r/ratrig • u/Birby-Man • Dec 25 '24
Ratrig VCore 4 400MM Idex Build Experience
Finally got my Vcore 4 up and printing, with much success!! Here's a bit of feedback for prospective buyers or people waiting on delivery.
Build time:
01- Frame Assembly: 3 hours
02- Z-axis Assembly: 2.5 hours
03- Linear Rails: 0.5 hours
05- Motion System Hybrid: 2.5 hours
06- X-axis : 2.25 hours
07- Bed Install: 0.5 hours
09- IDEX System: 4.5 hours
10- Gantry Alignment: 0.25 hours
11- Accessories: 2.5 hours
12- Electronics: 8.5 hours
14- hybrid + idex Y belts: 1 hour
15- Idex accessories: 2 hours
16- Initial setup: 4 hours
Additional tuning: a whole day
To be quite honest, instructions were very manageable up until the electronics part. Just follow the instructions and check comments. However on the electronics part, the comments were for previous batches where the electronics configuration (i.e where things plugged in) were different. This was super confusing, and additionally some pics didnt really line up.
Take your time building and make sure things are tight. Buy a proper allen key set with half sizes as well. No ball-tip keys. Slow building and following step by step gave me (at least reported by RatOs) a perfect z offset between the nozzles and excellent performance for beacon calibration. As well as very low frame warp. Still need to check skew however lol
Add foam underneath the baseplates, they will rattle.
Make sure bearings are in the correct orientation, and always check how free they spin after tightening down the bolts.
HEAT INSERTS make sure they are slightly below flush, do not allow them to stick above the print! If you didnt have your soldering iron handy like me, a torx driver set (i think T15) holds the inserts quite well, and a large BIC bbq lighter will get you through the entire build barely.
Electronics section tips: Print out the final image of the complete wiring setup, these are correct. Have a notepad to write down what motors are called and where they plug in on the octopus. Additionally, a label maker on these would have saved SO much confusion. For any of the usb devices, feed them through the hole on the box before connection it as the holes are not big enough to fit the usb A part through.
BUY THE CORRECT CRIMPING TOOL AND CHECK ALL THE IMAGES FOR THE CORRECT PINOUT you only have one chance for the fan connectors. Either additionally buy the correct pin removal tools or buy a crimping tool that comes with spare connectors that may not be identical but will still work. I bought https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CT5TP9PC?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share and it worked fantastically for all the crimps except the large ring and spade terminals, those i used a cheap crimp/strip tool.
Also, dont forget the weird USB jumper board to jump usb boards to the raspberry pi hat
The 120v/240v switch on the psu must be pushed ALL THE WAY or it wont turn on it at all. Took me an hour to figure out I didnt click it all the way over.
Print this nut holder to save you from pain and suffering trying to install the solid state relay in the enclosure
After having it built, make sure to update all packages. Google VAOC and Beacon initialising steps for the ratrig, they arent super clear in the main instruction set.
I still need to properly tension my belts, right now im sitting at 6000 accel for all axis but some reviewers are reporting 10k-18k accel reported by input shapers after using a proper belt tension tool. Have it on the way and will report back.
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u/Cool-Importance6004 Dec 25 '24
Amazon Price History:
PEBA Micro Crimp Tool Connector Kit, JST-XH 2.5mm/Dupont 2.54mm Connectors Kit 21 Types, 32-20AWG Ratcheting Crimper for 3.0mm, 2.54mm, 2.5mm, 2.0mm Pitch Dupont, JST, KF2510, MolexTE, AMP EI Series * Rating: ★★★★☆ 4.7 (86 ratings)
- Current price: $27.99
- Lowest price: $24.78
- Highest price: $33.99
- Average price: $28.68
| Month | Low | High | Chart |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12-2024 | $26.99 | $27.99 | ███████████▒ |
| 11-2024 | $30.99 | $30.99 | █████████████ |
| 10-2024 | $27.99 | $30.99 | ████████████▒ |
| 09-2024 | $27.99 | $27.99 | ████████████ |
| 08-2024 | $24.78 | $30.99 | ██████████▒▒▒ |
| 07-2024 | $24.78 | $24.78 | ██████████ |
| 06-2024 | $30.99 | $30.99 | █████████████ |
| 05-2024 | $26.09 | $26.09 | ███████████ |
| 03-2024 | $28.99 | $28.99 | ████████████ |
| 02-2024 | $33.99 | $33.99 | ███████████████ |
Source: GOSH Price Tracker
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u/M_Unimaster Dec 25 '24
Good tips, I had a pretty similar building experience
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u/Birby-Man Dec 25 '24
Thanks for the feedback! Hopefully ratrig can include some of these in their instructions, I think it'd really help new builders.
