Voron 2.4
If the Bambu is a walled garden with one open gate, the Voron 2.4 is the opposite machine: open all the way down, and there is no front door — you build it yourself. It is the community benchmark for what a fully open desktop printer looks like, and the clearest expression of everything this site scores for.
The Voron 2.4 is the most open machine we score: free GPLv3 hardware, standard STM32 control boards, Klipper as the native firmware, any open slicer, and an ecosystem built entirely from commodity parts you can buy anywhere. The catch is that it is a design, not a product — there are no assembled units. You self-source the parts or buy a third-party kit, then build and tune it yourself over a weekend or three. Do that, and you own every layer of the stack. If you want to switch a printer on and walk away, buy something else; if you want to understand your printer, this is the one.
What it is
The Voron 2.4 is an enclosed CoreXY FDM printer designed by Voron Design, a non-profit, community-run open-hardware project. Its signature trick is the flying gantry: the build plate stays still while the entire X/Y gantry lifts and lowers on four belted, independently-motored Z axes. Those four motors let the machine perform quad gantry levelling — the firmware tramming the gantry parallel to the bed in software before every print, rather than relying on you to fettle it mechanically.
It comes in three standard build volumes — 250 × 250 × 250 mm, 300 × 300 × 300 mm and 350 × 350 × 350 mm — all fully enclosed for a stable, heated chamber that makes engineering materials like ABS, ASA and polycarbonate practical. The current revision is the 2.4 R2. Crucially, Voron Design does not sell printers. It publishes the design; you either self-source every part from the bill of materials or buy a kit from a third-party vendor (LDO, Formbot, Fysetc and others), and then you assemble it. The reward for that effort is a machine with no proprietary anything in it.
Openness
This is the section the Voron exists to win. On every line of our scorecard it is open — not "open with caveats", but open as a first principle.
- Firmware — open by design. The Voron runs Klipper, and the whole machine is conceived around it. Input shaping, pressure advance, quad gantry levelling and the printer's configuration all live in a plain-text
printer.cfgyou own and edit. There is no signed, vendor-controlled firmware standing between you and the machine. - Mainboard — standard and documented. Vorons are built on commodity 32-bit control boards — the BigTreeTech Octopus and Spider are the common choices, paired with a Raspberry Pi (or equivalent SBC) running the Klipper host. These are documented STM32-class boards that the whole Klipper community targets, so you can swap, repair or upgrade the electronics without asking anyone's permission.
- Klipper — first-class. Where the Bambu treats Klipper as unsupported and the Ender 3 V2 treats it as a popular mod, the Voron treats it as the point. It is the native control stack, and the printer's reputation for speed and print quality is inseparable from it.
- Slicer — completely free. Nothing about the Voron ties you to a slicer. OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer and SuperSlicer are all common; the community shares tuned profiles for each. No vendor account, no walled slicing path.
- Ecosystem — GPLv3 and fully repairable. The design is licensed under GPLv3, so the hardware, configs and documentation are free to study, modify and redistribute. Every part is a commodity component — extrusions, rails, a standard hotend, off-the-shelf electronics — so repairs and upgrades come from any supplier, not a single vendor's spares desk.
Read fairly, the Voron is the reference point against which "open" is measured on this site. There is no gate to find because there is no wall — the trade-off lives entirely in the build effort, not in the freedom.
AI tooling
Out of the box, the Voron 2.4 has no built-in AI features — no factory camera, no spaghetti detection, no first-layer scanning. That is honest to its nature: it is a design, not a finished appliance, so AI tooling is something you add rather than something you are sold.
The upside is that because the machine runs the open Klipper stack with Moonraker and a web UI like Mainsail, it drops straight into the open AI-monitoring ecosystem. Add a camera (typically through the Crowsnest service that ships with the stack) and you can run Obico — the open-source, community-built successor to The Spaghetti Detective — for AI-based print-failure detection that can alert you or pause a doomed print. It is genuinely capable, but it is bring-your-own and self-hosted (or via Obico's cloud), not a turnkey feature. You assemble the AI layer the same way you assemble the printer: from open parts, on your terms.
Where it wins
- Total openness. Firmware, board, control stack, slicer and parts are all open or commodity. Nothing about the machine is locked, signed or vendor-only. This is its whole reason to exist.
- Print quality and speed. The rigid CoreXY frame, linear rails and Klipper tuning produce fast, clean output that competes with machines costing far more — once it is dialled in.
- Engineering materials. The enclosed, heated chamber makes ABS, ASA and polycarbonate genuinely practical, not a fight.
- Quad gantry levelling. Four-motor Z means the gantry trams itself in software every print — a mechanically clever answer to a problem cheaper printers leave to you.
- You own the knowledge. Building one teaches you the whole machine, so when something breaks you can actually fix it. The documentation and community are first-rate.
Where it's locked down
Nothing about the Voron is locked down — so for this machine the honest downsides are about effort and support, not freedom.
- You have to build it. There are no assembled units. Expect many hours of careful assembly, wiring and calibration; this is a project, not a purchase.
- Self-sourcing is real work. A full self-source means buying dozens of parts from multiple suppliers against a bill of materials. Kits ease this but cost more, and quality varies by vendor.
- No single support line. Your "support" is the documentation and the community Discord. That community is excellent — but there is no vendor to call when a print fails at 2am.
- Tuning is on you. The speed and quality are achievable, not automatic. You earn them through input-shaping runs, profile tuning and iteration.
- Higher up-front cost than a budget printer. A well-built 2.4 lands well above an entry machine like the Ender 3 V2 — you pay for the openness in money and time both.
Who it's for
Makers and engineers who want to own their machine — every layer of it — and who treat the build as part of the appeal rather than a tax. If you value open firmware, standard electronics, commodity parts and a printer you fully understand, nothing on our scorecard beats the Voron 2.4. If you want fast, dependable output with no assembly and a vendor to lean on, the Voron is the wrong machine and the Bambu Lab P1 or the open-but-assembled Prusa Core One will serve you better. The Voron is the benchmark this site measures openness against — bought with weekends, not just money.
Specs & links
- Build volumes: 250 × 250 × 250 mm, 300 × 300 × 300 mm or 350 × 350 × 350 mm; current revision 2.4 R2.
- Kinematics: enclosed CoreXY with a flying gantry on four belted Z motors; quad gantry levelling in software.
- Firmware: Klipper on a Raspberry Pi / SBC host — native, open, fully configurable.
- Mainboard: standard 32-bit STM32-class boards (BigTreeTech Octopus or Spider are common).
- Slicers: any open slicer — OrcaSlicer, PrusaSlicer, SuperSlicer.
- Materials: heated enclosure suits ABS, ASA and polycarbonate as well as PLA / PETG.
- AI / camera: none built in; add a camera (via the Crowsnest service) and Obico for open AI failure detection.
- How it's sold: design only — self-source the bill of materials or buy a third-party kit (LDO, Formbot, Fysetc). No assembled units.
- Licence: GPLv3 — free and open hardware.
- Project home: vorondesign.com · documentation: docs.vorondesign.com.