What is Voron Design?

The original goal of the VORON project, back in 2015, was to create a no-compromise 3D printer that was fun to assemble and a joy to use. It had to be quiet, clean, pretty, and continue to operate 24 hours a day without requiring constant fiddling. In short, an actual home micro-manufacturing machine without a hefty price tag. It took over a year in development, with every part being redesigned, stress-tested, and optimized. Shortly after the release, a vibrant community formed around the project and continues to grow today. This community is part of what makes VORON such a unique experience.

Brief History

RussianCatFood, aka RCF aka Maks, originally started building printers and founded a company called "MZ BOT" based on the open-source idealogy and foundations carried over from companies like lulzbot.

RCF posted the first "Voron" prototype on a Reddit thread on May 20th, 2015, which received much feedback and encouraged him to proceed further.

The iterative design process led RCF to design a smaller, lighter print head which he hoped to build his company on. 

In March 2016, MZ-Bot announced the first and only launch of a limited run of Full Voron Kits in the same year.

In 2017 RCF started designing a custom build Voron24 - a 24" x 24" x 24" massive design that paved the way for the stationary bed and moving gantry that is the hallmark of the Voron 2 line of printers.

Early 2018 began the development of the Voron 2 line of printers. This printer, the 2.0 was never released but taught many lessons and allowed the launch of V2.1 to be a successful printer.

Turns out making printer parts is not very profitable. MZBot as a company was closed for personal and financial reasons. The work done was then fully released as the Voron Design open-source 3D printers.

• v2.1 - Summer 2018
• v2.2 - 2019
• v1.6 - 2019
• v2.4 - Early 2020
• v1.8 - Early 2020
• v0 - Early 2020 
• Switchwire - Summer 2020 - Dev process for Switchwire was only 2 months
• Legacy - 2020 - Last Printer RCF will be completed in a vacuum

What was once a one-person operation has grown into a small, tight-knit group of engineers united under a shared design ethos. The Voron Design team is dedicated to creating production-quality printers you can assemble in your kitchen. This passion and dedication drive them to push the boundaries just a little further. 

Voron Design: We build space shuttles with gardening tools so anyone can have a space shuttle of their own.

The Voron Motion System 

All Voron printers are built using CoreXY or CoreXZ configurations to reduce moving mass, increasing acceleration and speed. Depending on the printer, linear rails (MGN7, MGN9, MGN12) or linear rods may be used along the X, Y, and/or Z axes. Gates 6mm and/or 9mm belts are used for movement; genuine Gates Unitta belts are recommended over generic versions for improved reliability and performance. A simple stack of flanged F695 bearings is often used as smooth belt idlers, as the bearings are much larger than the more common GT2 idlers. This provides increased service life.

Frames

All V1, V2, and Legacy frames are constructed with 2020 aluminum extrusions with a 6mm slot width. The V0 is built with 1515 Makerbeam XL extrusions, and the Switchwire has been built with 6030 and 3030 extrusions. Be sure to pay attention to the extrusion profile–not all extrusion types are the same, even if the outer dimensions are equal!

Motion Control - Klipper

All Voron printers use Klipper firmware. Klipper uses a Raspberry Pi for all the computation-heavy tasks and sends a list of preprocessed orders to the controller board. This gives considerable flexibility as various control boards (or a combination of boards) can be easily configured. In addition, more complex features such as input shaping (to reduce ringing) can be added no matter what control board is used. Finally, configuring firmware is fast and easy. Change to your desired parameter in an easy-to-read printer configuration file, save, and restart Klipper–a few seconds later, the printer is ready to go!

Voron Serial Numbers

In 2015, the first set of 18 Voron printers was packaged in RCF's garage and shipped as kits. As a fun addition, he gave each kit a serial number. While those were the only printers ever sold directly by RCF, the tradition has lived on as a way to represent the hard work each Voron owner puts into sourcing, assembling, and configuring their printer. It also is a great way to show how the community has grown throughout the years!