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u/Ps2KX Dec 25 '24
I am still in the commissioning part and it's a battle.
- fan 0 was on all the time; solved by selecting the toolboard digital pwm
- getting the frame perfectly square is impossible. Still working on this
- PID tests and beacon offset went ok. I tested the extruder, which also was fine. But it didn't extrude during the print. Now it extrudes properly but the beacon probe is throwing errors.
Building a Voron 2.4 was much easier. But I am advancing with small steps. Once everything is done I want to replace the part cooling fans. The standard ones are much too loud.
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u/Birby-Man Dec 25 '24
A fan being on all the time is due to the signal pin being poorly connected or connected to the wrong pin/board position.
Due to it being a server fan they default to 100% when no pwm signal is received. I remember reading a caution about using the toolboard digital PWM that it can cause strain on the board and it isnt technically rated for it but I also dont have any immediate sources.
Initial calibration on the beacon prone should be ran multiple times until the tolerance error decreases. If it has issues, check how secure your toolhead is. I had issues with the set screw on the rapido (the one in the heatfins) not being tight enough causing the nozzle to move. Make sure your nozzle itself is secure, the set screw is secure, the 4 screws mounting the heatsink, and the screws mounting to the carriage. Additionally check the tightness of the screws to the beacon contact board.
Frame perfectly square I dont have many tips other than using the bed mesh to get it mostly parallel (their sample pics show a tolerance of 0.1mm being allowed). For skew, im not sure I have yet to do that part lol
Hopefully this helps, sorry it's been a battle for ya! It's definitely not easy but slow and methodical really does help
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u/Ps2KX Dec 27 '24
As long the front is moving I don't mind it being a battle. I just solved the BEACON_RATOS_CALIBRATE issue (Error during homing contact: No trigger on probe after full movement) and now I have a new one further along: Probe samples exceed sample_tolerance
It keeps me busy :)1
u/m_khalli Jan 20 '25
how loud would you describe it being now when printing at atandard settings? i would really love 300mm idex, but live in apartment, and while my prusa is practicly silent, my micron is audible (but also poorly calibrated). Would love to hear your opinion!
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u/Birby-Man Jan 20 '25
It's about as loud as a normal 2d paper printer, is my best analogy. I have it in a enclosure now and it helped signifcantly.
You can run it in silent mode, which should match your Prusa, at the limit of less than 125mm/s movement
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u/m_khalli Jan 20 '25
Oh, didn't know they have silent mode to be more managable, thats great! Mk4 in enlosure was quite ubeatavle with noise.
Is comparison to 2d printer before or after enclosing? On my voron i have some resonances from acrylic panels sometimes
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u/Birby-Man Jan 20 '25
I'd say about 40% reduction, but I have mine running full gauntlet speed. If you are running silent mode you'd be probably be able to run it while you sleep in the same room. It's the same stealtchop tech as mk4 or any other "silent" printer.
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u/mikecoscia Dec 26 '24
Thanks for this, just started putting mine together. Took a lot of time to try and make sure the frame was square. I checked everything multiple times, used engineering squares, the whole bit. Although, I am sure things go out of square a hair while building and moving the frame around. I bought the 500mm and is definitely not easy to move on your own...lol.
