v0 Formbot V0.2r1 Kit Build

[Perkeo]

 

After receiving my Formbot Voron V0.2r1 kit in two parcels, the kit from Czech Republic warehouse and the printed parts from China, I started building the kit last week.

  

Extrusions looked very good, clean and straight cuts with the edges anodized.

I wanted the M2 Nut Adapter and No_Drop_Nuts and other small prints to be printed in ABS instead of the regular PLA I printed so far, thus went with black eSun ABS+ printed on my Ender3 Pro. With change of a printer, wanted to have a try with a different slicer as well so changed from Cura to SuperSlicer. I went with the Voron PIF settings and standard ABS setting from SuperSlicer (245C extruder and 90C bed). I don't think my Ender 3 reached 245C because it stopped at 235C which I think is the maximum I specified in Marlin firmware. Still these small parts just printed fine, so did not bother changing anything else.

Not sure if is really needed, but will apply some loctite on metal-metal connections. The PLTight (or Vibra Tite) VC-3 supposedly is safe to use on ABS as well and can be re-adjusted a couple of times!

One linear rails in the kit is marked as pre-loaded and will be used on the X-axis.

Plenty of preloaded nuts with the very handy No_Drop_Nuts.

And we have a frame with Kirigami bed. Next step will be the A/B Drives and Idlers.

 

[Perkeo]

 

Here are the motors.

And the motors and Idlers on the frame.

Feets up and down on the ground.

In this last photo, you may have noticed I changed wago mount that I mistakenly mounted upside down. A bit difficult to get the wires in and secured with the bed above the clips. 

This is where I leave it for now, time for my own feet up.  Next steps according to the manual are Z-lead screw and then on to the X-axis!

 

[claudermilk]

16 hours ago, Perkeo said:

In this last photo, you may have noticed I changed wago mount that I mistakenly mounted upside down. A bit difficult to get the wires in and secured with the bed above the clips. 

I was going to mention the Wagos, but you caught it. It's interesting seeing the small differences between the Formbot and LDO kits.

[Perkeo]

 

The building process is somewhat addictive. It is like an Meccano or Lego set from the past where you wanted to rush the building to get to the finished end result!

But, not rushing anything here, steady progress during which I actually have a live stream of a build playing on YouTube to keep pace and potentially catch any mistakes rather sooner than later. This is actually how I notices I had the wago clamps upside down.   @claudermilk, if you have any pointers on the build, happy to hear them. As well as nice mods that need any preparation at this stage (I pre-loaded additional nuts for a Nevermore filter already)

Mounting the marked X-axis which has the carriage with a little pre-load. Makes me wonder why all nuts need to be loaded here and on the Z- and Y-axis every other position with a nut was skipped?!

In the top extrusion pre-loading the three nuts for the panel mounts (although I am thinking to go for the zero panels), but also thee additional nuts to be able to attach the V0 Handles Slim at a later stage.

And the X-axis mounted and frame completed. Next are the belts, but leaving that for the next time!

 

[mvdveer]

2 hours ago, Perkeo said:

like an Meccano

Oh that brings back memories! - Use to love meccano.

 

2 hours ago, Perkeo said:

I pre-loaded additional nuts

Having built 3 x V0's, these pre-loaded nuts got me EVERY time. Therefor on the Micron, I loaded extra nuts - seeing they are in the no-drop plastic, they don't rattle and I don't find them intrusive. Good thing I did as I had to change the camera position to avoid interference with Z - travel. 

Like the build - coming along nicely

[Perkeo]

7 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Having built 3 x V0's, these pre-loaded nuts got me EVERY time. Therefor on the Micron, I loaded extra nuts - seeing they are in the no-drop plastic, they don't rattle and I don't find them intrusive. Good thing I did as I had to change the camera position to avoid interference with Z - travel. 

That's a good one, additional nuts for a webcam! Haven't researched webcam nor position yet and may already be too late for the additional nuts?! Any recommendations for a  webcam and position still available at this moment in the build? I have a small Pi camera on the Ender 3 Pro, but could do with a little better resolution this time.

7 hours ago, mvdveer said:

Like the build - coming along nicely

Thanks, probably a too straight forward build for most experts on this forum. I enjoyed reading the build diaries in preparation for choosing a Voron, so returning the favor for new entrants with a hopefully picture rich build log.

[claudermilk]

Just triple- and quadruple-check preloaded nuts. They aren't kidding with the extra check steps. I thought I was being very thorough with that...and I had to a little bit of unbuilding to add a couple of missed ones. It's a rite of passage building a V0.

