Usually, when we analyze a printer or device, we try to be as impartial as possible, but on occasions like today, when we have to do it with a Ratrig V-Minion machine, the little heart pulls us a little.
A few months ago we presented you the one that from our point of view and compared to other similar machines is currently the best CoreXY, in DIY format or do it yourself, the V-Core3. We show you the vision of Ratrig in small-volume single-arm 3D printers.
We remind you again, although in this case due to the size and simplicity of its chassis/kinematics it is considerably reduced, this type of DIY machine does not come assembled, so we advise you to plan the assembly well, something that Ratrig makes relatively easy with the available documentation.
Remember, as always, that we have a large community on our Telegram channel and a specific channel for Ratrig in Spanish.
The Ratrig V-Minion has an apparent similarity to the Prusa Mini due to its general design, although apart from that they have little else in common due to their robust chassis and kinematics system, multipurpose extrusion systems, or the freedom/versatility/power of the Klipper system who handles it.
Some of its most notable features:
You can find the kits to make your V-Minion from the Ratrig website where we basically have two kits:
Ratrig also provides the BOM (list of materials to buy) with everything necessary to assemble the machine ourselves.
As we have already mentioned, one of the advantages of Ratrig is that we can choose between different alternatives to mount our V-Minion:
In our case, since our maker spirit asks us to do so, we chose the mechanical kit together with the source and the excellent Keenovo heater. Below we list all the components that we have used:
Kit | Mecánico V-Minion Ratrig |
Electronics | Bigtreetech SKR Mini v3 Amazon/Aliexpress Raspberry Pi 4 |
Extrusor/Hotend | Orbiter v2.0 Phaetus Rapido |
Stepper Motors | Longruner 1.8º 2.0A |
Bed heater | Keenovo 24v 180W |
Leveling sensor | SuperPINDA |
Firmware | RatOS |
Filament for printed parts | Fiberlogy e-PETG Verde Transparente Fiberlogy e-PETG Vertigo Transparente |
If this is your first DIY printer we warn you that setting up these types of printers can be a bit laborious but Ratrig has done a great job with step-by-step documentation of the assembly.
On the other hand, this V-Minion is quite simple to assemble and in 4-6 hours depending on your knowledge, skill and planning when assembling.
Before starting with the assembly we must have the basic kit of printed parts that you can find in its repository or by downloading the following ZIP in the event that we do not choose the full kit where these are already printed.
In the case of the electronic box, you also have the CAD files available to be able to use a CNC to cut them yourself or order them cut.
Access to 3D design is also very interesting to be able to work on it if we want to make our mods.
From Ratrig we suggest the following configurations to print these pieces we would advise you to make them in PETG, ASA or ABS . In our case, we decided on the use of ePETG from Fiberlogy in Translucent Green and Vertigo, which, apart from giving it great rigidity, looks great on the printer.
Setting | Configuation |
---|---|
Perimeters | 4 x 0.45 mm |
Layer height | 0.2 – 0.3 mm |
Infill | Gyroid 10% / Rectilineal 25% |
Supports | Are not usually needed |
If we get any of the Ratrig kits we will have everything necessary to assemble the mechanical part which, together with the assembly documentation and the labeling that includes the screws, greatly simplify the assembly process.
A good tip is to print the help pieces in the assembly of the machine which will allow us, for example, to correctly center the linear guides or the adjustment of the rod … you can find these help pieces here
On the other hand, you also have an installation video of the V3D companion that can also be of help.
As a summary of the process:
The printer assembly is done!!!
Once the mechanical part is finished we can start assembling the electronics, in this case we will start by assembling the box specially designed by Ratrig for our V-Minion.
As we have already mentioned, in our case we have opted for some mods and the electronics box was one of them since, although it works relatively well, it is one of the components that can be improved in both design and functionality.
We chose this box model to which we applied some redesign since it improved the original in various aspects, such as allowing installation under our V-Minion, more space and modularity for our electrical components, better ventilation system, etc…
The full kit includes one SKR 2 and we leave you below the wiring diagram for this electronics. Although we also have direct support for the Octopus 1.1 although it seems to us that, this machine, is like killing flies with cannon fire.
This time we opted for the use of a SKR-Mini v3 that seems to us to be electronics more adjusted to a machine like the V-Minion and that it is relatively cheaper than the SKR 2. Another electronic that can go very well is the SKR Pico especially thought for machines that use Klipper.
As we already told you at the beginning of this guide, RatOS is a distribution of Ratrig for Raspberry Pi that includes in its image all the components and configurations for Ratrig machines, although this does not mean that we can use RatOS for other machines.
We are not going to go into much detail explaining what Klipper is or how it works, but we would like to point out that it is an extremely versatile and powerful firmware, although on the other hand, it requires a certain learning curve.
Klipper basically consists of three basic components on which others can be integrated to extend the system.
Rat OS includes Klipper, Moonraker, Mainsail and KlipperScreen with which having the environment is quite simple, although we also advise you to install Kiauh as you can see later.
Klipper uses a host to run, usually a Raspberry Pi, which is the brain of the system and directly controls the electronics of our printer, which becomes a simple motor and sensor manager.
On the one hand, this forces us to have two or more electronics, we say two or more because Klipper is modular and we can control several electronics simultaneously, either to control one printer or several through Klipper instances, but on the other hand, it gives us incredible power and versatility.
