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Sounds like your printer looked identical to mine at one point!

I've since upgraded with with a klicky probe, then removed that and went Tap. I'm looking at replacing the Stealthburner with something with better cooling as it's definitely not good enough, even after replacing the fan that came with my LDO kit with an even better fan.

I built mine in about a week while my wife was out of town with a friend, though. :D

I have had a lot of problems getting it to be reliable, though. I've replaced a lot of parts and did a lot of upgrades. I'm finally at a point where the only thing I might "fix" would be to replace the belts because I'm pretty sure they're stretching little by little still, even after months.

That said, it was more "reliable" out of the box than my 2 TronXY printers. It's just that I want it to be less stressful.

I've seriously considered a Bambu because of that, but at this point I think mine is a match for them, so it's only the multi-color capability that has me interested in them now.



>I've seriously considered a Bambu

I've been there, I've told my Ender 3 Pro (plus lots of upgrades) that if it Fs up ONE MORE TIME I'm getting a Bambu. BUT... A friend of mine recently got a Bambu, partly because of my saying this, and he's been having problems with it: the LiDAR is having issues and support is being unsupportive.

In the mean time my E3 has been super reliable and I've finally gotten it really dialed in (only took 4 years). I took a nearly year long side quest, replacing my original Sprite extruder/hot end with a second unit, until I could get the giant clump of plastic removed after a failed print, and apparently that second Sprite shipped with a bad nozzle. I finally happened on replacing the nozzle and things got instantly better.

I've always wanted to build a Voron, but this set of problems tuning my E3 have left me burned out.

On the Bambu front: my buddy wants to print primarily carbon fiber parts, so his use of it is more demanding than what mine would be, but it really gave me pause about my plan of getting a Bambu.


I was never convinced that Tap would be reliable, adding that extra pivot point, felt like it could throw off the accuracy. I stuck with klicky, and auto-z-calibration. My "startup" routine is slow, takes about 10 minutes not including heating things, but I get perfect prints every time.

3D printing is entirely a hobby for me, though I do find I'm able to make practical prints for around the house now I can print ABS, Nylon, ASA, etc; A Bambu would be the exact opposite of what I wanted in a hobby / something to tinker with.

As for multi-colour, I've considered building an Enraged Rabbit Carrot Feeder for (up to 9-colour/material) printing on my Voron; It's relatively inexpensive to build, but I expect it'll require a fair bit of tinkering to get right, and since I only really print functional prints, the colour change is less desirable than material-change for me, so I can combine materials, or use dissolvable supports etc.

In terms of Stealthburner cooling, perhaps we just print different things, but 90% of my ABS prints, I print with the cooling off entirely, or at 10-30%; I've been called insane more than once for it, but it's been great and means I get excellent layer adhesion. I don't do any crazy bridging, usually stick to less than about 2cm, but when I do I've found that cooling to 70-100% has been fine. I swapped out all of the kit supplied fans for higher-quality Delta fans which might have made a difference, but that was mostly for my sanity because of the whining of the cheaper kit fans, and the Voron sits in my home office.


I loved my Klicky when it worked. But when it didn't work, it would fling the klicky head off into the room somewhere while docking. If I only ever printed PLA, it was mostly reliable. But if temps got any hotter, it was practically guaranteed to warp.

I printed everything in ASA for it. And I re-adjusted it so many time. I thought it would eventually stop warping up and down, but it never did.

I think the Tap does indeed make it so one of my axes is noisier, but I don't have to worry about docking, there's no offset for the nozzle, and I don't have to have the z-calibration step for the klicky probe.

I expect them to eventually come up with a better Tap and I'll upgrade then, but I'm happen until that point.

I print almost exclusively PLA, so I need the cooling. ASA would be fine, I'm sure.


That makes a lot of sense. I haven't really bothered printing PLA since moving to the Voron, it prints ABS with such ease, there's not much reason for me to print PLA.

I do still have a stockpile though, so any time I print anything non-functional, or for my children, I use the PLA, which I have in a plethora of colours.

Klicky can certainly be a bit tricky, I've got mine pretty well configured now so that if it does ping off somewhere, everything stops so we don't get the head ramming into the bed or anything. Again, much of that advanced configuration came with the help of the amazing people in the Voron community. I've only destroyed one bed so far, and smashed one Stealthburner mount by ramming it into the endstop from the side (luckily I printed a spare).


Have you taken a look at the https://github.com/viesturz/tapchanger project?


I don't think I had, no. Thanks! I might try to turn one of my older printers into a franken-voron and see if I can make that work.

Edit: Just noticed that I'd already starred it on Github, so I guess I had, but had decided against it. I wonder if it was labeled as in-progress at that point?

Anyhow, seems like it's worth pursuing. Thanks!




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