Best Controller For Your 3D Printer Build? (BTT Kraken)

a little over a month ago we did a first dive into the brand new Leviathan controller from ldo in that video I received quite a few comments asking about big tree Tech's latest controller the Kraken this makes a lot of sense considering they are similar in price and have some crossover in the printers or custom builds you'd use them for big Tre Tech was kind enough to send over one of their Kraken boards and similarly to the previous video we will be doing an initial dive we'll go over the board specs and what makes it unique I'll do my best to point out any key differences between the two in hopes it'll help you decide which is best for your printer build so with all that being said and without further Ado let's get right into today's [Music] video massive thanks to microswiss for sponsoring today's video microswiss manufacturers hot inss extruders and nozzles for over 30 different 3D printers and are constantly expanding their most recent Ng Revo combines e3's rapid change Revo technology with their popular NG extruder I've been running their upgrades for over 3 years and I've printed everything from pla to carbon fiber nylon with them I love that they are us-based and all of their products are machined in house this helps them to maintain the extremely high level of quality their customers have grown to expect another huge perk is that their upgrades are made for specific machines making them drop in Replacements in most instances this expedites the upgrade process and allows you to get up and running again quickly links are in the description to find out more about the various upgrades they offer or to pick up your own starting with the size the Kraken is an absolute monster of a board with a footprint of 200x 113 mm it comes equipped with the stm32 h7230 GT6 for its MCU this is an arm cortex M7 32-bit chip with a maximum clock frequency of 550 MHz this controller comes with a total of eight onboard TMC 2160 drivers supporting a range of 24 to 60 volts four of them which will be your ab or A1 A2 B1 B2 in an all-wheel drive setup are rated for up to 8 amps with the other four being rated up to 3 amps all drivers are covered in a huge red heat sink that looks like it could be on a gaming PC the 8 Amp drivers are paired with four beefy capacitors rated at 820 microfarads with the three amp rated drivers having their own 560 microfarad 80 volt capacitors the higher rated drivers use much larger connections that are probably the largest I've seen I believe they are jst BHS the 8 amp rated drivers also each have their own fan connector on the left side of the board we have our large screw down terminals starting on the left there's motor power which lets you use a different power supply for the motors if you are wanting to use higher voltage followed by 24 volt in to power the controller and our bed connections this is used to trigger the SSR if you're using an AC bed and can be used to power a 12 to 24v DC bed up to 10 amps on the bottom left of the board there's another set of screw down terminals for our heaters this board can power up to 4 12 to 24 volt heaters at 6 amps next to that we have eight fan ports with six being two pin and two being four pin each has a set of headers above them that can be set to 5 Vols 12 volts or 24 volts by placing a jumper the four pin can be used for a standard fan Port but it can also be used for a water cooling loop on the right of these is a proximity switch connection on the right side of the board we have an SBC connection for uart and PS on for connecting a power supply relay there's also a Micro SD card port for flashing the MCU USBC to connect the Kraken to your Clipper host and a full-sized USB port that provides the needed 5vt 3 amps to power your Raspberry Pi or Pi alternative there are eight end stop ports and five ports for NTC 100K type THS you also get an additional two that can be used for PT 100 or pt1000 higher temp high accuracy sensors there are not one but two can ports on this board these provide can high and can low which means it's a great option for an idex printer running through the rest there's a Servo port two for rgbs filament runout probe i2c SPI and two expansion ports coupled with the potential for multiple can boards you would really have to try to run out of available connections on this thing as for safety there's a couple of replaceable fuses located behind the power terminals several e fuses built in and thermister protection circuits viig Tre Tech says the Kraken is compatible with Marlin Clipper and rep wrap firmware so you can use any of the big three just like we did with the Leviathan I wanted to take a look at the documentation generally speaking I've been pretty happy with big Tre text documentation in the past especially when compared to some others that I've seen but some gaps here and there are not uncommon going through the PDF many of the things I'd want to know about setting voltage and configuring jumpers on the drivers are covered they also provide picture examples for most of the ports on the board which may not exactly match what you have in front of you but it should be enough to hopefully help you figure out what you're supposed to be doing or how you're supposed to be hooking something up on the firmware side they provide instructions for both Marlin and Clipper but I don't see any info for rep WAP since they mentioned compatibility hopefully they can add some documentation for that in the future for Clipper they provide an example config that is all the headers you'd want along with the pinout to get you started unlike with the Leviathan having specifics for the 2.4 and Trident this is generic so you'll need to be comfortable inside of the config while you get everything set up so what are my initial thoughts on the Kraken versus the ldo Leviathan they're both very capable boards that to me are aimed at slightly different things the Kraken with its eight drivers including the four high voltage two can ports water cooling hookups and a plethora of other ports is a bit of a moder's dream if you're going to be building something like an all-wheel drive VY bot or Hort or you plan on building something like the voron Phoenix or heck even converting your voron into all-wheel drive then I would say that the Kraken is the better option the Leviathan has a much smaller footprint if space is a concern both in a board-to-board size comparison but especially when you include the pie that sits nicely on top of the Leviathan versus besides the Kraken I also think that the specific configs provided for the Trident n 2.4 along with its intentional Port placement lends to a very clean and simpler setup if you don't need the additional drivers rep ports then for $20 less the Leviathan is a great option option really I don't think there's a right or wrong answer and then it comes down to the unique specifics of your build I love having options and it's great to see two new highquality boards available and that has been a first look at the big tree Tech Kraken I hope that you enjoyed this video and I was able to answer some of your initial questions and hopefully give you at least a little better idea of which board might be better for your situation the Kraken or the ldo Leviathan let me know in the comments down below what your thoughts are on the Kraken and if you plan on picking up either of these boards which one you're deciding to go with and what your reasoning is on that note don't forget to like And subscribe for more great videos we make a video every single week so there's always fresh content coming your way and if you do want to support the channel further I will have links Down Below in the description over to our patreon where there are some really awesome rewards huge thank you to all of our existing patreon supporters I appreciate each and every one of you for allowing me to come back every single week and spend more time doing what I love which is making content for you all to enjoy on that note this has been Dan from modbot I look forward to seeing you guys in my next video peace guys

Channel: ModBot

Views: 26,800

Keywords: btt, btt kraken, voron, voron phoenix, awd 3d printer, vzbot, best controller, kraken controller, kraken 3d printer

Id: nS9TlEuBTbE

Length: 8min 2sec (482 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2024