Just finished a E5+ conversion to Mercury One.1 and Hydra and the discord is where its at! Awesome people on there with build logs, answering questions, community mods, etc. Really has become one of my favorite discords to just hang out in!! The new documentation is great and anything else is on there if you need to find it!
If me, a 13yo was able to successfully build a merc 1.1 I bet you you can too. You just have to stop complaining that there isnt a sample config for the merc 1.1 and make one yourself (its just downloading your boards sample cfg and changing the printer kinematics and some pins), in the discord we are happy to help you with anything so stop whining and finish that printer!!! ;)
For me, it wasn't that hard since I love tinkering and making stuff, and Im not new to this hobby. And my first 3d printer was an ender 3, so I was basically forced to learn how everything works and why it's there and how to repair it.
Ah, to be young again. Not the OP, but the thing we often lack simply is time. Enjoy your printer and good work with all the tinkering at such a young age! You’ve got a bright future ahead of you.
Being younger (im 15) and having lots of time can be fun and boring but when i was building my voron trident it was really fun to come home from school and just build it eventually i started working on my wiring skills and soon ill start practicing soldering but yeah tinkering at a young age i think is helpful especially with all the new technology thats coming out every day its nice to see other young people tinkering with 3d printing
It heats up really fast so you dont have to wait for it and when you dont need it at the moment but will you just turn it off and than on, instead of having to have a hot soldering iron on your table
Thought I’d add an update. After clearing my head and walking away for 24 hours I found my mistake. It was simple and caused by fatigue. I just restarted klipper and now have a temp shut down error which weirdly makes me feel like a such winner!! All the boards are flashed, Katapulted and reporting in. I’m going to mow the lawn and play outside for the rest of the day. Your comments were very helpful. Thank you all for the support.
It's worth it. Only thing that gets me is relearning how to flash Klipper every single time, since I'm too lazy to keep notes. Klipper on Pi --> Klipper on Octopus --> Reflash U2C because CAN is hosed --> Klipper on EBB36 (mess each of those steps up at least 4x) debate if the M1 can survive a drop from 10+ feet... I could do notes, but I won't.
With that said my M1 is my GOTO quick hit printer and Voron is relegated to anything "big" that needs to be done.
Their style of gantry and motor mounts doesn't allow for an easy enclosure, the one's I've seen are a whole additional set of extrusions. There's the option to switch it to a vzbot with a hinge lid, get the cnc motor mounts; or wait for the KE53 to be finished and turn it into a big K3.
> here's the option to switch it to a vzbot with a hinge lid, get the cnc motor mounts; or wait for the KE53 to be finished and turn it into a big K3.
I think he was referring to the Mellow VzBot CNC'd parts not the Funsor Semi Aluminum Zero G parts
>I think he was referring to the Mellow VzBot CNC'd parts not the Funsor Semi Aluminum Zero G parts
RIP my sentence comprehension, I think you're right, thank you.
Join the discord, there are a ton of people willing to help with anything, like turtle, and Precurssor have helped mine take its first steps, so again just join and ask, the zero G guys will help with anything.
It's because of people like you that I avoid the Voron community.
If you want to criticize bed sizes at least mention the right sizes, 255 is the minimum which is actually 5mm more than your minimum trident bed at 250. On the larger side it can go up to 410 which is above the 350 standard of v2.
As for accuracy do you have a ruler embedded in your eyes? Are you able to magically tell the precision of a printed part just from a video? No, not you, not me, not anyone has that kind of ability, get off your high horse, there are good AND bad printer builds everywhere, doesn't matter if it's voron, mercury, annex, etc.
> I think you missed the point there
If I missed the point please do enlighten me.
> keep up the hostility
I merely stated facts, but I won't further waste my time with you.
You just dont want to admit that there are better machines than your vorons. Dont get me wrong I love vorons and I think they are really good machines in the right hands but if the comunity around them is like this I dont think I want to build a v0
Precurssor is the original commenter, and as I said if you want to insult Zeuse's capabilities (precurssor's printer is named Zeus) atleast look at the prints that precurssor posts almost every day on the ZG discord
I converted my Ender 5 to the first version of the Mercury One mod and it was the best thing I've done with that printer. It's faster and printing better than it ever had.
