I’m looking into getting a new printer, and I’m interested in building my own. I know Voron 2.4 and Trident are the obvious ones to look at. But I can’t help but notice they are both 3+ year old printers. Considering how much the industry has grown in the last few years, it got second guessing if Voron is still the way to go.

How do Voron printers compare to the current state of the art (Prusa CoreOne+, Bambu P2 series, Qidi Plus 4, etc.)? Are there mods that are essential to improving them? Are there other DIY printers I should look at?

Thanks!

  • IMALlama@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    3 hours ago

    2.4 R2 owner chiming in. I built mine about 3 years ago after window shopping for a year.

    Why Voron in 2026?

    • They’re fully open source. This has a couple of benefits such as (basically) guaranteed repairability in the future and super easy modability. Basically all the parts are standard, so you should have no problem sourcing replacements. Want to change something? Download the official CAD and remix
    • Being open source means there’s a huge quantity of official and unofficial mods available, as well as tons and tons and tons (and tons and tons, but I’m getting tired of digging up links) of commercial hard parts if you want to tinker. Yes, commercial printers also have mods available, and even some hard part swaps, but Voron is next level if you like to tinker. Even if you don’t like to tinker, some mods are fantastic from a quality of life perspective and of course there are many many vendors that will sell you kitted parts
    • The printer itself is highly capable in ways that go beyond just being CoreXY. Both the 2.4 and Trident can mechanically get their bed and gantry in plane because they use multiple z-steppers to move the bed (trident) or gantry (2.4) up/down. Bambu’s printers use a single stepper and a belt to connect things
    • Even if you buy a BOM in the box you’ll learn a ton building the printer

    Why not Voron?

    • No official store or kit means you’re going to either rabbit hole who to buy a BOM-in-a-box from or spend a lot of time self sourcing. I personally went with West3D’s configurator
    • You’re building a printer from literal nuts, bolts, linear rails, and extrusions. It’s not a hard build, but it is a long build. If you can put together IKEA furniture you can build a Voron, but it’s going to take 20-40 hours
    • They’re not the budget proposition they once were
    • You’ll spend more time thinking through the build up front (who to buy from, what components to swap, what out of the gate mods, etc). Easy example: want to tune for resonance compensation? Gotta mount/wire up an accelerometer on the toolhead, unless you use one of the many tool-head PCBs that include one
    • Cable chains look dope, but wire breaks are real. They’re easy to repair, but they’re annoying. Granted, you can just go umbilical out the gate. LDO’s Nitehawk SB is dope
    • You want to go even bigger. You can stretch a Voron taller, but Rat Rigs go quite a bit bigger

    Edit: final thought. IMO I do not find myself wanting for “tech” and there’s really not much missing from a Voron out of the gate. Nearly anything a Bambu can do is easily adopted to a Voron if you want to.