Voron V0.1 - Blurolls Kit - My Experience

Voron 3D printers are not meant for beginners! That doesn't mean you need to be an engineer to build them, but you need to have some experience and knowledge with building 3D printers and eletrconics in general. Don't expect these kits to be as straigt forward as a Prusa Kit or similar!

A lot of people in the community tell you to stay away from these kits and source all the parts yourself. However I did not want to source all the parts by myself and decided to give one of the kits a try. If some of the parts seem low quality I can still replace them with better parts. At the moment of writing this project I could only find one kit for the V0.1 which was actually available, which is the Blurolls kit. I picked the version with the high flow dragon hotend.

According to the listing on aliexpress they are using high quality parts - like LDO motors, genuine meanwell power supply, Mic6 cast aluminum bed and supposedly even Hiwin linear rails. At the moment I can't tell if all of these things are actually true, but I will do some more research about them.

Unfortunately there were problems with the availability of LDO motors. I was given two options:

• use the motors of the V0 and get an upgrade for the hotend (however I already picked the upgraded hotend and I wanted the more powerful motors of the V0.1)
• wait a couple of weeks until the motors are available

On request they agreed to a third option - shipping the kit directly without the motors and ship the motors as soon as they are available. This way I can already get started with the build and install the motors as soon as they are available.

Once the package was shipped, it arrived within just one week in germany. A few small dents in the cardboard, but overall everything seems in tact.

Everything inside is packed quite, well nothing is flying around. I attached a bunch of pictures so you can see for yourself.

• the parts arrived in a bunch of small boxes and bags.
• small items like the screws are also labeled so you can easily find the right ones
• the power supply looks like a genuine meanwell power supply to me
• the linear rails have Hiwin engraved on them - but I'm not sure if that's a reliable way to verify their authenticity :D
• the bed looks really nice with the black coating, but I have no idea if it's actually Mic6.
• the heating pad seems to be a noname product (not from keenovo) but they also never claimed that
• the aluminum extrusions seem to have all the holes predilled and tapped
• the PCB for the small OLED screen has some flux residue on it, but this can easily be cleaned
• the segments of the cable chain can not be opened, but I am not sure if there even are such small cable chains that can be opened?
• the panel parts are wrapped together and still have their protective film on them - I will check later if there are any scratches

That's it for now. I will update the instructable along the way.

The project also involves a lot of 3D printed parts. Actually I was quite surprised how many 3D printed parts fit in such a small 3D printer.

All of the parts should be printed in ABS or ASA. While ASA is a bit more expensive than ABS, it is also a bit easier to print, since it warps less. So I went with black and white ASA for my build.

Some of the 3D prints you can see here are not the original voron files, I used some mods and modified some of the parts myself.

While the Voron V0.1 is a small 3D printer and it might seem less complex than some other Voron printers, it actually is quite tricky to build - because it is so small. Make sure to follow the instructions and don't skip any steps. Especially when it comes to installing the M3 nuts in the aluminum extrusion - if you forget these, you might need to disassemble quite a bit to be able to install them afterwards. Also I would highly recommend to use the 3D printed nut holders from the printer mods.

During the assembly I noticed that the quality of the screws in the kit was inconsistent. While most of the screws were fine, sometimes the hex-cutouts on the head were slightly too large and would strip when I tried to tighten them with an allen wrench. I even had some screws with no threads at all. But there were a few extras for all of the screws, so this wasn't a big issue.

This part will probably be intimidating to a lot of people and overall I would not recommend a beginner to build a Voron 3D printer!

The kit I bought came with all the connectors, pins and some silicone wires. But you still have to create your own wiring harness and crimp the pins yourself. This step also requires several tools (wire strippers, crimp tools etc) which are not included in the kit! Make sure to do your research and take your time when wiring everything up.

One thing that was missing in the kit were cables for the mains-wiring and also some ring/fork terminals for the PSU and the 5V converter.

During the wiring I noticed that I received the wrong control board. The kit was supposed to come with the SKR Mini E3 V2.0, but I received the SKR Mini E3 V1.2. While these boards are mostly the same, the version I received is missing a fan header and therefor I won't be able to control the hotend fan - it will always be on 100%. Also the firmware for the V2.0 from the website won't work on the V1.2 since the pinout is slightly different.