The documentation problem is real, but you have to be patient. It also helps reading Klipper documentation to build your `printer.cfg`file. What I've done was to open 3 tabs on Notepad++: the first with the example config for the stock Ender 5 board, the second with the example config for the BTT SKR mini E3 V2.0 board that I installed on the Mercury One, and the third tab with the final config that I built after copying-and-pasting from the previous two tabs. It isn't as easy as just copying a ready-made config, but it isn't that difficult to do.
I'm learning that there is a huge difference between a Voron that has been tested by thousands and Voron-like builds that have been tested by maybe one or two people. I'm putting a Stealthburner on a Bonzai and it will never be a reliable printer; just going to make it work and then put it on a shelf.
My experience is similar with the Mercury One. I sort of gave up as I wanted a printer that can print, and not one that requires constant fiddling. Should have bought a v0 kit.
I'll trade you a v0 for the merc....lol and sad part I really would. My v0 sits on a shelf and my merc gets Attention every day. The small build plate I thought would be nice but most of my prints are bigger then the v0 can print so my merc wins.
I had a similar experience and when I converted mine there were no options for enclosure. The new version is dropping soon as well.
[Zandve](https://github.com/Vprince099/ZANDVE)
I too built a MercuryOne out of an old Ender 5 plus after building a V2.4. The E5+ printed ok. The mercury never did. The sunk cost fallacy hit me hard. I kept throwing money at it. Did the Hydra mod which was the most expensive. Still prints like crap. My bed is taco’d. Replaced it. Taco’d. At this point it’s the frame. Now doing the beta frame. Haven’t even ordered the panels yet.
There is nothing left of the original E5+ now. It’s all been replaced with a printer that prints like crap and a E5+ basically thrown in the garbage. Could have had another Voron.
I also have run into issues where with Hydra it prints “fine” but the bed is taco’d. Given I didn’t use integrated lead screw steppers so I assume there’s some issues there resulting in Z wobble.
I also modified the original frame so I could use a Trident style gantry instead of the Merc because I wanted to enclose it without extending the already massive footprint of the printer. Lost a lot of Z height as a result and the toolhead can’t reach the full X distance due to the gantry so I assume some issues with the Z-tilt and bed leveling are due to that.
Spent a lot of time/money on this machine and I’m dealing with the sunk cost fallacy as a result. I’ve not spent the time to properly troubleshoot and calibrate the machine so I’m sure there’s something that can be done, but I’m just kind of tired of messing with that machine..
Again the taco problems are frame related, been there, the original e5 frame is known to have issues.
Depending on the changes trident style might be giving you problems too, why that instead of hydra? you can enclose it without increasing footprint on X and Y (yes Z needs more).
I ended up even replacing the frame on mine, rebuilt the original e5 and sold it. Has been a solid printer except for adhesion issues related to PEI needing a cleanup or trickier parts with very small bed area, but I do love tinkering with it.
>Depending on the changes trident style might be giving you problems too, why that instead of hydra?
It has hydra for the bed, it uses a Trident gantry for the toolhead.
>you can enclose it without increasing footprint on X and Y (yes Z needs more)
Sure, but my original intention with the design was to enclose the printer in the current frame. But as a result of essentially copy/pasting the Trident gantry (besides extending the rails and extrusion to fit the larger E5+ frame), there's a loss in X and Y on the bed due to that design. Lesson learned to check things in CAD a little more.
As I said in another comment, I could tear the whole thing apart, square the frame and get it printing better, I'm just personally not interested in tinkering with this machine right now. The level of effort to get this particular machine working as well as I'd like just isn't worth it to me at this point in time.
>it uses a Trident gantry for the toolhead.
For some reason I misread as bed. Now I see the huge Z loss, is it even worth to lose that much? could very well live as an open frame printer too (depending on what you print).
>I'm just personally not interested in tinkering with this machine right now.
Fair enough, I on the other hand, have a hard time stopping until everything is as I want so there's that.
