Formbot Trident 300 Build (1st build!)

[AnotherAmateurBuilder]

Hi everyone, I started my first ever build a few weeks ago that I'm hoping to chip away at as I have time. I chose the Formbot Trident 300 kit with the dragon uhf as a good balance of performance and price. My first post will be a bit of a dump of the progress made so far, and then I hope to do some more real time updates after that. I'm looking forward to sharing my progress with everyone and hearing what you have to say!

As a sneak peek, here is where I am so far.

 

 

[AnotherAmateurBuilder]

7/7/25

After several false starts, I finally got my build surface mostly clean and ready to build on. I went back and forth on locktite for a while before settling on just a touch of blue locktite for the frame. It took a while to get the hang of it but I just kept flipping the frame around to get the best orientation for keeping everything square. I did have to build out of order since the E extrusion on non 250 kits is the wrong size to act as a vertical spacer for the gantry extrusions. I built one side as a subassembly and then slotted in the H extrusion as intended, then bolted the whole subassembly on. This worked well for me but if you have a perfect spacer to use, that may work better. I still have to do the top of the frame and I'm pretty sure I at least partially stripped one screw, but we'll keep chugging tomorrow.

[claudermilk]

Welcome to the forum! Good start on the build, a Trident is a good one to start in the Voron world. That's where i got my start and the printer is a workhorse.

[PFarm]

Welcome to the forum, looking forward to following your build!

 

[mvdveer]

Welcome. Happy building, you won't be disappointed by the results

[TitusADuxass]

Welcome.

[AnotherAmateurBuilder]

Alright, time for a mega post. Here are all the updates I was taking offline before joining the forum. After this everything should be caught up!

7/8

Finished the frame this morning before work. Seeing all the diagonals measure in almost perfectly identically made me smile. It's definitely less than 1mm out, probably withing 0.5 mm. 

After work I did the first threaded inserts (way easier than I thought they would be), and build the idlers and the A side drive. I'll repeat and build B side tomorrow. 

As a side note, I found space to lay out all the hardware and it makes life so much easier. The kit I got marked everything so with labels up and roughly ordered by size, finding hardware is a breeze.

7/12

I did some minor work a few times before today, but today I made some real good progress. I got all the frame mounted linear rails decreased, regreased, and installed, and the z axis lead screws mounted. I would have continued but I found that I hadn't printed the parts for the feet, so those will print overnight.

Linear rails: Man I was scared to mess this up. I read and watched so many videos of people loosing balls and ruining their rails. I tried my best to grease them from the outside but I couldn't get the grease down into the mechanism. I ended up very carefully removing each carriage to gain access for grease and reinstalling. I did lose a few balls that I had to repack by hand, but everything still slides smooth so hopefully I didn't make a huge mistake. I'm glad to be done with those for a while. I only have the big x axis one left so I hope it is a little easier to deal with.

Also, after bragging about my hardware organization in the last entry, I spent about 10 minutes looking for m3x8 shcs's today before giving up and going to the hardware store. They only had screws down to m4 so I ordered a pack on Amazon. Then I looked again when I got back from the hardware store and guess what.... a giant bag of m3x8 shcs.... right on the table in plain sight....

7/13

The prints lifted a little at the corners overnight but for feet it should be fine. During the swap to my accent color I managed to jam up my extruder and spent about an hour disassembling the hot end to clear it out.... I love when projects spur other projects.... The accent pieces for the feet are printing now. Hopefully I get a chance to do a little more work on it this weekend.

No more printing mishaps, everything finished in time for me to keep going, yay! I finished getting the feet installed, then I dealt with the X axis. I was right the larger linear rail was easier to deal with. I think I packed that carriage way better than I did any of the others.

It was very satisfying to flip it over and have what is really starting to look like the skeleton of a printer. I know how far we have to go though so I'm trying not to get too excited. 

On a side note, I'm following the instructions to a T, including some parts for the cable guide that I really don't think I need. My logic is that it is easier to take it off than add it back. However, getting started on the carriage I think I should probably be doing something different for the Tap... I'm gonna try to do some research there.

7/19

Alright, a lot has happened since the last update. To start, I asked a question about frame rigidity on reddit and added a picture of the build for attention only, and guess what? I assembled all my parts for holding the bed upside down . 

I guess if I had gotten my stuff together and was posting this as a build thread somebody would have probably called it out earlier, but better late than never. I fixed that, got Tap pretty much complete, routed and tensioned belts, then rerouted and retentioned belts, then did it one more time and actually trimmed the belts. I'm a pro at belt routing core xy now. 

I've also gotten the bed mounted up, which feels like a big step. Im now pretty much committed to NOT doing the flipped electronics mod, so we'll see if I regret that. I read a bunch and I know it's popular but I can't help feeling like I'll have better free access from the bottom, especially since this printer is going in a workshop and I'll have plenty of work bench space if I need to troubleshoot. We'll see...