To prepare our Pi we will start by preparing our SD (8GB or larger) with the Ratrig RatOS that you can download the image in its Github RatOS repository and burn it in our SD following these simple steps:
sudo raspi-config
:Now that we have the base of our Klipper firmware installed, we are going to start with its initial/basic configuration:
We already have the machine ready to continue with the important initial adjustments to be made before starting with the calibration steps.
The PID adjustment is an important point to perform during start-up and whenever we modify any part/component related to the heating system of our machine.
The process is very simple and it is done very quickly, so we have no excuse to do it whenever we see abnormal fluctuations in temperature:
PID_CALIBRATE
command from the terminal, for example:PID _ CALIBRATE HEATER=extruder TARGET=200
SAVE_CONFIG
so that our PID configuration is saved in our printer.cfg .PID _ CALIBRATE HEATER=heater_bed TARGET=60
SAVE_CONFIG
so that it is saved in our printer.cfg It is important to verify that our motors are going in the right direction, for this we have two ways to verify it:
If we find that the movement is not in the correct direction we should check dir_pin within the PRINTER CONFIGURATION section of our printer.cfg and add or remove ! at the beginning of the pin definition
// Example of an X-axis inverted its direction
[stepper_x]
dir_pin: !x_dir_pin # Add ! in front of pin name to reverse X stepper direction
We can check the status of our endstops from our UI in the MACHINE tab where we will see an ENDSTOP STATE section .
You can also perform the process using console commands, you have more information here.
For the Z endstop we will use a leveling sensor in the process, apart from verifying the correct activation and logic of the endstop in the previous point, and we can use two processes to obtain the z-offset:
RatOS comes with some predefined macros that we can call directly from our slicer, which allows us centrally from Klipper to manage the start, end, or other gcodes that interest us.
We can find the START_ PRINT and END_ PRINT macros in config/printers/v-minion/macros.cfg. In any case, depending on our slicer, we will have to make some adjustments:
Start GCode
M190 S0 ; Prevents prusaslicer from prepending m190 to the gcode ruining our macro
M109 S0 ; Prevents prusaslicer from prepending m109 to the gcode ruining our macro
START_PRINT EXTRUDER_TEMP=[first_layer_temperature] BED_TEMP=[first_layer_bed_temperature]
End GCode
END_PRINT
Start GCode
START_PRINT EXTRUDER_TEMP=[first_layer_temperature] BED_TEMP=[first_layer_bed_temperature]
End GCode
END_PRINT
Start GCode
START_PRINT EXTRUDER_TEMP={material_print_temperature} BED_TEMP={material_bed_temperature}
End GCode
END_PRINT
Start GCode
START_PRINT EXTRUDER_TEMP={temperature_extruder1} BED_TEMP={temperature_heatbed}
End GCode
END_PRINT
Start GCode
START_PRINT EXTRUDER_TEMP=[extruder0_temperature] BED_TEMP=[bed0_temperature]
End GCode
END_PRINT
End GCode
END_PRINT
End GCode
END_PRINT
End GCode
END_PRINT
We already have the basic settings of our V-Minion ready, in any case, and in order to make it perfect, we advise you to make the following fine/advanced settings:
The Ratrig V-Minion, as a good DIY machine, has a large number of mods to improve it. Although we have already been indicating some of them, we have been compiling them in our Printables collection .
In any case, we list the ones that we apply to our machine that, although they are not strictly necessary, do give it a unique touch and some improvements:
The Ratrig V-Minion has a compact but very robust design that for a printer of the size and type, together with the Klipper system, will allow us a degree of quality and speed in our prints above the rest of similar printers on the market.
Thanks again to the great work of Ratrig with its documentation, and support videos, RatOS and its community growing every day have made the assembly and use of this little beast of a printer quite easy .
During the time we have been using it, both our test unit and others previously assembled, we can tell you that it has given us great quality and reliability in our prints .
We show you some test pieces that have been made with hardly any fine adjustments on the machine using the profile provided by our laminates with speeds between 100-140mm/s, which in any case we advise you to do following our calibration guide.
The Ratrig V-Minion is a sensational, powerful, robust and very fast machine within the size/kinematic range, so we could say that this is a “premium” quality/price printer.
Although Ratrig have had some past issues with the quality and availability of some components we know they have worked hard to resolve them. The success of their machines coupled with the current context of component availability has created the “perfect storm” in some cases.
The effort in documentation, as well as with its RatOS, help make the set a printer despite its size, highly recommended if you want to seriously learn in the 3D world with a compact, powerful machine at an affordable price.
And that’s all, we hope as always that our article Ratrig V-Minion: Analysis, guide and configuration of this great little DiY beast has been to your liking.
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Ver comentarios
V-Minion is, somehow, the Better Pr*s* mini. Well, much better. Why join the prusa cult when you can get so much better?
Hi Arty,
If we discard the V-Minion and Prusa Mini are both 3D printers and have similar kinematics the rest is slightly different as explained on the review.
Why to choose one or another? Basically depends on user, their knowledge in 3D printing and their level to manage/configure 3D printers.
About specifications V-Minion is more powerful than Mini but in the other side Prusa Mini is the most similar in 3D printing as a paper printer, as an example of easy and simple machine management with low level of knowledge, and you have a really good support service from Prusa... And this is why basically depending on user one printer will be more or less perfect for their usage.