Hey gang, I’m on the fence about ordering a Prusa Core One. I have a mk3 and love it but I’m ready for an upgrade. Anyone here have any experience with a Voron 2.4 though?
Right now I have the mk3 and a Kobra Max. The Max is OK for big stuff and I could pass on the mk3 if I got the One. But I could probably get by with just a 300x300 Voron.
My concern is that is it more a project than a go-to printer? I got a lot of that out of my system with my first printer, an AnetA8. That was more upgrading and tuning than printing. It was fun and I learned a whole lot, and I recommend a path like that to anyone interested in doing more than plug and print. But at this point I have more interest in printing than tinkering. And I still get a lot of that with the Max anyway.
But a core xy that’s 300x300 does have an appeal. And the Vorons are pretty sexy looking too.
I like to tinker, my brother just wants something that works. I built a Voron, he got Prussa. We are both happy with our 3d printers.
Yay! Waz.squared
I went from a sidewinder x1 to a 300 2.4 and I love it. The built was a lot of work but it was extremely rewarding. Once you get it full set up it’s consistent just load and print, but if you are not confident in your ability to tinker don’t do it. I set up a custom webcam mount, a custom nozzle wiper modled after bambos, a nevermore filter and frame thermal expansion then invested a ton of time in start up scrips and now it’s no work to print anything but it was a lot to get there. If you go this route skip the drag chains and go umbilical, that’s my one regret.
Edit: also consider going 350, you lose a lot of z with mods etc, I would also have gone 350 instead sorry.
Also a 2.4 owner, I bought the 350 LDO kit from Fabreeko and it was delivered back in August. Getting it assembled and dialed in was certainly a process, but aside from that it’s been an absolute workhorse (I think I’ve got something like 200+ hours of print time in; completely blows my Thessian Ender out of the water in terms of both speed and reliability). You certainly can tinker with it and make it a project printer, but they print really well stock. The only mod I’d say is anywhere near required is swapping out the magnetic bed meshing sensor, only because the sensor readings tend to drift as the sensor gets hot. You can totally work around it, by waiting for the printer to warm all the way up or cool down to ambient before printing, but I’m impatient plus the mouse switch mod (Klicky) tends to be more reliable and accurate (plus it’s temperature agnostic).
Don’t get me wrong I’ve totally modded mine: swapped out some of the plastic parts for metal ones, added a brush to clean the nozzle before my print (makes for more consistent Z heights), replaced the panel clips with snap latches, but none of it was required to make the printer print better (mostly just to make maintenance easier and partly because it looks cool).
2.4 owner chiming in. It’s a long build and you should probably skip the drag chains due to wire breaks. I am very happy with the printer and the community. Mods are readily available, the stock models are all open source so if you want to make your own mods it’s easy, etc. My printer is also extremely reliable - click print, walk away, come back to a completed print. You’ll need to do some klipper setup to get here, but it’s very achievable with some basic macros like Z Caliberation.
As for print volume, larger prints result in more warpage if you want to print in anything other than PLA. It’s all about chamber temps, but larger prints = larger printer = more surface area for your enclosure to lose heat. Big PETG prints needs an enclosure, but it doesn’t need to be that intense - I was fine with acrylic panels and even popped the top. Big ASA/ABS prints need an insulated enclosure, but I can now print large ASA things successfully. To go with your enclosure you’ll also need a method of actively hearing it. Bedfans, and under bed filtration, is how I dealt with this on my Voron. Since Vorons are designed for an enclosure, all the electronics are not inside the enclosure. I do not know if that’s the case for the Prusa.
Mk4s owner here and I’m super unhappy with the output of my factory assembled mk4s, due to a consistent first layer problem. The mk4s is related to the core 1 as far as I know as the “next gen”.
Prusa seems to be aware of the issue, but I feel they are still messing around greatly with any kind of actual solution to the problem, that actually led me to pulling the pin on any work purchases from Prusa at all.
I actually got sent a second factory assembled mk4s as a “make good”, and the new unit had the exact same problem, right out of the box…
If I had my time again, I wish I’d have gone the Voron in some kind of pre-packed kit form…
Not a Prusa user, but the title of that bug does look accurate - the first layer is too low. Does Prusa support bed mesh and is there a way of setting the zero point of the bed relative to whatever they’re doing for z-endstop?
In klipper land there are solutions to this, but they’re not baked into the out of the box solution.
On my Voron if I want to guarantee a good first layer, I must:
- let the bed temp stabilize after hitting temp for a bit. The bed is a nice thick piece of aluminum, which helps with consistent temp, but when the thermistor hits temp the top is still a little cool
- wipe the nozzle to get it clean since my printer uses the nozzle for homing z. There are mods to automate this
- bed mesh. This is available out of the box with klipper, but it will be turned off until you configure it and include it in print_start
- I use a z Caliberation macro to align the z height of my z end stop and my klicky bed probe that’s used for bed meshing. When setting this up, you need to make sure to use the same origin point as the bed mesh otherwise your first layer can be too low or too high
My first layer is nearly aways flat. It will occasionally be too high or too low because there was a goober on the end stop or something else along those lines.
Are you sure things are clean? Likewise, are you running a mesh? Have you tried adjusting z-offset up a touch?
Honestly, I would start with first layer squish as you could easily be too low.
How long was the build? I gotta say, it does look fun. And did you get a kit or source the parts yourself?
I bought a BOM in a box from West3D. I would say the build took 40 hours or so. This includes figuring out what parts to print, mechanical assembly, wiring, and getting klipper up and running.
Edit: maybe 30-40 hours as a guess. I wasn’t rushing and built over the course of two months or so as I had time I could spend. I bet I could cut that down a lot on a second build, but even a fast build is going to be 10-15 hours. Things to be careful of: grabbing the correct pull/belts for the z motors when doing initial assembly, otherwise you’ll have to tear down later, and belt routing for the gantry. I had to redo that one too, but tear down was less intensive to fix that one.