I'm not dead

It's been a while since my last update. Life has been busy. Friends visiting from across the world, constant work on the Voron Switchwire, and the usual life things all keeping me busy. Content has been a bit light, but I have a backlog of things to talk about now that I have some free time thanks to the holidays, I should be able to get more content out. I don't keep a backlog of content to delay out posts, and would rather keep things as up to date as I can. I'll be posting an update on my Voron soon, and I hope this one was worth the wait. It sure has been an adventure for me, and it's still not over.

It moves!

After much much failure, I have it able to move. The Y belt seems really loose, near impossible to fix, the gantry is a bit stiff, but it's moving. I'm not going easy on this printer, and going for Voron speed right out of the gate the first print. It's by no means done. Enclosure is still not on, y belt is skipping, parts are missing here and there, but it can at least print the rest of it's upgrades if I tame it in. There will be at least a few more follow up posts as I'm looking into some upgrades that can solve some issues. So far I'm printing the Y belt mod found here. That should help me get better acceleration, but I'll need to wait to see until belts come in. The parts are printed. I also printed a temporary solution to not wanting to solder the bed connectors, which I think looks nice enough for now.

Some pictures/videos

Starting a benchy. It didn't finish thanks to the Y belt skipping.

Tamed the printer down and started printing the fix.

This printer is totally not tuned, and ringing can be seen, especially near the voron logo. I'll address this later hopefully, but that's high speed printing problems at least. The rest looks bad on camera, but looks fine in person.

Here's the connector I printed to be lazy.

It's getting closer!

This has truly been a learning experience in things that should be obvious, but aren't when you are in the middle of things. Crimping the connectors has been nothing but a pain, so for now, I soldered most of them on the toolhead, which I'm sure I'll regret later, and by later, I mean almost instantly. I've torn the entire toolhead down at least 10 times due to small issues here and there. The probe was installed too high, the extruder had a few issues once I looked at it, the list goes on, but with each teardown, I learn a bit about the toolhead, and it gets easier. Firmware is flashed, wired up to test, but I'm out of time, and I didn't bother to cable manage too much because I'm sure I'll have to rewire it all eventually.

Some pictures

Turns out that the probe, while it looks like it should be flush mount, should, in fact, not be.

Not only is my cable management horrible, but it also was a horrible photo!

It's starting to look like a printer.

Slowly but surely

I don't have a lot of time today to work on the printer, but I managed to install the toolhead. It's not really wired, but it's on the X carriage, which is also installed. I also got the drag chains on, display attached, and a few other things. Planning on hammering out wiring tomorrow to see if it will live or die. Time will tell. I'm bound to destroy something.

Some pictures

I've never been a fan of the V6 groove mount, and neither has anyone else. I'm hoping to replace this with a Revo or a Dragon hotend at some point.

Final shots for the day.

It's finally revealed

It's been a while since I've posted, and I'm sure you wonder what I've been up to. The Prusa Mini has been working overtime, printing every waking hour, failing a lot because ASA is hard to print on a Mini (for me at least), and it's time to reveal what it's all been about. Without further ado...

I'm building a Voron

Day 1 summary

With some images to spoil a bit, I've been hard at work for a while on this. Printing and starting to build my Voron Switchwire. I've started with a Formbot kit, but I'm sure I'll replace a lot of things. Been going through the generally good manual, building, screwing things up many times, and ordering parts that weren't included. Was missing the Keyback, PTFE tube, and a few other small things, but it's getting built. So far, I have the frame, and Y axis mostly built somewhat connectly I think, skipping some things I'll have to go back to due to missing parts. I've never built a printer before, and the only electronics knowledge I really have is keyboards. Luckily, I at least ran Klipper on my prusa mini most of the time, so hopefully tuning that won't be as hard as it could have been. This post is a short one, but hopefully it helps explain why I've been so busy. This is what it looks like at the end of day 1.