Documenting my V0

[Kyle]

 

Formbot kit. (Dragon HF hotend)

Planning to do the Mini AfterSherpa/Sailfin for my print head, mostly because I really want to be able to get to the large plastic gear to manually advance/retract filament when loading and unloading. I have that on my modified prusa (via a bondtech bmg) and I don't want to go back to not having it.

Bought parts for the Umbilical (https://deepfriedhero.in/products/voron-v0-umbillical-and-rear-connector-boards?_pos=2&_psq=umbilical&_ss=e&_v=1.0) but not sure how to get the board pointed straight up given that the sailfin turns the extruder motor sideways. went ahead and built the extruder/hotend without the umbilical for now, since the kit has most of the wires already made, and I'd have had to redo them for the umbilical, anyway. I'll save that mod for the first time I want to change out the extruder (and get annoyed that I have to open up the whole cable bundle to do so). 

Bought a fan an some (supposedly non acidic) charcoal for a nevermore, so went ahead and printed the parts and put that together while waiting for my kit to arrive.
 

Main parts printed in Fusion Filaments Geomagnetic Mauve

Accent parts printed in Atomic Filament Neon Green UV Reactive ABS

Black parts printed in Atomic black ABS

 

Other mods/things I'm considering:

Per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3_A5d-1Vq4 an additional thermistor (for measuring build chamber temp) can be connected to SPI GND+MOSI pins. That seems useful enough to do.

 

https://www.printables.com/model/146877-voron-0-voron-01-raspberry-pi-camera-mount I'm spoiled having cameras on all my octoprint instances. I'm probably going to want a camera on this printer, too. Though I'm new to klipper, I've seen mention of using cameras with it, so I'll figure it out.

https://voronregistry.com/mods/quackprofit-v0adafruitneopixelledmounts Well, if I'm going to have a camera, I'm probably going to need some lights, so why not go a little extra?

 

Kit delivered, and I got all the accent parts printed (since that filament showed up first).

 

Went ahead and built a nevermore filter while I'm at it, since I expect to be using this printer to print ABS and whatnot. I found a link to that cable channel model somewhere in the voron community, but can't for the life of me find it now. The picture I saw was it fitting in a V0.1, so I'm hoping I can find a place to put it and help manage the cable mess that printers always become.

Put the extruder/hotend together to make sure I had all the pieces I need. Not sure where I'm supposed to get a different carriage, since this one has a curve in the top that doesn't line up to where the motor actually is on the sailfin, but whatever, it doesn't obstruct anything, so I'll keep it this way for now until I find or design a different carriage. 

+

 

Tip: The PEI stickers from Prusa for their Mk3 steel sheets are big enough to make exactly four PEI stickers for a bed the size of the voron 0. Since my flex plate came with textured PEI on one side, but bare metal on the other side, and I had a couple spares of these, the bare side got a PEI sticker to give me options for a print surface.

Progress on the actual printer build. Having done the bed frame, i now understand why people buy the stamped metal ones. Lining up the nuts for those 8 screws was the most time consuming thing I've done so far on this thing. 

And more parts printing (the angle of the camera is exagerating the warp, but yes, those parts are warping. This enclosure is a little too big to heat up well, so I probably need to avoid having parts near the edge of the print bed. We'll see in an hour when this set is done if these will be usable, or if they're scrap.

Other errata: 

The printer above is actually my second Prusa mk3 (a mk3s+ to be specific). I printed all the green parts, black parts, and the first batch of purple on my first mk3, but it's old and struggling. I was having extrusion issues (unable to tune for temp or extrusion modifier effectively) when I checked the nozzle and found it was hollowed out to about .6 by years of printing abrasives (it's hardened tool steel, but even that has limits). Then, after replacing the nozzle and getting it printing much better, it had a temperature panic and reset during a print job. I tried to run a PID tune, thinking that ABS prints hotter than the CFPETG I usually run through it, so maybe tuning was in order, when I saw fumes coming off the nozzle during the heatup/PID tune. At first I thought it was steam and the filament was wet, but then I saw the temp go from 245 to 280 in about a second and a half, and realized two things almost instantly: 

     a. My thermistor is dying/failing/flaking.

     b. That wasn't steam, it was smoke, and I was burning filament.