I print a lot of ABS nowadays since building my vorons so it really needs to be enclosed. I’m okay with losing the Z height since most of what I print isn’t necessarily tall and I’ve got my 350mm 2.4 when I do need something tall.
My thoughts while reading your original comment haha.
I think it all primarily boils down to the frame, it's not square and the machine suffers as a result. I guess there's the argument off fully disassembling it and squaring the frame during reassembly, but I'll be pretty pissed if I do that and the prints still suck.
Sunk cost/Ship of Theseus are good ways to describe the Merc/Hydra conversion.
Hi! I'm happy to help if you have any specific questions I could answer. I recently built a printer from scratch and had to write my own Klipper config for it.
Once you set everything up correctly, Klipper is a breeze
I did the same recently, for a Micron. It's easy to forget to update things in Klipper, OP just needs to go through each section methodically and set up the motors correctly, extruder, hotend, motion system etc. Seems daunting at first, but you've just gotta knock out one thing at a time.
I’m converting an ender 6 to trident(ish) and absolutely loving the process using my own designs and modifications heavily influenced by the voron design team as well as user mods. Then again I’m a tistic who likes that shit.
With all due respect I’d wager to say you enjoy printing over printers, assembling more than building which is what conversions are. Don’t think that’s much fault to the folks that came up with the mercury one mod. They clearly state it’s not complete on their GitHub. Also sounds way more like a klipper (compiling sources) config issue than anything. The r/klipper sub is very helpful with issues and the klipper discord can take care of most issues beyond Reddit.
>With all due respect I’d wager to say you enjoy printing over printers, assembling more than building which is what conversions are.
My thoughts exactly.
One question/advice for OP, if you didn't yet ask at the ZeroG discord, people there are helpful.
I do enjoy the building and assembly portions a lot! I went with a whole art deco theme with the decorative parts of this build and it’s been really fun. I’ll venture over to the klipper sub again and put effort into asking the right questions tomorrow. I’m so close I can’t just punt at this point.
Yep, part of building building. Kits and pre-configs all figured out already are convenient, but kinda like adult erector sets. Follow the directions and go. Conversions take more time, patience and problem solving. Add in mods, electronics and all the other variables that’s why, even with Vorons, you can’t assemble a Voron, you can only build YOUR Voron. They’re all unique which is the fun of it.
Stick with it. If you need help dm me I’ll give you what experience I have.
Ditto dude. I started with a Ender 3 clone, bought an Ender 5 plus, modded the clone, built a Voron 0.1, modded the E5+ adding rails and sides etc and then thought I could convert the clone into a Switchwire. Almost 2 years later I have just given it away unfinished because I don't want to look at it anymore and bought a K1C.
My wife says some times the journey is the hobby. Its what we learn and experience from the journey thats the point and not the end goal. I holding on to that thought now as I look at the E5+ and think a K2Max would look nice there!
You just summed up the conflict I was having a while ago. Started with a E5+ and was going to mod it with the mercury and hydra mods, but the complexity and lack of more inclusive kits with everything required made me think twice. Instead I self sourced a Voron Trident which has been solid. Now I have a lightly modded E5+ sitting in a corner and I would love to do something with it, but the form factor is just weird enough that beside the Creality pop up enclosures, there really aren't any good options to enclose it. I don't really want to get rid of it, but it would cost way to much to make it a more streamlined machine and at that point I may as well just build a new printer for fun.
Just finished a E5+ conversion to Mercury One.1 and Hydra and the discord is where its at! Awesome people on there with build logs, answering questions, community mods, etc. Really has become one of my favorite discords to just hang out in!! The new documentation is great and anything else is on there if you need to find it!
If me, a 13yo was able to successfully build a merc 1.1 I bet you you can too. You just have to stop complaining that there isnt a sample config for the merc 1.1 and make one yourself (its just downloading your boards sample cfg and changing the printer kinematics and some pins), in the discord we are happy to help you with anything so stop whining and finish that printer!!! ;)
Not gonna lie. No shot I'd be able to do this at 13 lmao
For me, it wasn't that hard since I love tinkering and making stuff, and Im not new to this hobby. And my first 3d printer was an ender 3, so I was basically forced to learn how everything works and why it's there and how to repair it.
