The Voron 2.4 is touted as the ultimate general purpose large format 3D printer, and it does much at that. We were very impressed at its speed and print quality, easily climbing to the top of all the FDM printers we have tested while boasting best-in-class automatic bed leveling. The Voron 2.4 is held back from mass market appeal due to its $1,000+ price tag, lack of an easily available kit, and requires expert knowledge to build one.
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The Voron 2 printer was designed to be a large, no-compromise, high-performance CoreXY 3D printer. Combining many of the most advanced 3D printers features in an attractive, enclosed design, the Voron 2 aims to be one of the top-tier 3D printers on the market.
As a community-designed 3D printer, the Voron 2 has received several iterations to improve its usability and ease of assembly since its debut in 2018. The latest version is the Voron 2.4, whose plastic components were designed to reduce plastic usage and improve ease of assembly. In late 2020, several AliExpress vendors produced assembly kits for the Voron 2, making it easier for hobbyists to build their own Voron 2. The Voron design team has made it known that they are in no way affiliated with these vendors and that users should buy at their own risk when purchasing one of these kits that have not been vetted.
In our quest to build our own Voron we took the risk and bought a kit from AliExpress for this in-depth Voron 2.4 3D printer review. We will take a deep dive into its strengths and weaknesses to determine whether its claims of being a top-tier all-purpose 3D printer is true.
The Voron 2 competes against several high-performance CoreXY printers, including the BLV Cube, Railcore IIZL, Raise3D Pro 2 and Ratrig 3. Priced between $1,500-$2,000 depending on where the user sources their components, the Voron 2.4 is on the upper end of high-performance 3D printers aimed at enthusiasts and professionals.
When looking for a great 3D printer, one of the things you need to look out for is the ease of setup. If you’re an experienced 3D printer enthusiast, the Voron 2.4 won’t intimidate you. However, if you are new to 3D printing, this might not be the printer for you. We scored it a 4/10 for setup since it arrives in a fully do-it-yourself kit which requires considerable knowledge of electrical and mechanical components. While the Voron 2.4 comes with a massive and detailed manual, it’s still very intimidating. We also had to find secondary help with assembly, even with the 100-page manual at our disposal.
If you can make it past the assembly and your main priority is print quality, the Voron 2.4 has the best quality printing we’ve seen, hands down. We tested the Voron 2.4 with a Mandalorian figure and calibration cube. The details of both were impeccable, and we saw minimal ghosting due to the anti-ringing feature built into its Klipper firmware.
Already you can tell this printer is fantastic. However, we want to remain picky due to its price and assembly. That said, the next thing you should look for is print speed. Thankfully the Voron 2.4 is incredibly fast at 120mm/s. In our hands-on test, the Voron 2.4 had 0 issues maintaining quality at these ludicrous speeds.
Another factor to take into consideration is noise levels. While you obviously need to ensure you have proper ventilation for your 3D printer, you still want to ensure that the printer isn’t too loud to upset roommates or neighbours. The Voron 2.4 is a relatively quiet machine due to the TMC 2209 silent stepper drivers. When not in use, it makes absolutely no noise. However, when in use, it outputs around 50db of noise. However, if you close the panels and doors and sacrifice ventilation, it drops down to 44db.
Once you have all the basics down, you want to evaluate what unique things the 3D printer brings to the table. The Voron 2.4 has quad gantry leveling which is different from other 3D printers that use automatic bed leveling via software to compensate for unevenly heated beds. Additionally, the Voron 2.4 has a custom 3:1 direct drive extruder which allows for 3 times the pushing force feeding filament into the hotend which makes this printer faster and more reliable.
Learn more about our review methodology.
The Voron 2.4 belongs to the high-performance CoreXY family of 3D printers specializing in high-speed and high-quality FDM prints. These types of printers are known for their reliability, large community support and relatively high costs.
With that said, we decided to put the Voron 2.4 through a gauntlet of test prints, check out its support groups, stress test the printer and much more. To get a better idea of its capabilities, we compared it against many of its competitors like the BLV Cube, Railcore IIZL, RatRig 3 and the Raise3D Pro 2.
The Voron 2.4 is unique in that it uses a flying gantry design where the heated bed is fixed on the bottom of the printer, and the printhead moves in X, Y and Z. This is different from most 3D printers as the heated bed moves in at least one direction.
