Self sourcing vs complete kit
Self sourcing vs complete kit
I've just about convinced myself that I need a voron trident to replace my current cheap bedslinger. Since I can't live with the small print area of the 0.2, that one is out of the picture although I was thinking of that first. I like the DIY and open aspect of them, but many of the kits I can get locally seem grossly overpriced at around 1700 euros for a trident or 2.4 kit that I have to do all the work on myself.
Is there actually any significant saving by sourcing all parts yourself instead of buying the kits? Anyone here have experience buying all the individual parts? Brands to go for or avoid?
If you decide to self-source, then order as many things as possible from a single shop to cut down on shipping costs. The benefit is you can customize everything to your liking and have spare parts for the next Voron you build. 1700 euros seems high to me, but I haven’t built a new Voron recently. Try checking the Discord to see if there are any cheaper places to get kits.
As far as suppliers, I’ve heard good things about Fermio for self-sourcing components. Most of my parts came from Aliexpress. The Voron website has a great self-sourcing guide you can use that includes links. Nero3D (Canuck Creator) has some older livestreams where he walks through the sourcing guide and talks about the different things to look for on Aliexpress.
The trident is a fantastic printer and you will spend a lot of time and money on it no matter which route you choose. Now is probably the best time to plan out which mods you want as well.
That price seems pretty steep for a kit, unless it's a high grade kit. In USD land, formbot kits are around $750-800 for a 350mm trident and LDO kits are around $1,400 for a 300mm trident. I personally went with option c: a West 3D self source configurator. Their 350mm trident starts from $1,450.
In the US, self sourcing tends to cost more than say formbot kits. There are four things to be aware of:
- Especially for the hardware, you're likely going to need to buy more material than you actually need. This adds cost
- If you wind up using multiple vendors, which is hard to avoid, shipping can add up too
- It's tempting to upgrade parts that don't really need upgrading, so make sure you choose wisely
- Self sourcing can take quite a bit of time (finding/selecting vendors, debating which flavor of each part you want like LDO vs Moon motors, etc)
That's not to say you will get a bad outcome self sourcing, just know what you're getting into. It might be worth looking for things like a hardware kit, that way you won't have to track down a ton of fasteners.
Keep in mind that Vorons are somewhat open ended in their design. For example, you'll have to decide between kicky vs hall vs tap. Even in kicky land there are a bunch of variants like kicky NG (no glue). Don't overthink the build too much, but do consider what mods you might want to start off with. For example, I have magnetic panels, 270 degree door hinges, a filter/bed fan called "the filter", and sex bolt. If you ever might maybe print TPU, you should start off with the sex bolt. The others are all nice quality of life updates.
Luckily all the fasteners, t-nuts etc. I can just get at work so I don't need to source any of those. Might actually even be able to buy the extrusions and have them precision cut at work now that I think of it 🤔
I already print a little in TPU, mostly 85A, so I'll look in to that mod.
It's a little hard to get a good overview of all the mods and their added value compared to default config, guess I'll do some more research 😅
Honestly, start another thread here and ask for mods for a fresh build. This community is fairly quiet, but there are a number of lurkers that come out of the woodwork for posts.
You'll hear a lot of posts saying "keep it stock", but the things I listed above don't really make much change over the stock layout.
The sex bolt is really useful due to the design of the stock end stop - it's just a section of steel rod sitting on a micro switch. If you have some warm TPU on your nozzle from a prior print it can pull the rod out of the hole. Yeah, you can change your homing macro to move a bit in x/y before moving in z after hitting the stop, but sex bolt makes the problem go away.