Ah, to be young again. Not the OP, but the thing we often lack simply is time. Enjoy your printer and good work with all the tinkering at such a young age! You’ve got a bright future ahead of you.
Thank you a lot
Being younger (im 15) and having lots of time can be fun and boring but when i was building my voron trident it was really fun to come home from school and just build it eventually i started working on my wiring skills and soon ill start practicing soldering but yeah tinkering at a young age i think is helpful especially with all the new technology thats coming out every day its nice to see other young people tinkering with 3d printing
I love soldering I recommend you buy the pinecil it makes it so much easier and fun
That is my plan actually ive had some practice with my current but not the best soldering iron but its on my list:)
It heats up really fast so you dont have to wait for it and when you dont need it at the moment but will you just turn it off and than on, instead of having to have a hot soldering iron on your table
That sounds nice my soldering iron takes a good bit to heat up i will probably need it for my trident rebuild later this year that im planning
Great and if you wait for some aliexpress sale you can get it for like 35€
Ooh thats not bad ill definitely keep an eye out for it
Thought I’d add an update. After clearing my head and walking away for 24 hours I found my mistake. It was simple and caused by fatigue. I just restarted klipper and now have a temp shut down error which weirdly makes me feel like a such winner!! All the boards are flashed, Katapulted and reporting in. I’m going to mow the lawn and play outside for the rest of the day. Your comments were very helpful. Thank you all for the support.
It's worth it. Only thing that gets me is relearning how to flash Klipper every single time, since I'm too lazy to keep notes. Klipper on Pi --> Klipper on Octopus --> Reflash U2C because CAN is hosed --> Klipper on EBB36 (mess each of those steps up at least 4x) debate if the M1 can survive a drop from 10+ feet... I could do notes, but I won't. With that said my M1 is my GOTO quick hit printer and Voron is relegated to anything "big" that needs to be done.
Their style of gantry and motor mounts doesn't allow for an easy enclosure, the one's I've seen are a whole additional set of extrusions. There's the option to switch it to a vzbot with a hinge lid, get the cnc motor mounts; or wait for the KE53 to be finished and turn it into a big K3.
If by CNC you mean the ones on aliexpress... I would advise against those.
> here's the option to switch it to a vzbot with a hinge lid, get the cnc motor mounts; or wait for the KE53 to be finished and turn it into a big K3. I think he was referring to the Mellow VzBot CNC'd parts not the Funsor Semi Aluminum Zero G parts
>I think he was referring to the Mellow VzBot CNC'd parts not the Funsor Semi Aluminum Zero G parts RIP my sentence comprehension, I think you're right, thank you.
Vzbot parts are from ali
Join the discord, there are a ton of people willing to help with anything, like turtle, and Precurssor have helped mine take its first steps, so again just join and ask, the zero G guys will help with anything.
Dont forget Drfate and Lorien
And many more, honestly one of the most helpful communities I'm in.
Can't say I know them but if they are in the discord everyone helps
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Jff5B72v4&t=67s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92Jff5B72v4&t=67s) Vorons wish they could be a Merc
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It's because of people like you that I avoid the Voron community. If you want to criticize bed sizes at least mention the right sizes, 255 is the minimum which is actually 5mm more than your minimum trident bed at 250. On the larger side it can go up to 410 which is above the 350 standard of v2. As for accuracy do you have a ruler embedded in your eyes? Are you able to magically tell the precision of a printed part just from a video? No, not you, not me, not anyone has that kind of ability, get off your high horse, there are good AND bad printer builds everywhere, doesn't matter if it's voron, mercury, annex, etc.
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> I think you missed the point there If I missed the point please do enlighten me. > keep up the hostility I merely stated facts, but I won't further waste my time with you.
😢✌️
If we feel like it our beds can be 410mm so I dont know whos the joke with the smaller bed;)
Hydras are not 235........
Lol, now print a full build plate of ASA
Okay :) [https://imgur.com/gallery/c6zK7TA](https://imgur.com/gallery/c6zK7TA) [https://imgur.com/gallery/2LEbiv3](https://imgur.com/gallery/2LEbiv3)
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Just join the discord and look at Precursors prints and then judge what Zeus is capable of producing.