So I quickly reset the printer and opened a window to keep my smoke detectors from going nuts (the camera is close to the nozzle, so the actual amount of smoke was small, but I was definitely burning the filament. ABS doesn't smell pleasant on a good day, but I had to air out that room for a while to be comfortable going in there. So yeah, I guess my old mk3 needs some love before it's going to be doing big print jobs again. Hopefully I get the V0 up and running soon, and it can fill in for now until rebuild the hot end (I was getting annoyed at the PINDA probe, anyway, since printing at ABS temps starts to get to the point where the PINDA messes up its reading and your nozzle height gets screwy. The new generation (Super PINDA) on the mk3s+ has no trouble levelling the bed even after heating up for 20 minutes to try to get the enclosure to a decent temp. (Well, I say that, but the picture above does show the parts curling, so obviously the enclosure didn't get as warm as I'd like). 

Okay, that's probably enough for now. That batch is almost done on the printer, so I can check the parts and do some more assembly if they're usable. 

 

 

 

 

 

[smirk]

Good tip about the PEI sheet, buying a larger one and cutting down can be a lot more cost effective that sourcing "native" v0 sizes.

[Kyle]

For the record, the warp was, indeed, too much. Especially given that those parts are supposed to hold pulleys for the belt mechanism. The warp was going to put a non-trivial angle in the screws that act as the axels for the pulleys, so I'm reprinting the parts one at a time with a draft shield, and that seems to be doing the trick.

[claudermilk]

I kind of knew those parts were scrap seeing that warp. On my Mini-under-a-box I found that adding a 9mm brim and using glue stick eliminated the warp issues i had on larger parts.

[Kyle]

Utterly failed to take more pictures yet, but the printer is assembled with the exception of the enclosure panels/skirt and cleaning up the wiring to make it pretty (it's managed enough that running the printer won't snag/rub anything, but the compartment near the control board and pi are a rat's nest right now).

So, things I messed up that might save someone else in the future:
1. The Formbot kit comes with an skr mini e3 V3 now (not the v2 in the BOM/Instructions). The incoming power to the board is pointed at the end instead of the side, but the connector isn't just turned 90 degrees, so if you go into it thinking it just turned to the side, you're going to wire the incoming power backwards. This is going to cause your PSU to freak out and do nothing. Switching those wires will sort it, though. Would be nice if there was a +/- on the board for that connection, but it didn't fry anything, so live and learn.
2. Speaking of the v3 board, the klipper install/flash instructions for the v2 board work okay, just use the config file from github for the v3 board, and you'll be alright. It has comments at the top of what to set for the couple things that are different than the documentation. That said, I've spent a decent amount of time faffing about in linux, so this might be super frustrating for someone who isn't an IT nerd. I assume the documentation will be updated soon since the Formbot and LDO kits are both shipping with the v3 board now from what I'm hearing.
2. The z motor that comes with the formbot kit is noisy af if you do the standard klipper config, but if you set its stealthchop threshold to 500, it stops whistling/whining. We'll see if that affects its ability to do its job (I see folks online saying stealthchop can reduce torque, but it seems to be moving the bed up and down fine for me in homing/move tests, so we'll see if it's an issue when I actually print something).
3. Take pictures of all the labels on your motors before you put the dang thing together. You're going to need to look up the specific motor to make sure your klipper config is right, and it's annoying to try to get to them once the printer is assembled.
4. Just accept that you're going to waste a few crimp on JST (or whatever they're called) ends, and take a few of them and some scrap wire and practice this if you haven't done it before. You're going to waste the crimped end when your crimp fails, anyway, and it's better to have it happen on a piece of scrap wire than on the hotend cooling fan wire that you already cut to the length you wanted it, so when you strip it back more to put a new end on it, it's a little short.

Okay, it's 4:30am now, so I'm going to sleep. I'll take some pictures and try a PLA test print when I wake up, and see how things look at that point. 

