Posts on Waffelo's Den

My Voron Experience

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 09:14:50 +0200

It all started with my Creality Ender 3 V2, which was starting to infuriate me because of it’s state. The printer barely worked because of all the “upgrades” that I have done to it over the two years when I was still at school. I really didn’t have much money in that period of time, so I just tried to upgrade it with little money as I could. And that backfired at me. I used incompatible parts with the Hero Me V6 duct and also I had it printed in PETG and PLA, which cracked and melted a lot over time, making it less reliable. I had to deal with breaking parts often. And that made my printing experience pretty unenjoyable.

HERE WILL BE THE PICTURE OF ENDER (dont have it rn qwq)

Now that I have a job and live on my own, I have decided to upgrade to much better 3D printer. First I wanted to go small, and get something like newer Ender or Elegoo. But then I just thought that Voron would me really fun and good for me. It is definitely a flex to have, and building it yourself is pretty fun. I didn’t want to get a Bambu Lab. I think that is the wrong direction for 3d printing, its just for lazy people that don’t really understand technology.

So I have decided to order a kit from Formbot for the Voron V2.4 r2 with 350mm build plate. So I could print way more and bigger models with it. I have impatiently waited for it whole week and half, because the kit came with already printed ABS parts. But then I got an email that the guy did a mistake, and the kit that I have ordered was not in stock. Luckily he offered to give me the FYSETC kit instead which should be higher quality and more liked. I agreed and waited another couple days for the package to arrive. In the mantime I have began to prepare the things needed for the build. I bought a square, loctitte, metal ruler and linear railing lube. Well, the lube was actually meant for cars, but I suppose that works well too.

After the kit arrived, I had an issue with trying to get the box home. I chose to get the kit sent to nearby Packeta supported store. I had help tho, we took turns in carrying it.

This is not a guide, just mentioning the most notable things.

The assembly

I was looking forward to assembling my own Voron, it is pretty notable thing to do when you are interested in 3D printing. And also it teaches a lot about how the machines work. But not only that, it also improves your motoric skills while you do it.

I unpacked the boxes and opned up the PDF guide. The assembly of the frame was pretty straight forward. All I had to do was follow the guide and make sure that all extrusions are squared. I didn’t have any reliable flat surface for that, but I had the 350mm build print bed which should be milled pretty well. I mounted the four linear rails for the Z-Axis, but I greased them up before that. I finished up the frame by mounting two perpendicular extrusions which will hold the print bed. And then the bottom plate for the electronics area.

I did the bottom four feet which housed the Z-Axis motors. I had to insert brass M3 threaded inserts into 3D printed parts. This is pretty much my favorite process to do whenever I 3D print something functional. While at it, I did more parts, even for the gantry to save time. And of course, I used the loctitte thread locker to secure the screws in moving parts.

Assembling the gantry was more tricky. I had to make sure the parts are seated together well, and that extrusions are square. I had to put on the linear rails and put a perpendicular Y-Axis extrusion on the linear rail carts. I messed it up by accidentally putting stepper motors for Z axis on the AB drives instead of the specific AB motors. Another mistake was that I accidentally mounted the Y axis moving part the wrong direction, so that would mean that the printhead would face wrong direction.

I also spent like 2 hours solely trying to figure out how to assemble the CNC Fysetc Voron tap printhead holder because I couldn’t find any guides anywhere. Everything I found online was for different models. I figured it out eventually.

Belting

This was the most annoying part of the entire build. It was so nerve wrecking I had to take several breaks trough the process. The Z axis belts were fine. I made sure the gantry is attached to the top of the frame with zip ties, so it holds hanging dowm. And then I threaded trough the belts and made sure they are well adjusted. Only issue I had was threading them trough the Z motor pulleys. I accidentally threaded two belts wrong and almost damaged the belts.

The worst part was the A and B drive belts. One thing was routing the belts correctly. I really struggled with routing trough the tensioning pulley. And other thing was making sure the belts are the same lenght and tension. That also took me a long time to get right so the printhead moves correctly. I also had to fix racking issue.

Printhead

This step was also quite annoying because of the tight space constraints. I threaded the clockwork extruder parts and assembled it. Then I did the rest of the Stealthburner. Put in the hotend, coolers and LED. I put in the CAN board which is really good so I don’t have to route so many cables trough the gantry. And yeah, the extruder motor.It was pretty annoying to close up the printhead together, mainly because of the wires blocking stuff.

Attaching it to the gantry was pretty straight forward and simple. I just noticed an issue where I haven’t thightened the linear rail for the tap. I blame Fysetc for having bad documentation. But yeah, after a while it was done and ready.

Electronics

Next big step which I was really looking forward to, but also was a bit afraid of. I thought it will go well, but again because of Fysetc, it turned into hellish annoyance. So I started with PSU, I wired up the plug, relay, then the controller board, added Raspberry pi 4 and connected CAN board on toolhead. It all looked really good, I kinda struggled with cable managment, but by the end I think I got them well. I had to trim the fan wires because they were too long.