One nice feature of my LDO kit is they include a a nice bag full of their drop-in 1515 nuts. You can get those separately at several vendors (I've seen them listed at KB-3D, West3D, and Fabreeko). So I'm not too worried about preloading for possible future mods.

The last thing that caught me a bit was mounting the hotend. With my LDO kit I have their Picobilical kit, and I managed to run the wires up the wrong side. So I had to pull the tool head and redo them; now they are up the correct left side (the printed parts seem to want to run them up the right).

[Perkeo]

Belts & Bed

 

The belts had me worries a little bit, but were pretty easy to install in the end.

Routing of the belts is very good described in the manual. Little trick at the motors is to stick the belts up out of the motor, make a large loop and push them back down at the other side.. And only then route the belt around the pulley.

Attaching the belts, I left the "MakerBeam XL" Nuts away to be able to easily push the belts through the X-carriage. Attaching the "MakerBeam XL" Nuts I paid attention to have the sharp edges (the nuts are stamped parts with a sharp and a more round edge) not touching the belts.

I cut both belts at exactly the same length making the initial tensioning and the X-carriage and then at the motors very easy. I was curious whether I could get the 110Hz measured. Pany Tuner is a great app that I use with my guitar playing as well. It keeps the measured frequency when the tone died.

Proof of both belts at 110Hz

Sticking the heater and the magnetic bed to the aluminum plate went pretty well. After cleaning the plate with 99,9% Isopropanol it was a matter of sticking one time, no pulling loose again, just sticking it one time!

Next up is the Print Head!

 

[Perkeo]

 

Print Head

So far the build went like a breeze. The printhead caused some more difficulties!

Getting the parts ready

Putting them in the right order in

Putting the Mid Body on top. Although all the parts look very good, I had some minor work of scraping some edges to get this piece to fit snuggly on top.

Then attaching the Print Head and setting the 50T gear spacing

At this point in time, with the 5 steps above, I had put the aprts together already 10 times before I was satisfied. You can also already see that the hole for the PTFE tube isn't exactly round causing that the PTFE tube would not fit. Using a small 4mm drill as a reamer solved this problem as well. I also used some Capricorn Bowden Tubing I had, which was ever so slightly smaller in diameter.

Then on to the fans, finding the right rotations of the fans, cable routing and correct fit was a bit of a puzzle as well before everything was mounted OK.

This is the Pheatus Dragon Hotend. Before mounting, the PTFE coupling needed to be removed.

And the toolhead completed. The PCB Mount on the picture was not included in the Formbot Kit. These flat parts work very well on my Ender 3 Pro without enclossure,..

The PCB mounts need to be detached again before mounting on the X-carriage.

Let's see whether I can get to a working printer over the weekend,...

 

[Penatr8tor]

Nice! I see you're going above and beyond the standard Ellis tuning and are moving on to piano tuning. 

I'll have to try that technique.

[mvdveer]

Enjoy following this - great work

[Perkeo]

 

 

The build is definitely becoming more challenging, progress feels a lot slower. A big compliment to the Voron team for a very good manual, you can see that on other parts that are not yet in the manual, e.g. the Kirigami bed, you need to have a good look yourself!

I had skipped the wiring with the Wago clamps during the Kirigami bed install, so had to get that done now before being continuing with the electronics. It started with cutting the bed heater and thermistor wires short and connecting them to the Wago clamps. Taping the wires together I fed them through the cable chain to remove them within the hour because they were to short to have a proper routing and cable management to the MCU.

Still waiting for the Heluflon-FEP wire from Aliepxress, so had to use slicon wire instead for now. Securing them nicely to the Kirgami bed with the rie-wrap options provided.

I would like to see a strain relief going into cable chain, would be a good further upgrade to the part that now hold the cable chain. Perhaps something for myself to design later on and contribute back to the community .This time the easy way out by tie-wrapping to the cable chain itself.

The Formbot kit came with the umbilical mod, very nice! Unfortunately the polycarbonate cover is mirrored incorrectly and cannot be fit properly.

After a couple of failed attempts, my Ender 3 Pro could also print this part. Adhesion to the glass bed is however enormous. It is almost impossible to detach the part of the glass bed. Even when using 3DLAC spray.

The on to the electronics. I would like to use the cable duct mod with Klipper Expander attached (click), but will not try to print this cable duct on the Ender. To be able to change easily later on, I will use similar positions for the Pi, Pico and Klipper Expander boards.

Then onto some really nitty gritty, needing reading glasses work. Crimping some JST XH connectors,.... The first two must have  costed me more than an hour and several attempts

But not looking to bad, I think,...