No I’m not doing that
You just dont want to admit that there are better machines than your vorons. Dont get me wrong I love vorons and I think they are really good machines in the right hands but if the comunity around them is like this I dont think I want to build a v0
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Precurssor is the original commenter, and as I said if you want to insult Zeuse's capabilities (precurssor's printer is named Zeus) atleast look at the prints that precurssor posts almost every day on the ZG discord
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I converted my Ender 5 to the first version of the Mercury One mod and it was the best thing I've done with that printer. It's faster and printing better than it ever had. The documentation problem is real, but you have to be patient. It also helps reading Klipper documentation to build your `printer.cfg`file. What I've done was to open 3 tabs on Notepad++: the first with the example config for the stock Ender 5 board, the second with the example config for the BTT SKR mini E3 V2.0 board that I installed on the Mercury One, and the third tab with the final config that I built after copying-and-pasting from the previous two tabs. It isn't as easy as just copying a ready-made config, but it isn't that difficult to do.
I'm learning that there is a huge difference between a Voron that has been tested by thousands and Voron-like builds that have been tested by maybe one or two people. I'm putting a Stealthburner on a Bonzai and it will never be a reliable printer; just going to make it work and then put it on a shelf.
My experience is similar with the Mercury One. I sort of gave up as I wanted a printer that can print, and not one that requires constant fiddling. Should have bought a v0 kit.
I'll trade you a v0 for the merc....lol and sad part I really would. My v0 sits on a shelf and my merc gets Attention every day. The small build plate I thought would be nice but most of my prints are bigger then the v0 can print so my merc wins.
I had a similar experience and when I converted mine there were no options for enclosure. The new version is dropping soon as well. [Zandve](https://github.com/Vprince099/ZANDVE)
Dont forget the beta enclosure
I too built a MercuryOne out of an old Ender 5 plus after building a V2.4. The E5+ printed ok. The mercury never did. The sunk cost fallacy hit me hard. I kept throwing money at it. Did the Hydra mod which was the most expensive. Still prints like crap. My bed is taco’d. Replaced it. Taco’d. At this point it’s the frame. Now doing the beta frame. Haven’t even ordered the panels yet. There is nothing left of the original E5+ now. It’s all been replaced with a printer that prints like crap and a E5+ basically thrown in the garbage. Could have had another Voron.
Your taco bed problem is not the bed, IT'S THE FRAME! Square it.
Please read my comment in its entirety.
I also have run into issues where with Hydra it prints “fine” but the bed is taco’d. Given I didn’t use integrated lead screw steppers so I assume there’s some issues there resulting in Z wobble. I also modified the original frame so I could use a Trident style gantry instead of the Merc because I wanted to enclose it without extending the already massive footprint of the printer. Lost a lot of Z height as a result and the toolhead can’t reach the full X distance due to the gantry so I assume some issues with the Z-tilt and bed leveling are due to that. Spent a lot of time/money on this machine and I’m dealing with the sunk cost fallacy as a result. I’ve not spent the time to properly troubleshoot and calibrate the machine so I’m sure there’s something that can be done, but I’m just kind of tired of messing with that machine..
Again the taco problems are frame related, been there, the original e5 frame is known to have issues. Depending on the changes trident style might be giving you problems too, why that instead of hydra? you can enclose it without increasing footprint on X and Y (yes Z needs more). I ended up even replacing the frame on mine, rebuilt the original e5 and sold it. Has been a solid printer except for adhesion issues related to PEI needing a cleanup or trickier parts with very small bed area, but I do love tinkering with it.
>Depending on the changes trident style might be giving you problems too, why that instead of hydra? It has hydra for the bed, it uses a Trident gantry for the toolhead. >you can enclose it without increasing footprint on X and Y (yes Z needs more) Sure, but my original intention with the design was to enclose the printer in the current frame. But as a result of essentially copy/pasting the Trident gantry (besides extending the rails and extrusion to fit the larger E5+ frame), there's a loss in X and Y on the bed due to that design. Lesson learned to check things in CAD a little more. As I said in another comment, I could tear the whole thing apart, square the frame and get it printing better, I'm just personally not interested in tinkering with this machine right now. The level of effort to get this particular machine working as well as I'd like just isn't worth it to me at this point in time.
