I’m looking to expand my printer lineup, and have been looking at kits from magic phoenix for both the Voron Trident and the v2.4R2.
Is there any real benefit to one over the other, or is it more a preference thing?
Edit: if anyone know of other kits, preferably available in the EU, I would also like to take a look at those.
Looked into this myself, here’s a brief summary of my thoughts:
V2 has the flying gantry, Trident has the moving base. Primary difference is that since the base (i.e., print surface) is physically secured and rigid to the frame, bed meshes and other alignments should be more consistent. In other words, run a mesh once (or a few times for each of different bed temperatures) and never need to create the mesh again. All else being equal, the flying gantry is a more idealized option since the base in contact with the print is stationary, so very little force is ever seen by the model itself (short of small x and y forces while printing).
Now the trade off is the significantly added complexity of 4 independent z-motors supporting the gantry. In addition, this requires a gantry alignment macro each time the motors are powered off/on since the gantry sags asymmetrically if the motors aren’t locked (requiring power).
I have built a V2.4 and found it great, but I don’t know if I personally have found it worth it to have the fixed bed and additional motors. It’s nice to say I did, and it works, but if I needed to make another, I would absolutely go Trident. Cheaper and simpler, and it’s not an ideal world so many of the supposed benefits don’t really make a big difference.
The weird thing is, the trident kit from magic phoenix is almost $100 more expensive than the V2.4 kit.
Automatic levelling of the gantry with a macro wouldn’t be a dealbreaker for me, as long as it will give me consistent results without manual adjustments every time.
One thing this overlooks is that the rigid mounted bed of the V2 causes thermal expansion issues. There’s a lot of really bad lore that gets repeated in the community re: bed heater power because the V2 tends to want to taco the bed if it’s heated too quickly.
The WhoppingOrchard kinematic mounts are a solid option for addressing the issue.
I went with the v2.4. Why?
- Build volume. I often ran out of space on my 200mm^3 I3 clone and I wanted the largest build area possible. You can also more easily push Z if you want to by adding a top hat and longer rails
- No worrying about bent lead screws, etc
- Easier/simpler bed fans for chamber heating, although there are designs that work on trident
- A little bit of aesthetics if we’re being honest. That flying gantry looks good IMO
Quad gantry level is very easy to set up. I’ve never bothered with a bed mesh and, now that I have a better put together stealthburner, only need to fiddle with my z-offset when I change material.
3 steppers for z vs 4 isn’t a big deal, but there are a few more parts to install and you’ll have to make sure your a/b belts are on the correct side of your z belts. I didn’t find the mechanical build particularly hard.
In theory, the V2 can print a little faster, due to the low center of gravity on the first layers.
However, the fixed gantry height on the Trident makes it possible to install a fixed part cooling, a lighter print head and go even faster.
I’m a little bit in favour of the Trident. Mostly due to a simpler construction, I would assume there are fewer things I can mess up.
The Trident is the overall better design with a higher performance ceiling.
Flying gantries are a solution forever in search of a problem. They can work okay and they’re fine at the speeds that were common when the V2 was first designed, but there’s a reason why the community has converged on fixed gantry designs. They’re neat to watch operate but they don’t offer any practical advantage. The V2 tends to be relatively slow by modern standards, especially in terms of accel.
The Trident isn’t without flaws but it’s a perfectly fine starting point and the huge community does mean that most of the bigger design issues either already have a usermod or somebody working on cooking something up.
