First build 2.4

[Nilrods]

I have started sourcing parts for my first 2.4 build. I want a few specific things so the complete build kits I saw didn't really meet my needs.

But I have bought a couple parts kits(frame, wiring, etc) and few individual items so far. Much is in transit.

Build will probably take me a while as I am usually slow and methodical about putting things together. But looking forward to it.

Couple of questions for the experts out there related to boards used.

Since it seems like Vorons use klipper firmware on raspi to do heavy lifting and child board(s) just curious why all the fairly expensive/complex boards being used.

What is benefit of the octopus or spider? Would just think would want fairly inexpensive dumb boards for running steppers, fans, heaters. Maybe I misunderstood how it all works together.

Any suggestions for basic boards install? Not real interested in huge display screen or tons of convenience features. Will probably use web interface as much as possible.

Thanks,

Chris

 

[mvdveer]

34 minutes ago, Nilrods said:

What is benefit of the octopus or spider?

You would need a board to accomodate all the stepper motors, such as the octopus. If not using CanBUs, this will be 7 motor ports (4 x Z, X, Y, E). Prior to octopus the BOM had two smaller boards to accomplish this (SKR 1.4, SKR Mini, etc). If you use a CanBus board, then you will need a printer board with 6 motor drivers. Nothing prevents you from using cheaper boards as long as you can accommodate all the motors. Then there is consideration for all the fans, especially if you are using a nevermore, bed fans, exhaust fan, electronics bay fans, etc.

[PFarm]

Another great option from BTT is the Manta 8P which has a CB1 (BTT version on RaspPi) one less item to wire and install in the electronics bay plus has all of the features you'd be looking for in a 2.4 build.

https://biqu.equipment/collections/control-board/products/manta-m4p-m8p?variant=40451537404002

[Dirk]

What @mvdveer says

I am not an expert. Just have opinions

If I am not wrong, Octopus and Spider boards were developed specifically for the Voron 2 series. Similar to the Catalyst and Pico are developed for the Voron 0 series.

Using smaller boards and getting all to work in Klipper is of course possible. I believe the 'dedicated' boards will give you better performance, more ease of use, better organization of your electronics bay.

I doubt that the money you save by reusing 'older' boards, will be worth the trouble. A Spider costs 50, an Octopus 40 euros on AliExpress. During black friday I bought a Spider 3.0 without drivers for 30 euros. Compare that to the cost for a 2.4 which is around 800 to 1400 euros.

Recommendation for which one to choose... Most people use BTT Octopus or Octopus pro. But that is mostly because they build a kit that comes with it (Formbot kits or LDO kits). I think Fysetc Spider is compact and has similar / same functionality. BTT Manta M8P has same functionality along with the option to plug in the BTT pi on the board, making it even more neat and integrated in your electronics bay.

 

[claudermilk]

I am biased since I have an Octopus in my Trident. That said, the Octopus seems to have become the default board for V2.4 and Trident. With good reason, IMHO. It's a good board and has plenty of capacity for add-on mods. It's a solid board and pretty easy to get set up. The only issue I've run into is the probe port bug, and you just shift the signal cable as shown in the Voron docs site and you are good to go. I've seen more posts of issues with the Spider, but otherwise it's equivalent. Since my build there's been several new boards released to compete with those two, and to address the Pi shortage.

There's nothing saying you have to use Klipper and one of the typical boards + a Pi. But most of the community uses Klipper, so support will be easier to come by.

[Nilrods]

5 hours ago, PFarm said:

Another great option from BTT is the Manta 8P which has a CB1 (BTT version on RaspPi) one less item to wire and install in the electronics bay plus has all of the features you'd be looking for in a 2.4 build.

https://biqu.equipment/collections/control-board/products/manta-m4p-m8p?variant=40451537404002

Nice! Let me check that one out.

[Nilrods]

5 hours ago, Dirk said:

What @mvdveer says

I am not an expert. Just have opinions

If I am not wrong, Octopus and Spider boards were developed specifically for the Voron 2 series. Similar to the Catalyst and Pico are developed for the Voron 0 series.

Using smaller boards and getting all to work in Klipper is of course possible. I believe the 'dedicated' boards will give you better performance, more ease of use, better organization of your electronics bay.

I doubt that the money you save by reusing 'older' boards, will be worth the trouble. A Spider costs 50, an Octopus 40 euros on AliExpress. During black friday I bought a Spider 3.0 without drivers for 30 euros. Compare that to the cost for a 2.4 which is around 800 to 1400 euros.

