!  

8 hours ago, claudermilk said:

What'd they forget

@!#%$# to check autocorrect 

[ChicagoKeri]

5 hours ago, mvdveer said:

I don't like to use this word, BUT 

I HATE autocorrect!!!  

@!#%$# to check autocorrect 

It's known also as "SpellWreck"

[claudermilk]

I call it Automangle. 

[XXXXXXXXXX]

Magic Phoenix for the win!   Great kit, perfect choices, good price.

[5twenty]

23 hours ago, XXXXXXXXXX said:

Magic Phoenix for the win!   Great kit, perfect choices, good price.

Where'd you get one with a good price? I'm looking at them, from their site proper, and shipping is 1/3 of the printer. At that price I could almost buy a full LDO supplied kit - shipped.

Magic Phoenix is the only kit I have yet to try out, and it is because of their super-higher-than-everyone-else shipping prices. Fysetc, formbot, blurolls, all are good and had no extra shipping on it when I last bought (about 7 months back). They do now, but it is about half of what MPX is charging. They must use a better DHL than the one the rest of the world uses?

Edited September 23, 2023 by 5twenty

[XXXXXXXXXX]

On 9/23/2023 at 12:19 PM, 5twenty said:

Where'd you get one with a good price? I'm looking at them, from their site proper, and shipping is 1/3 of the printer. At that price I could almost buy a full LDO supplied kit - shipped.

Magic Phoenix is the only kit I have yet to try out, and it is because of their super-higher-than-everyone-else shipping prices. Fysetc, formbot, blurolls, all are good and had no extra shipping on it when I last bought (about 7 months back). They do now, but it is about half of what MPX is charging. They must use a better DHL than the one the rest of the world uses?

I bought it direct from them, all the options delivered for less than 1000USD.  I went with this kit because I wanted CAN umbilical and TAP.  It was the perfect setup for me.