This is definitely research that you would not want to skip out on. With high-performance 3D printing, you would want to know everything that is out there, especially when looking at the prices some of these printers ask for. Choosing the wrong high-performance printer will lead to poor quality prints, headaches when things go wrong in the setup and a very long bill for replacement parts and cooling. We dove deep into the land of high-performance 3D printers so you can make the right decision on which CoreXY printer you should buy.
Assembling the Printer
The Voron 2.4 arrives as a fully DIY kit which requires extensive knowledge of the mechanical and electrical components of 3D printers. Users are required to fully assemble the kit themselves, and the Voron design team has an extremely large and extensive manual for mechanical, electrical and software installation. Despite the thorough (100+ page) manual, we used several secondary sources to properly install electrical components, such as the mains-powered heated bed. The Voron 2.4 is not recommended for a user’s first 3D printer as they may be overwhelmed by the complexity of assembling the Voron 2.4.
In our assembly of the Aliexpress provided kit, we found that the included solid state relay (SSR) was defective, and we replaced it with a locally sourced SSR. The Voron design team recommends that users locally source the SSR as that is a critical electrical component, and the quality control of the Aliexpress provided kit is unknown. Assembling the Voron 2.4 took us around 25 hours, including software installation.
The Voron 2.4 uses a large number of 3D printed parts using ABS. As it is difficult to print filament, many Voron builders may struggle to print these ABS parts, and the Voron design team has initiated a Print It Forward (PIF) program. The PIF program is a nonprofit initiative by current Voron users to print the ABS parts required for the Voron series of printers and may be reached via their Discord channel. We made use of the PIF program for our Voron 2.4 build and found the community extremely welcoming and willing to help new Voron users.
Leveling the Bed
The Voron 2.4 uses quad gantry leveling to automatically level the printhead to the heated bed. This is done before every print to ensure a perfect first layer every time.
The Voron 2.4 has a large build volume of 350mm (l) x 350mm (w) x 350mm (h). In practice, we found we could use around 320mm of its height.
Its cooling fan was created with ABS and high-temperature filaments in mind. As a result, it has trouble working with the far more common PLA filament that we utilized in our tests. We removed the acrylic side panels and doors to boost air flow in order to thoroughly test the Voron 2.4.
The Voron was put to the test in four important areas: detail resolution, z layer alignment, dimensional accuracy, and print repeatability. In Cura, we utilized the default 0.2mm layer height settings for the testing.
We printed several detailed models, including the typical test model Benchy, a Mandalorian figure, and a calibration cube, to test the Voron’s capacity to resolve details. Out of every 3D printer we tested, the intricacies of the Mandalorian figure, benchy, and calibration cube came out the best. Despite its massive and hefty direct drive extruder, the Voron 2.4 has minimal ringing and ghosting thanks to an anti-ringing technology called input shaper incorporated into its Klipper firmware. However, before this function can yield results, users must fine-tune it. How to tune the input shaper is mentioned in the Voron handbook.
We printed a large 300mm tall tube to evaluate the BLV Cube’s z-layer alignment consistency. If the lead screws on a 3D printer aren’t completely straight, they can cause z to wobble. We couldn’t observe any z artifacts on our 300mm tall tube because the Voron 2.4 has belt-driven z-axis.
We printed a 20mm calibration cube 20 times to see if there were any discrepancies between the multiple cubes to test dimensional accuracy and print consistency. The Voron 2.4 was our most dimensionally exact machine, measuring 20.1mm (l) x 20.1mm (w) for our cube. We also found that there was no significant difference in finish or dimensional accuracy between the first and twentieth calibration cubes, indicating that the Voron is a very consistent 3D printer.
Setting Up Prints
The Voron 2.4 is a community-designed printer and does not come bundled with slicer software like many commercial printers. In 2020, the Voron 2.4 experienced a large surge in popularity, and its community grew exponentially. As a result, there are many community profiles for all the popular slicer programs, and the latest version of Cura has a default profile for Voron 2.4. In our testing, we used the Cura default profile.
Sending files to the Voron 2.4 is incredibly easy as files are transferred wireless via the Raspberry Pi Octoprint interface. Once loaded, users can start, stop and monitor their prints using the Octoprint web interface. The Octoprint interface is intuitive and quite easy to use; however, compared to the web interface of the Duet 2 WiFi, it does not have the same level of aesthetic polish. Additionally, it does not view well on mobile devices as it does not have a mobile version and displays its desktop interface. Plugins are available to make Octoprint more mobile-friendly.