Recommendation for which one to choose... Most people use BTT Octopus or Octopus pro. But that is mostly because they build a kit that comes with it (Formbot kits or LDO kits). I think Fysetc Spider is compact and has similar / same functionality. BTT Manta M8P has same functionality along with the option to plug in the BTT pi on the board, making it even more neat and integrated in your electronics bay.

Hmm, not sure where you were seeing spider and octopus prices like that. I was seeing octopus with stepper drivers on average in the high $100-200 range. When I see much cheaper makes me wonder about quality of components, but maybe wasn't looking in right places.

Maybe I need to revisit looking at those. Seemed to be a number of versions(pro, 446, 429,etc). Not sure which is minimum needed.

[Nilrods]

3 hours ago, claudermilk said:

I am biased since I have an Octopus in my Trident. That said, the Octopus seems to have become the default board for V2.4 and Trident. With good reason, IMHO. It's a good board and has plenty of capacity for add-on mods. It's a solid board and pretty easy to get set up. The only issue I've run into is the probe port bug, and you just shift the signal cable as shown in the Voron docs site and you are good to go. I've seen more posts of issues with the Spider, but otherwise it's equivalent. Since my build there's been several new boards released to compete with those two, and to address the Pi shortage.

There's nothing saying you have to use Klipper and one of the typical boards + a Pi. But most of the community uses Klipper, so support will be easier to come by.

Another one of my concerns, as I have seen with other printers, is having everything on one board if one thing goes bad on it your buying another board. Which is ok if they are inexpensive.

Maybe quality on these are much better than previous ones though.

So has anyone had to replace any octopus boards yet, for whatever reason?

 

[Dirk]

4 minutes ago, Nilrods said:

Hmm, not sure where you were seeing spider and octopus prices like tha... maybe wasn't looking in right places...

I guess so.

Even when you do not take into account that I am mentioning numbers in euros (shipping to the EU means AliExpress adds 21% VAT to the price, which is not the case for the US) As @PFarmmentioned, check out their website. An Octopus 1.1 without drivers costs only 37.88 USD for you if you are in the US

Good luck with the search / research

[PFarm]

14 minutes ago, Nilrods said:

Hmm, not sure where you were seeing spider and octopus prices like that. I was seeing octopus with stepper drivers on average in the high $100-200 range. When I see much cheaper makes me wonder about quality of components, but maybe wasn't looking in right places.

Maybe I need to revisit looking at those. Seemed to be a number of versions(pro, 446, 429,etc). Not sure which is minimum needed.

Lower prices are most likely just for the motherboard without any stepper drivers. 446,429 is the microprocessor installed on the board. I believe the 429 was the older processor but not 100% sure.

[Nilrods]

Yeah looks like places I looked may have been selling sets with more expensive stepper drivers or something.

Thanks @PFarm for pointing me in right direction. These look more reasonable.

Not sure what the difference is between tmc2209 vs tmc5160T? 

I will probably go with octopus, but still thinking about manta, as I do have a couple pi cm4 floating around.

 

Thanks for all the advice guys!!

[PFarm]

4 minutes ago, Nilrods said:

Yeah looks like places I looked may have been selling sets with more expensive stepper drivers or something.

Thanks @PFarm for pointing me in right direction. These look more reasonable.

Not sure what the difference is between tmc2209 vs tmc5160T? 

I will probably go with octopus, but still thinking about manta, as I do have a couple pi cm4 floating around.

Thanks for all the advice guys!!

You're welcome!  The TMC 2209 = 24V. stepper TMC 5160= 48V stepper can be used with the Octopus Pro V1.1. Yeah if you have a CM4 you'll be able to transfer OS to it so you'll no longer need a SD card inserted. Manta is a great board, I got it installed in my 2.4 when the Octopus gave up.

Edited December 20, 2023 by PFarm

[claudermilk]

20 hours ago, PFarm said:

Lower prices are most likely just for the motherboard without any stepper drivers. 446,429 is the microprocessor installed on the board. I believe the 429 was the older processor but not 100% sure.

429 is the Octopus Pro. 446 is the "regular" Octopus 1.1. I don't recall the extra features of the pro (I think more set up for handling 487V?). I have a standard 446 Octopus V1.1 on my Trident. It's been absolutely rock solid for over 2 1/2 years. I know people have had to replace them, but that's almost always been after releasing the magic smoke from one.

[Nilrods]

1 hour ago, claudermilk said:

429 is the Octopus Pro. 446 is the "regular" Octopus 1.1. I don't recall the extra features of the pro (I think more set up for handling 487V?). I have a standard 446 Octopus V1.1 on my Trident. It's been absolutely rock solid for over 2 1/2 years. I know people have had to replace them, but that's almost always been after releasing the magic smoke from one.

