Fysetc vs LDO Voron 0.1 Kit Differences 2022

This purpose of this article is to touch on the differences between the Voron v0.1 Kits from 2 of the popular companies putting together kits; LDO and Fysetc.

From the Voron developers themselves "The original goal of the VORON project, back in 2015, was to create a no-compromise 3D printer that was fun to assemble and a joy to use. It had to be quiet, clean, pretty, and continue to operate 24 hours a day without requiring constant fiddling. In short, a true home micro-manufacturing machine without a hefty price tag. It took over a year in development, with every part being redesigned, stress tested and optimized. Shortly after the release a vibrant community formed around the project and continues to grow today. This community is part of what makes VORON such a special experience.

What was once a one-person operation has grown into a small tight-knit group of engineers united under a common design ethos. We're dedicated to creating production-quality printers you can assemble in your kitchen. It's this passion and dedication that drive us to push the boundaries just a little further. We build space shuttles with gardening tools so anyone can have a space shuttle of their own."

Both kits are put together by their respective companies following the Bill Of Materials provided by the Voron Developers however all kits are not equal and the quality of parts included in the kits can vary between brands.

The LDO Kit

I built the LDO v0.1 kit first, the kit supplied was the anodized orange variant.

It is the more expensive out of the two kits at $999 and certainly has a premium feel to it.

Everything included was labelled and individually boxed

The matte anodized finish on the frame extrusions is extremely well done and looks beautiful in person.

The LDO kit includes several quality of life items such as:

• threaded bars to replace the 3d printed M2 nut carriers (While not a necessity, it will save you some time during the build)
• a pre-crimped and cut to length harness made of what appears to be teflon coated wires
• an included plastic cable cover for easier and neater cable management

The rails included were LDO's own brand of MGN7 rail. They are stainless steel and after cleaning and greasing they are very smooth with almost no play in the carriage.

Following the Assembly manual the build went together without a problem.

The Bed came with a Genuine Keenovo heater pad pre applied with pre-applied RTV silicone.

The Wiring harness was pre cut to length and pre-crimped. The wiring was straight forward and each part of the harness was labelled and easily identifiable. All wires are PTFE or Teflon coated.

The software installation was straight forward, following the software installation guide in the Voron documentation installing Mainsail and flashing the SKR Mini E3 2.0 was a breeze. One of the benefits of the LDO Kit is the use of the Mini E3 as the documentation and support for this board is easy to find and well laid out. 

A Printer.cfg for this board is supplied in the Voron docs, copying it across onto the Raspberry Pi brought the printer to life. I found that all pinouts were correct except for the fan outputs which were reversed as the hotend fan was controlled by the cooling fan output. I could have fixed this by physically swapping the plugs however swapping the pins between the hotend fan and cooling fan in the printer.cfg file was faster and easier.

After doing the initial checks and setting up the Print_Start Macro in a way that suits my preferences the LDO 0.1 Kit was up and printing

The Fysetc Kit

Next I turned my attention to the Rev 1.1 Fysetc Kit, this is the cheaper of the two kits coming in at $729. The packaging it comes with is quite basic compared to the LDO kit but everything is well padded and securely packed.

A printed wiring diagram for the Fysetc electronics is also included.

Initial assembly of the frame was very much similar to the LDO Kit, the major difference being in place of the threaded bars to mount the linear rails, m2 nuts are inserted in a printed nut carrier. This can be quite fiddly and added some time to the assembly of the frame itself. The second notable difference in this stage of the build is the machine screws provided with the Fysetc appeared to be a softer metal and lower quality than that of the provided LDO machine screws. This wasn't an issue however care did have to be taken so as to not round the heads of the screws when bolting the frame components together tightly. A rounded screw added extra time to my frame construction this time around.

The linear rails appeared to be non branded with a red and green colour scheme, after cleaning thoroughly and applying lubrication they ran smoothly with minimal play in the carriage. 

The bed includes two holes for mounting screws for bed locating/positioning with matching cut outs in the PEI sheet which is a nice quality of life feature to have.

The heater pad did not come pre applied to the bed this time however this is not a difficult job and only adds a few minutes onto the build time.

Now that the frame and bed were fitted it was time to move onto the electronics and software installation.

A few key differences here to note; the Fysetc Cheetah V2.0 board that comes with the kit comes preflashed with klipper. This is extremely handy as the klipper software does not currently have a boot offset for the bootloader to support the STM32F401 chip. This makes installation of klipper to this board quite convoluted and significantly more difficult that the SKR board. I suspect this is why the boards come pre-flashed. If you are in a situation where you need to reflash your Cheetah V2 you can find the instructions on how to do so here.

The rest of the software installation is very much the same as the previous build, the Pi was flashed with mainsail as the UI and while not as readily available as the printer.cfg for the SKR board a working config is provided by Fysetc if you know where to look. You can find it here

While installing the electronics I did note that the motor wires for both the A and B motors apear to be PVC coated vs the Teflon coating on the A and B LDO Motors. This is inconsequential however as once mounted there is no movement in these wires.

Once the wiring was completed and I had a few successful test prints under my belt it was time to run input shaper on both builds. 

The results are as follows

Both printers show comparable results in the test prints before and after input shaper has been run.

Pros and Cons of the Fysetc Kit

Which one should I buy?

After building both kits the LDO kit is definitely the nicer and more finished of the two however the Fysetc Kit has the best bang for buck however.
It's best to weigh up the pros and cons of both kits and see which one is most suitable for you.