Let's build a VORON Trident
Let's build a VORON: Major failure
After 600 hours, the printer met it’s first major failure. I know I earlier described how the extruder starter skipping in a big way, but that was just some filament getting stuck in the extruder. This time a part physically broke down.
What happened was that the rod on one of the Z-motors started to grind down the POM nut that holds up the bed:
It did this so much that the threads got ground down, making the bed fall down.
The POM nuts are considered expendable items, but a failure after only 600 hours “shouldn’t happen”. But here we are.
Potential issues
I’ve tried asking around, and I’ve rounded up a couple of potential culprits:
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Tightening the nuts holding the POM too hard.
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A gap between the motor mount and the front extrusion.
I found is a gap between the motor mount and the front extrusion. This should mean that the rod would be tilting backwards at a slight angle, which might mean that the rod would catch against the nut more in that direction, increasing the attrition on the nut.
The theory meshes well with the unevenly ground threads, especially since I mostly print things at a similar Z-height (as you can see in the first photo where the rod has collected a lot of flakes).
The threads aren’t ground down evenly. One side is almost completely flat, while the threads are clearly visible on the other.
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I used the wrong grease for the rods (POM is self-lubricating, maybe I don’t even need grease?).
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Dust/dirt stuck in the nut or on the leadscrew.
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An issue with the LDO kit.
Someone in the VORON Discord said that this is a well-known problem with LDO Trident kits (sigh, I chose the expensive option to avoid problems like these…).
The Z-motor I have is LDO-42STH40-1684CL300T. I don’t know what kind of POM nut I have (it’s black and it came with the LDO kit…)
Solutions/workarounds
I don’t know the actual cause of this, but I’ve done my best to address the potential issues described above. I’ve loosened the nuts on the POM nut a bit, I’ve adjusted the motor mount, and I’ve tried to clean the leadscrews (with a toothpick of all things). In the future I’ll try to avoid the grease as well.
I complained to 3DJake where I bought the kit, and they’re sending me a replacement leadscrew including a POM nut. It’s shipping from China so the wait is very long. In the meantime I bought a few replacement leadscrew nuts (TR8*4, not the TR8*2).
Replacing the nuts weren’t that hard, but I hope it’ll take more than 600 hours until the next major issue.
(I’ve already started seeing dust on the leadscrew… I’ll probably replace it when the replacement arrives and hope it’ll get better.)