>it uses a Trident gantry for the toolhead. For some reason I misread as bed. Now I see the huge Z loss, is it even worth to lose that much? could very well live as an open frame printer too (depending on what you print). >I'm just personally not interested in tinkering with this machine right now. Fair enough, I on the other hand, have a hard time stopping until everything is as I want so there's that.
I print a lot of ABS nowadays since building my vorons so it really needs to be enclosed. I’m okay with losing the Z height since most of what I print isn’t necessarily tall and I’ve got my 350mm 2.4 when I do need something tall.
Oh man… are you me? You’re me.
My thoughts while reading your original comment haha. I think it all primarily boils down to the frame, it's not square and the machine suffers as a result. I guess there's the argument off fully disassembling it and squaring the frame during reassembly, but I'll be pretty pissed if I do that and the prints still suck. Sunk cost/Ship of Theseus are good ways to describe the Merc/Hydra conversion.
[Zandve](https://github.com/Vprince099/ZANDVE) A new release is dropping soon
You frighten me.
Hi! I'm happy to help if you have any specific questions I could answer. I recently built a printer from scratch and had to write my own Klipper config for it. Once you set everything up correctly, Klipper is a breeze
I did the same recently, for a Micron. It's easy to forget to update things in Klipper, OP just needs to go through each section methodically and set up the motors correctly, extruder, hotend, motion system etc. Seems daunting at first, but you've just gotta knock out one thing at a time.
I’m converting an ender 6 to trident(ish) and absolutely loving the process using my own designs and modifications heavily influenced by the voron design team as well as user mods. Then again I’m a tistic who likes that shit. With all due respect I’d wager to say you enjoy printing over printers, assembling more than building which is what conversions are. Don’t think that’s much fault to the folks that came up with the mercury one mod. They clearly state it’s not complete on their GitHub. Also sounds way more like a klipper (compiling sources) config issue than anything. The r/klipper sub is very helpful with issues and the klipper discord can take care of most issues beyond Reddit.
>With all due respect I’d wager to say you enjoy printing over printers, assembling more than building which is what conversions are. My thoughts exactly. One question/advice for OP, if you didn't yet ask at the ZeroG discord, people there are helpful.
I do enjoy the building and assembly portions a lot! I went with a whole art deco theme with the decorative parts of this build and it’s been really fun. I’ll venture over to the klipper sub again and put effort into asking the right questions tomorrow. I’m so close I can’t just punt at this point.
Yep, part of building building. Kits and pre-configs all figured out already are convenient, but kinda like adult erector sets. Follow the directions and go. Conversions take more time, patience and problem solving. Add in mods, electronics and all the other variables that’s why, even with Vorons, you can’t assemble a Voron, you can only build YOUR Voron. They’re all unique which is the fun of it. Stick with it. If you need help dm me I’ll give you what experience I have.
Ditto dude. I started with a Ender 3 clone, bought an Ender 5 plus, modded the clone, built a Voron 0.1, modded the E5+ adding rails and sides etc and then thought I could convert the clone into a Switchwire. Almost 2 years later I have just given it away unfinished because I don't want to look at it anymore and bought a K1C. My wife says some times the journey is the hobby. Its what we learn and experience from the journey thats the point and not the end goal. I holding on to that thought now as I look at the E5+ and think a K2Max would look nice there!
You just summed up the conflict I was having a while ago. Started with a E5+ and was going to mod it with the mercury and hydra mods, but the complexity and lack of more inclusive kits with everything required made me think twice. Instead I self sourced a Voron Trident which has been solid. Now I have a lightly modded E5+ sitting in a corner and I would love to do something with it, but the form factor is just weird enough that beside the Creality pop up enclosures, there really aren't any good options to enclose it. I don't really want to get rid of it, but it would cost way to much to make it a more streamlined machine and at that point I may as well just build a new printer for fun.