Using these two tools. Engineer PA-06 wire stripper and Iwiss IWS-2820M crimper. Using the 1.3mm setting for the wire crimp and 1,6mm setting for the insulation crimp.

And this is the electronics bay with the very few wires connected at this moment. When I can (when making the wires myself) I will also print on shrink sleeves. See this great video to be able to use cheap cassettes in a Brother labelwriter (Voltlog #238 - Finally Printing Shrink Tube Labels With A Brother Printer)! 

Hopefully more work and progress tomorrow again!

 

[Perkeo]

 

Some more building today! The V0.2 may be small printer, but is definitely no small work to get it up and running!

Initial progress was good with connecting more of the wiring.

And zip-tying everything down. It actually looks pretty decent and I might even skip the cable ducts.

After double checking all connections one more time, it was power-up time!! 

Lights and no smoke! Yeah!!   

But that didn't mean that there were no wiring issue,..

Power button is also lighting up when powered down

Because I had the same problem after building my CNC controller (click- sorry, only in Dutch), this problem was easily resolved.

From the initial wiring

to the following wiring

MCU 'mcu' shutdown: ADC out of range

This error message is displayed when a heater is exceeding its set temperature range in the printer.cfg file, but apparently as well when an analog pin is floating or not connected correctly. Since I did not turn on either bed or nozzle, it must be the wiring. Well if you did not put in the little thermistor in the heater itself,.... :sleep:. OK, so after removing the print head and hotend, putting the thermistor in and putting everything together, this was another problem fixed.  

Display V0

After initial configuration of the printer.cfg file, I could not get Mainsail to start-up and connect to the printer. Only after a second round of flashing and incrementally changing the printer.cfg file with restarts after every step, I came to the conclusion that the Display itself of course cannot be plug-and-play, there a more controller thingies to be flashed,...

Initial Startup

Just starting this process now. Temperature checks done, nozzle heater is working, fans are working, X, Y and Z-stepper motors have gone through the Buzz test.

Next-up is the sensorless endstops configuration, but better not get that started late in the evening. The finish line is in sight, but in Dutch 'de laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst' which I think translates into 'the last mile is the longest'...

To be continued...

 

[Perkeo]

 

It's alive!!

From where I left it, there was only very minor work left to be done. Basically just  meticulously following the Initial Startup from the VoronDesign page.

The sensorless homing that got me worried a little bit was basically all pre-configures, like most of all the other Initial Startup checks. Nice! 

In the homing macro the (restricted) homing current per X- and Y-direction is specified. I had mistaken this for the actual current and thought the 0,7 from below code was the restricted motor current. But this is actually the factor the running motor current is limited, thus not 0,7A, but factor 0,7 = 70%. Watching part of the the live-stream of @BallisticTech made this clear.

{% set HOME_CURRENT = 0.7 %}

I did not find it in the Initial Startup text, but remembered to torque down the nozzle after pre-heating. Heating to 270C and the little natural overshoot of a couple of degrees crashed Mainsail and stopped the Printer, so tested that feature as well. With the nozzle still at temperature, I could torque it to 2,5Nm.

Then some Z-height and bed_screws levelling and on to the E-step calibration which needed no, but then also exactly no change whatsoever. I extruded 150mm of filament at 1mm/sec @ 200C for the green PLA shown above and it exactly extruded the 150mm. Must be my lucky day 

In Superslicer I chose the standard Voron V0 with 0,4mm nozzle configuration and generic PLA, sliced the “voron_design_cube_v7.stl” test cube and sent it directly from Superslicer to the printer. The print time of 3h56 will need some tuning I guess . I now set the speed factor to 150% during the print and will let it finish tonight.

Does anyone have a Superslicer configuration for Voron V0,2r1 or some good starting values? Or is it best to go through the Ellis Tuning Guide now?

 

[claudermilk]

It's always best to go with the Ellis tuning guide.

Congrats on pushing plastic. Looks like cereal time!

[Perkeo]

Last pictures of my build were in a semi-finished state, but I guess with a Voron the semi-finished state can likely be considered as the final state because there is always another mod that you can be done?! 

This is how she stands now

Included the Nevermore V6

With handy 2-Pin JST-XH 1515 Snap-in Mount in the corner (not visible on picture) to be able to simply disconnect the Nevermore when needed.

Some nice V0 Stealth Handles from Maple Leaf Makers.

And added a Raspberry Pi Camera Module 3 - Wide with Mount

The clearance to the tool head is probable just a couple of millimeters, so look out that none of the fan or heater wires are sticking out to far from the toolhead, because they will catch on corner of the mount!