[smirk]

(Hope you slept well) Really helpful post with the tips. Totally agree with point 4, I actually enjoy crimping cables (weird I know) but dunno how many I burnt through before accepting that as the price of learning. As you say, acceptance is very important

[mvdveer]

Very informative thanks. Even after crimping literally 100’s of wires, I still get a mis crimp at times. It happens but nonetheless very frustrating 

[Kyle]

Welp, it prints! Not particularly great quality yet, since I haven't done any tuning (just the basic pre-flight checks of "do the motors go in the right direction?" and "do the heaters/thermistors do things that seem reasonable?"). That said, it's doing its thing and while the test cube won't be the prettiest that's ever existed, it's printed in ABS and isn't going to fail or anything, so I'm pretty happy. I went ahead and submitted a serial request (link below) and now it's on to tuning!

Screenshot of mainsail for this printer on my tablet:

 

Serial request: 

 

[Kyle]

Tossed a spare thermistor into the build chamber (hanging loose-ish above the nevermore). Plugged into SPI GND+MOSI pins per this video.

(Unrelated to the new chamber thermistor) Got a "Your cpu temp was over 60c" warning from mainsail about the pi. Took the back off, and that got it down to 45C while idling (ish. It had been printing earlier, but did level off at that temp).

I also wanted to cover the gap to the build chamber left by taking off the back, so I took some measurements and threw together a simple panel for that space, and a mount for the 5v 40x40x20 fan that used to be connected to this pi when it was the octoprint server for my cr10s5. (I actually measured a little wrong on the panel, so it was like 1mm short, and the screw holes 1mm too close together side-to-side, but nothing a 3mm round file can't fix by making the holes oval shaped). Wired the fan straight into the 5v converter that powers the Pi, since even idling the Pi has been running warm, so this way it'll have a fan on full-time when the printer is powered. (The red and black line up in the picture, but that was actually backwards for this cheap-o fan, so got swapped around to make it work).

That got the idle temp of the Pi down to about 30C (you can see the whole printer cooled down a bit, but I take that to just be due to the slow return to "basement ambient" since it had been a few hours since it printed at this point). 

[mvdveer]

28 minutes ago, Kyle said:

(hanging loose-ish above the nevermore).

Won't the airflow from the nevermore affect the true temperature values?. I actually have mine at the back of the chamber at the position of the Z-Switch.

[Kyle]

44 minutes ago, mvdveer said:

Won't the airflow from the nevermore affect the true temperature values?. I actually have mine at the back of the chamber at the position of the Z-Switch.

Possibly, but the airflow from the nevermore will also be indirectly hitting the parts as they print, so unless that air is at a temperature that I can live with, I'm probably going to have issues printing ABS anyway? (At least, that's the logic I was going with). If it needs to move to the other side, I haven't shortened that thermistor's wire yet. Maybe I'm totally off base and the nevermore is only supposed to run during the warmup phase and after the print is done? I assumed it's meant to run the whole time. 

[Kyle]

Out of curiosity, I ran the nevermore at 90% for 15 minutes, and the chamber thermistor stays within 1 degree of the bed and extruder thermistor, so I think this will be okay.

I'll still wait a while to shorten/route that thermistor wire, though, in case it does become an issue.

[mvdveer]

I have the nevermore running all the time printing ABS as it absorbs the fumes and circulates the air with "I think", a better distribution of heat in the chamber. A way to overcome issues with printing ABS is to heat soak the chamber for 30min prior to starting the print. (I manually heat the chamber before starting a print). In that case it won't matter where the thermistor is placed as the air distribution would hopefully be uniform. Interesting one. But I like your logic. An interesting experiment would be heating the chamber with the nevermore on and the thermistor where it is, then moving it to the back of the chamber and see if there is a variance in the temperature.

[mvdveer]

1 minute ago, Kyle said:

Out of curiosity, I ran the nevermore at 90% for 15 minutes, and the chamber thermistor stays within 1 degree of the bed and extruder thermistor, so I think this will be okay.

Makes sense. 

[Kyle]

This printer is now officially V0.1924!

[mvdveer]

Congratulations and happy printing

 

[Urshurak776]

Thanks for all the tips!  Starting my Formbot build soon.  Curious if I’ll get the V3 board.