Here are some modifications I did to the printer, which are not part of the kit and you don't need them. I just added them for a cleaner aesthetics and some more features.

Instead of routing all the wires from the printhead directly to he control board, I created my own PCBs to only have a single 12 pin connection/wire on the printhead. In my opinion it looks a bit cleaner and also makes it a lot easier if you want to swap out some components (fans, heater etc) because you don't have to undo the entire wiring harness - instead you can just unplug it diretly on the printhead PCB. There is already a similar PCB available in the mod section made by timmit99 with a 14 pin connector. I used the original design and modified it to my needs and got rid of two of the pins to have less wires going to the printhead. This was the first time for me to do a wire with individually sleeved cables and it was a really tedious process to get it perfect. But the result was worth it to me.

I also added the klipper expander (also designed by timmit99) which allows you to have some more inputs and outputs. these can be used to control some more fans, lights, connect more temperature sensors etc.

I used the klipper expander to control some custom LED lights, connect a temperature sensor inside the chamber and will later on add some more controllable fans.

Installing the firmware and configuring everything ... this was probably the step I had most of the trouble.

As mentioned before, I received the wrong control board (SKR Mini E3 V1.2 instead of the V2.0). Not only is this board missing a fan header, which means that the hotend fan is always running at 100% (even if the hotend is cold) this also meant that the config file is not compatible with the board I received. After reaching out to Blurolls, they told me they also don't have a working config file for the printer with this control board.

This meant that I had to check the pinout for both boards and check every single pin and modify the config file to make sure I don't accidentally have something misconfigured, which could cause some problems.

But the problems didn't stop there, no matter what I tried, I frequently lost the USB connection from the Raspberry Pi to the Control Board. I reinstalled the firmware several times, I tried different USB cables and much more. I reached out to Blurolls a few more times, but nothing really helped. At some point they asked me for my e-mail address to send me a new firmware, but I never received an e-mail back from them.

After some more trial and error I bought a new control board which fixed the problem. So it seems like there was something wrong with the USB connection on the board I originally received. My response to Blurolls that the control board I received seemingly was damaged was ignored.

My overall conclusion about building a Voron V0.1:
I have a background as a mechatronics engineer, so building mechanical assemblies, working with electronics and setting up the firmware etc. are part of my job. If you don't have any experience with these topics or never built a 3D printer before, I would probably not recommend you to start with a Voron 3D printer. Even though the manual is well done, the manual also expects certain basic knowledge regarding the above mentioned topics - especially when it comes to the wiring.

Overall it was an interesting experience and fun to build an entire 3D printer and understand how everything works together. But of course it was also frustrating a lot of times, because you will run into a few problems every now an then while building and setting up the printer.

Once everything is done, it seems like a really reliable printer so far. But to be honest, I am still not finished, there are always some details that can be improved and expanded.

One thing I did not like about the design of the printer is the use of VHB tape in many places. I redesigned some of the parts to screw things into place instead of glueing them into place. I redesigned the hinges so they could be screwed to the acrylic pieces and I made some new mounts for the Raspberry Pi, SKR Mini etc. to mount them directly to the frame which also allows me to slightly adjust their position. Other than that it is a well designed printer and lots of the parts serve multiple purposes.

I might build another Voron printer in the future, but for now, there are some other projects I will be working on.

My conclusion regarding the blurolls kit:

My experience with the kit are mostly positive, but there were also some problems. If you buy such a kit, you should always expect that you have to replace some of the parts.

Summary of the problems I had:

• inconsistent quality of the screws
• I received the wrong control board which is missing a fan header to control the hotend fan
• I had to modify the config file, since the control board I received is not compatible and the seller was not able to provide me with a matching config file
• the USB connection on the control board I received was damaged and I had to buy a new one myself

In the beginning they were really helpfull and agreed to send two separate parcels so I could start the build while the motors were not available. In the end I think they were a bit anoyed by my messages regarding all the problem I had with the control board.

Other than that my experience with the kit was good and most of the parts seem high quality.

Would I buy a kit again? Probably yes. Simply because I don't want to deal with sourcing every single part on my own. If I have to replace some of the parts, I'm okay with that.

Unfortunately the kits won't always contain the same parts! Some things might improve over time, some parts might be swapped out for cheaper alternatives over time. I saw someone else actually received the right control board - so it might have only been the first batch were the old model was used. So my experience might vary from your experience.