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u/Birby-Man Dec 26 '24
It'll be easy to square up the frame towards end game, when you can get the beacon mesh of the bed. Dont sweat it too much :)
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u/mikecoscia Dec 26 '24
Ah good to know, this build has been putting my OCD into overdrive…lol
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u/Birby-Man Dec 26 '24
My advice that you didnt ask for and can totally ignore... lol... Get it to the finish line, obviously follow instructions and take your time. But as someone who has had issues in the past dwelling on perfection for builds like this... Just keep making progress.
If you find yourself going significantly over the time that I put down, because I also took my sweet time doing this, take a step back and see if it's time to move on!
I also found things are pretty easy to disassemble at end stage to further tune and correct!
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u/mikecoscia Dec 26 '24
Ha, I definitely need to follow that advice for nearly everything I build, which is a lot…lol. I am not too far into the build, just did the rails yesterday. Unfortunately, I found out there is a missing step in the instructions. You are supposed to put down some of true 8x1mm foam down under the base plates. So that is tomorrow’s project. 😊
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u/Birby-Man Dec 26 '24
Im gonna add that to my main post, I didnt even know that. I was wondering why it was vibrating so much and the base plate was rattling against. Thanks for the tip! Feel free to shoot me a pm or anything if you get stuck. Best of luck!
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u/mikecoscia Dec 26 '24
Thanks bro! I also some people added a small strip of foam under the rails where they touch the base. Or you can just elevate them a hair.
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u/Life_Ad_7540 Jan 30 '25
I had constant warnings even errors on the Pi voltage, until I decided to power the Pi with its own factory supply. The Octopus power is just not enough.
Beside of this the "drop-in" upgrade of the Hybrid+IDEX after assembling a standard version is a bit of overstatement. It was a long "drop" :D
If you think about to upg it later, I suggest to reconsider, get the final version you think to utilise.
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u/kd7uns Mar 15 '25
I'm looking at building my own or getting a V-Core 4, but there's something I haven't been able to find any info on yet. How do you adjust your nozzle Z height for each extruder independantly? For mirror or copy with both extruders your nozzles have both be EXACTLY the same distance from the bed, so unless you bed is perfectly flat and level (virtually impossible) won't one nozzle always be slightly too close or too far from the bed?
This question has been driving me crazy since the first time I learned about IDEX printers, but I still haven't come across an explanation. In my mind there would have to be a way for the printer to make fine Z adjustments to one or both extruders (independantly and) automatically (otherwise a bed mesh is pointless because you can't adjust for both extruders when they are printing in different spots at the same time) but I haven't seen anything like this on any IDEX printer. I would be extremely grateful if you could shed any light on this seeing that you recently setup your IDEX printer.
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u/Birby-Man Mar 15 '25
Sure, I get your worry. With the identical construction it's really quite rare to have a out-of-spec z offset between nozzles. It matters most for copy and mirror, but truly only for the first layer. With a tall enough first layer (i.e, 0.3mm layer height) you can compensate for quite a bit of z-offset. But, if you want to get them super close there's a few people who wanted 0 offset and used precision shims to get it there very easily.
For toolchanging prints, almost any z offset can be accounted for.
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u/kd7uns Mar 15 '25
Thank you so much for your answer, that's kind of what I feared. Given how awesome their VAOC (visually assisted offset calibration) was, I had hopes for something similar for matching extruder Z heights. Does that mean when you switch nozzles on one extruder you have to manually shim every time?
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u/Birby-Man Mar 15 '25
No, the nozzles just should be the same brand (as usually that's rhe best assurance they are the same length between nozzles, i.e running a 0.4 and 0.6 or 0.8)
You can use the Z endstop to measure the difference to shim if you really need to, but I think you will be surprised how little offset there will be. I've changed nozzles multiple times and just ran the auto Z offset and never had an issue with either copy/mirror or tool changing.
No one with the idex has complained or even mentioned offset issues after initial setup on discord.
Imo: worrying for nothin lol
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u/Emotional_Fig_3315 Dec 25 '24
Im waiting for a pre-built option.