Noise Levels
The Voron 2.4 is a relatively quiet machine thanks to its TMC 2209 silent stepper drivers. When idle, it makes absolutely no noise as its fans only activate when the printer is heating up or in motion. However, when in motion, it is still relatively quiet, outputting around 50db of noise while in motion and with its acrylic panels and doors removed. With the panels and doors in place, the Voron 2.4 drops down to a very quiet 44db of noise, making it among the quietest printers we have tested.
Print Speeds
As a CoreXY 3D printer, the Voron is capable of printing at fast speeds. By default, it prints at a blistering fast 120mm/s. In our tests, the Voron had no issues keeping up with those extremely fast prints and had some of the best quality prints we produced.
With its 3:1 dual drive extruder, it is also capable of printing TPU and other flexibles quickly with a very speedy print speed of 50mm/s.
The Voron 2.4 is a large format 3D printer, with overall dimensions of 520mm (l) x 520mm (w) x 580mm (h), sporting a build volume of 350mm (l) x 350mm (w) x 350mm (h) and weighing in at 20kg. This large machine requires a wide and sturdy table to accommodate its weight. Users may also find they need more than 1 person to help move the 3D printer around.
The build volume of 350mm (l) x 350mm (w) x 350mm (h) is unique to the Voron 2.4 as most other large format printers have a slightly taller and more narrow build volume of 300mm (l) x 300mm (w) x 400mm (h). This allows users to print slightly wider objects at the cost of height. However, this slightly wider build volume has the significant downside of the Voron 2.4 being considerably more expensive to build compared to its more narrow competitors. Many users have claimed that they have built a Voron 2.4 with a smaller 300mm (l) x 300mm (w) x 300mm (h) build volume at half the cost of the larger 350mm (l) x 350mm (w) x 350mm (h) variant.
The Voron 2.4 places a large emphasis on aesthetics as it hides its electronics within the base of the printer, routes all of its cables within a series of cable drag chains and encloses the entire printer in clear and black acrylic. This gives the Voron 2.4 a professional and clean look that is similar to several thousand-dollar professional machines such as the Ultimaker S5 and Raise3D Pro 2 and is unmatched by any of its competitors like the BLV Cube, Railcore IIZL and RatRig 3.
Thermal Runaway Protection
Having the heater lose control and catch fire is one of the most serious problems with 3D printing. Thermal runaway protection is a software function that keeps an eye on the hotend to ensure it doesn’t overheat. This crucial safety feature is enabled on nearly every current 3D printer, and the Voron 2.4 is no exception. If the Voron 2.4 detects a malfunction in the heated bed or hotend, it will turn off the printer, display an error message, and wait for the user to repair and resume it. When the printer’s thermal runaway protection is tripped, the printer’s fan will spin up to full speed to cool any overheating components.
Cable Management
The Voron 2.4 routes all of its cables within 3 cable drag chains located around the printer. Apart from it improving the printer’s clean aesthetics, it also protects the cables and the user due to the cable drag chains removing any chances of cables snagging on moving parts and potentially breaking.
Mains Powered Bed
A mains-powered bed draws power directly from the outlet, allowing for much faster heating of the heated bed. Typically we are wary of such heated beds due to the inherent safety risks of applying either 120V or 220V directly on a surface that a user can touch. To safely implement a mains-powered heated bed, the bed itself must be grounded to a metal frame or ground terminal within the power supply unit. We are happy to report that the kit we have received contains all the necessary components to do so. Additionally, our kit includes a thermal fuse that detects if the heated bed heats past 110C, it will immediately cut power as a safety precaution.
Full Enclosure
The Voron 2.4 comes with several acrylic panels to fully enclose the 3D printer. This allows users to print filaments that require an enclosure, gives the Voron 2.4 a clean and professional look, reduces noise output and protects the user from touching hot or moving components of the 3D printer.
Finding Replacement Parts
The Voron 2.4 was designed with easy-to-source parts in mind. As a result, all of its major electrical and mechanical components are easy to find from major 3D printer retailers such as Matterhackers, Digitmakers and Spool3D. It was also designed to be sourced from major marketplaces such as Amazon and Aliexpress.
Accessing the Control Board
The Voron 2.4 has all of its electronics mounted on the machine’s base. Accessing the control board and all of the Voron’s electronics just requires the removal of 4 screws to remove the base panel, revealing all of its components. Due to the large base size, there is a huge amount of room to navigate around the control board, making it easy to replace components.
Quad Gantry Leveling
The flagship feature of the Voron 2 series and what draws users to this 3D printer is its quad gantry leveling ability. Using 4 stepper motors located on each corner, the printer physically aligns itself to the heated bed to ensure it is properly leveled. This differs from an automatic bed leveling from most other printers, as those printers use software to compensate for an unevenly heated bed. Users would see the most benefit over very large and wide prints as a physically leveled bed would yield smoother and flat bottom layers over software levelled beds.