Good to know thanks!!

Sounds like I might be able to get one of those cheaper.

Sounds like I just need to be extra cautious hooking things up. I am guessing then that most issues ate related to hooking up wrong then.

[Dirk]

I bought an octopus pro last week. 

On the BTT GitHub they have nice drawings where they explain what the differences are between the different chipsets on the boards ( octopus 1.1 comes with 407ze or 446ze, octopus pro comes with f446 or h723 or f-429 chips).

The most expensive ones are faster and the f429 supports and has more memory which is apparently required for a rep rap. Not used for the Voron, so didn't look. The cheapest chipset is enough.

The difference between the octopus and the pro, is that the pro has more advanced electronics and more pins/plugs.

What Interested me most in the octopus is that it contains a warning when you short circuit something. The octopus only flashes with a light and the pro flashes but also buzzes.

They also sell a octopus max ez, with jumperless stepper drivers and even more features for people that want to connect 20 fans and 6 extruders with different voltages.

Since last week they also sell a BTT Kraken. Meant for 48v mainly. More voltage is more speed... I don't get this still, since the limiting factor is the extruder still.

Anyway... To come back where you started with the initial post, since the Trident and 2.4 printers can run with any board that has 7 stepper driver circuits ( or two boards), the faster and more expensive chips are overkill. 

So a normal octopus (or any other modern board I mentioned earlier) seems more than enough. Unless you wish to have the luxury of different voltages for different fans and so on.

I bought the cheapest pro because of the Buzz warning on shortcircuit. The Fysetc Spider which died on me neither has a buzzer nor a light on shortcircuit.

But again... Try their git. A lot of info.

 

 

[Dirk]

2 hours ago, Dirk said:

...since last week they also sell a BTT Kraken. Meant for ....

 

The Kraken... The mythical huge animal... Is actually meant for the other mythical fantastic animal: the Phoenix. The one @mvdveer mentioned last week. The Monster-Voron Phoenix

Edited December 21, 2023 by Dirk

[Nilrods]

3 hours ago, Dirk said:

I bought an octopus pro last week. 

On the BTT GitHub they have nice drawings where they explain what the differences are between the different chipsets on the boards ( octopus 1.1 comes with 407ze or 446ze, octopus pro comes with f446 or h723 or f-429 chips).

The most expensive ones are faster and the f429 supports and has more memory which is apparently required for a rep rap. Not used for the Voron, so didn't look. The cheapest chipset is enough.

The difference between the octopus and the pro, is that the pro has more advanced electronics and more pins/plugs.

What Interested me most in the octopus is that it contains a warning when you short circuit something. The octopus only flashes with a light and the pro flashes but also buzzes.

They also sell a octopus max ez, with jumperless stepper drivers and even more features for people that want to connect 20 fans and 6 extruders with different voltages.

Since last week they also sell a BTT Kraken. Meant for 48v mainly. More voltage is more speed... I don't get this still, since the limiting factor is the extruder still.

Anyway... To come back where you started with the initial post, since the Trident and 2.4 printers can run with any board that has 7 stepper driver circuits ( or two boards), the faster and more expensive chips are overkill. 

So a normal octopus (or any other modern board I mentioned earlier) seems more than enough. Unless you wish to have the luxury of different voltages for different fans and so on.

I bought the cheapest pro because of the Buzz warning on shortcircuit. The Fysetc Spider which died on me neither has a buzzer nor a light on shortcircuit.

But again... Try their git. A lot of info.

Great info thanks!! Sounds like the lower end will be just fine for me.

I do like the idea of a short circuit alarm.

I am not trying to set any speed records, just get some print times down some and still have good quality.

 

[claudermilk]

The regular Octopus has selectable voltage for the fan outputs.

I have a bunch of mods hooked up and still have plenty of spare ports. You'd really have to try to run out.

[Dirk]

1 hour ago, claudermilk said:

...have a bunch of mods hooked up and still have plenty of spare ports. You'd really have to try to run out.

Heh. Looking through those manuals I kept wondering: what do they use all these extra options for. But apparently there is need for more, bigger, better

Look at Phoenix and Kraken. But then I always think of Bill Gates' historic quote: "640K ought to be enough for anyone". And to be fair, when he said it back in 1990, it was very true.

[Nilrods]

Question for those who have already built a 2.4r2.

I already have a bunch of hiwin  precision Z1 preload mgn12 rails and mgn12h carriages for other CNC projects. The rails are 395mm long. 

Will the 5mm less make any difference on the X axis? Does the carriage actually use the full 400mm of rail?

Any thoughts would be helpful. 

Thanks,

Chris