Printer tuning itself is again a little further. I am working through the Ellis' Print Tuning Guide, but started with his V0 15mm3 flow Superslicer Profile.

I am impressed how good the printer prints with this profle from the start and after a little tuning.

Not too bad I think. Biggest headache so far initially were some elephant feet.

Following mods are still work in progress:

• Daylight on a Matchstick (mistakenly bought the Daylight on a Stick, but didn't want to hacksaw in the polycarbonate from the electronics bay to make them fit)
• Tuning with Inputshaper board
• Adding Klicky probe (there was just too much comfort with BLTouch on my Ender 3 Pro that I cannot do without ABL)
• Not now, but probably after a little while reorganise the electronics bay, because I was impressed by the clean electronics bay of @claudermilk in his build thread

I am still undecided on the next step of a Formbot vs. Magic Phoenix V2.4 300mm kit. I guess a next step is to try an ASA filament spool that I already bought in preparation of this next step and see if it prints as easily as the eSun ABS+.

Are there specific test prints or tests that I can do to warrant problem free parts for the next build? All above prints were already according to PIF specifications.

 

[claudermilk]

Looks good! I'm totally stealing some of those mods for my build.

All credit for my wiring routing goes to LDO. I just followed their suggested layout for parts. From there, it's easy to route the wires and hide all the excess (that rear cable channel is full).

[Perkeo]

5 hours ago, claudermilk said:

Looks good! I'm totally stealing some of those mods for my build.

Exactly why I am writing down these posts with the links included.

Really like this forum and atmosphere, so trying to contribute my little bit!

[Perkeo]

Just as I was posting my serial request this evening, I saw that @claudermilk just had done the same. Turn around time for my serial request was very short.

Welcome my V0.3106 !

I guess a next mod should be the serial number plate. Is there a multi colour serial plate STL? Never done a filament change during print and I guess a multi colour serial plate might be a nice challenge!

[claudermilk]

It looks like the serial bot no longer sends you a pre-processed stl.  Here's the source GitHub: https://github.com/rdmullett/voron_serial_plate. I'm struggling with it as the V0 version seems programmed for a three digit number and we are well into four digits. I know nothing about defining an object through OpenSCAD, so haven't gotten mine set up yet. I might cheat and hack the plates LDO made to come up with my own.

[Perkeo]

I just followed the Thingiverse V0 label and went through the process. It looks like it is just processing a nameplate with full length. The little one is printing it as we speak.

@claudermilk since I had everything configures on my PC and could easily remember your serial number , I generated your nameplate which is attaced to this post.

 

Voron_Logo_Plate V0.3105.stl

[Perkeo]

Forget about the previous post, this is the standard Voron Serial Number Plate and not the remixed version for V0.

I already had the previous one changes with a little longer nameplate for better spacing of the serial number. The remixed V0 version does not generate properly with four digit serials. Let's see if I can get it working,... But then, looking at the STL itself, I am not sure it will fit on the V0.2 skirts.

To be continued..... 

[claudermilk]

I'm guessing it's too short, but I have no idea how to make that change and haven't made the time to try and learn how yet.

[atrushing]

21 minutes ago, claudermilk said:

I'm guessing it's too short, but I have no idea how to make that change and haven't made the time to try and learn how yet.

In OpenSCAD you need to have their .stl files in the same folder. Then you can edit the fields on the left as needed or you can expand "Parameters" on the right.

I think the plate looks too long but, for me, it would be easiest to adjust that in Blender. Or I could even duplicate the logo on the other side to make it more symmetric.

 

Voron0_Logo_Plate_V0.3105.stl

[Perkeo]

The current Serial Number Plate for V0 on Thingiverse, does not fit to the V0.2 skirt anymore. After downloading several files, trying to change STL files and getting nowhere, I was getting somewhat agitated,... 

So decided to make my own design, well with taking some ideas left and right: 1) zeroclip approach, no nuts and bolt and forgetting nuts,..., 2) LDO design adding the serial number plate on the top hat with similar design of the current corner pieces, 3) Voron logos included, 4) scad file to generate serial numbers

This is what I ended up with V0.2 Serial Number Plate Generator:

 

I may tweak it a little further, so suggestions welcome. Is there for instance an official Voron logo design in CAD? I have used a canvas of a picture to make the design in Fusion 360, but in the picture the logo was not a polygon with 6 sides, the top and bottom lost some height.

But for now very happy that the little printer has a badge to show. 

@claudermilk, for your convenience I have attached your serial number plate in this style.

V0.2 Serialnumber Plate V0.6105.stl