Out of all printers we have seen and used, only the Railcore and the RatRig 3 features a similar leveling system by physically moving the bed to be level with the printhead.
Fully Enclosed Print Area
Many high-performance filaments such as ABS, nylon and polycarbonate require a fully enclosed area due to their plastics requiring a warm environment to print properly without warping and possibly detaching from the print bed. The Voron 2.4 features removable acrylic panels and doors to insulate the build volume and provide hard-to-print filaments with a warm environment for printing.
Flexible Removable Build Plate
A flexible spring steel construction plate with textured PEI on one side and smooth PEI on the other comes standard with the Voron 2.4 kit. The flexible spring steel plate makes removing finished 3D prints a breeze; users merely need to flex the construction plate slightly, and the prints pop right off. PEI is a good print surface in general, allowing prints to stick well to it when heated.
This flexible spring steel construction plate has a smooth and textured PEI surface that works well with various filament types. Smooth PEI is most commonly used for PLA, ABS, nylon, and polycarbonate filaments since it has the best print adherence. PETG and TPU are not suggested since their strong adhesion may damage the build plate. Smooth PEI prints have a smooth and glossy surface on the bottom of the prints.
Because it provides significantly less adhesion, the textured PEI side is excellent for PETG and TPU filaments. The bottom of prints made with the textured PEI has a slightly rough and matte appearance.
3:1 Direct Drive Extruder
A unique 3:1 direct twin drive extruder is included with the Voron 2.4. When compared to a normal single gear extruder, a 3:1 drive gear ratio extruder has three times the pushing force (torque) feeding filament into the hotend. This enables the Voron 2.4 to print extremely quickly and consistently. The Voron 2.4 can also print flexible filaments like TPU significantly faster than bowden drive printers thanks to the direct drive extruder.
Hotend Made Entirely of Metal
The hotend of most consumer 3D printers is lined with polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). Because the plastic degrades quickly and generates poisonous gases at higher temperatures, PTFE hotends limit the printing temperature to roughly 245-250°C. Printers with a PTFE hotend are unable to print with more exotic materials like as polycarbonate and nylon due to their inability to print at higher temperatures. The Voron 2.4 has an all-metal hotend that readily reaches the 280°C needed to print exotic materials like nylon and polycarbonate.
Wireless Connectivity with Octoprint
The Voron 2.4 is equipped with a Raspberry Pi microcomputer with Octoprint web server installed. Users will find this extremely convenient as 3D prints can be loaded, started and monitored completely remotely via a web browser. Additionally, Octoprint’s functionality can be expanded by using plugins created by the 3D printing community. Features such as camera support or 3D print failure detection can be quickly and easily added to the Voron 2.4 if the user desires.
Belted Z Axis
Almost every 3D printer uses lead screws to move the printer up and down on the z-axis. It is an accurate, reliable and inexpensive feature. However, for proper movement, lead screws must be perfectly straight, or it will introduce print artifacts known as z-wobble. The Voron 2.4 avoids this issue by using belts instead of lead screws to move the printer up and down.
TMC 2209 Silent Stepper Drivers
The Voron 2.4 features TMC 2209 silent stepper drivers on all its stepper motors. This allows the Voron to be very quiet when in motion.
As of 2020, the Voron community has experienced a large surge in popularity. In particular, its Discord server is extremely popular and active. Users are highly encouraged to join the Voron discord server for solutions, mods and upgrades. However, users will find an active Facebook and Reddit subreddit for other sources of community support.
The Voron 2.4 is a top performer in our tests. It produced some of the best 3D pints at an extremely fast 120mm/s and was incredibly easy to use thanks to its automatic quad gantry level and Octoprint web interface. However, it is an extremely expensive printer with kits between $1500-2000. Similarly, specced 3D printers such as the BLV cube and Ratrig3 can be found for much less. Additionally, unlike other community-designed 3D printers, the Voron 2.4 was not designed with mods in mind, and some users may not like the rigidity of a single specced machine.
For us, due to its print quality, reliability, ease of use and speed, the Voron 2.4 is our favourite FDM printer. We would wholeheartedly recommend it to 3D printer enthusiasts who are in the market for a high-performance DIY 3D printer.
Disclaimer
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Sources
1. VoronDesign.com, “Voron Design” Accessed July 26, 2022.
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