Then I had to flash firmware to the CAN and controller boards. It took me quite a longer time to figure out how to set the menuconfig options to make them both communicate together and have usable UUIDs.

Roadblock

I was about to set up the printer, I checked all end-stops if they work, setting speeds and stuff. But I was unable to move the stepper motors. I spent so much time changing configs and playing with the TMC driver stuff, I tried checking voltages and stuff but that was fine. I was so desparate, even people on the Voron Discord server couldn’t help me, but they did a great job trying to help me and they are very willing to spend time on your problems.

I replaced the whole controller board, and boom.. It still didn’t work. Then I tried to buy stepper motor drivers from some popular 3d printing eshops, but like two of them called me that they don’t have the drivers and suggested me some totally different ones that wouldn’t work for me. Finally I got some from new small eshop that was in my area. And they worked! I was so relieved that the printer finally works.

Tuning

There is nothing special about this, I think it applies almost the same to any printer. I would just say that tuning Voron was much smoother than tuning Creality Ender 3 V2 which I had before. I still have some things to do, like setting per-filament advance pressure and things like that. I am pretty content with the print quality, but there are still things that can improve, like stringing on ABS.

Finishing

I added some LED strips to the top of the printer and connected them to a fan port which I set a switch for in Klipper. The strips have warm yellowish tint, which is something that I really like. I hate cold neutral LED lights. I also tried to add a wiper to the back, but my toolhead cannot reach there sadly…

I still have a lot of things to do, like replacing the skirt fans for some quiter ones. Adding better cooling for Raspberry Pi and stepper motor drivers. I also have to fiddle more with Klipper macros and filament slicer settings. But I think I will eventually get to the point where I will be very content with.

Encrypted Gentoo

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 10:46:08 +0200

This is a small guide on how to do encrypted Gentoo install. This isn’t really an all purpose article for all cases, I just wrote this while I was installing Gentoo on my Thinkpad T430 laptop and wanted to make a article that maybe could help someone a bit.

Preparing disks

First, you will have to prepare your disk for the Gentoo installation. This will be the base for your entire system. You will have to create three partitions (boot, swap and root) using the program gdisk and then use the cryptsetup command on the root partition to create encrypted luks container.

Creating encrypted container

cryptsetup -yv luksFormat /dev/sda4

Opening the encrypted container

Note that the pharse at the end of the command is the mapper name, you can choose any.

cryptsetup open /dev/sdb4 root

After opening the encrypted container, you can notice that it is located in the /dev/mapper/root.

Formatting the partitions

Now format the boot partition to ext4 and root to btrfs. And don’t forget to format swap partition.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda3

mkswap /dev/sda2

Preparing the system

In this step you will need to download the stage3 tarball from the Gentoo website and extract it installation /mnt/gentoo/. In my case I will be using amd64 desktop profile with OpenRC.

Mounting the disk

First, you will need to create the /mnt/gentoo and /mnt/gentoo/boot directories.

mkdir -p /mnt/gentoo/boot

and then mount the partitions.

mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt/gentoo

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/gentoo/boot

Downloading and extracting the Stage3 tarball

Go to the Gentoo download website and copy the download link of the selected tarball and download it into /mnt/gentoo/.

cd /mnt/gentoo

wget [tarball link]

After downloading the tarball, extract it using this command:

tar xpvf stage3-*.tar.xz --xattrs-include='*.*' --numeric-owner

After it is done extracting the tarball, you can delete the .tar.xz file.

Configuring compile options

This is very important thing to set, most of your packages will be compiled with the settings you set in the /mnt/gentoo/etc/portage/make.conf. I will show you some important things to set for this guide. Use this wiki page for your invididual configuration as an help guide.After

Most importantly don’t forget to set your -march= to your CPU architecture. If you are compiling on the computer that will the Gentoo used on then just set -march=native and if not then go to the safe CFLAGS wiki page and find the code for the CPU that you will use this Gentoo installation on. In my case I will be setting -march=ivybridge.

You should also set your CPU_FLAGS_X86 to your CPU flags. You can do it by booting into Gentoo liveiso from an usb flash drive on the computer you will use this Gentoo installation on and running the cpuid2cpuflags command to list all the tags.

Rust software is spreading like so caled “COVID-19” few years ago, so I would advise you to include RUSTFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}" in your make.conf.

You should also include this quality of life option that will automatically append these flags when you will go compile something. EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--ask --verbose".

You will want to have faster downloads from the Gentoo mirrors. So you should set the GENTOO_MIRRORS to the closest mirror there is to you. You can find mirrors by going to the Gentoo mirrors page.

You also will want to set the VIDEO_CARD option so your video drivers get compiled. I will use the VIDEO_CARDS="intel" on my ThinkPad because it has an integeated GPU. If you don’t know which flag to set, go to the video cards section on the make.conf wiki page to find the GPU flag you need.

For the Grub bootloader you will want to set GRUB_PLATFORMS="pc" since this guide is focused on installation with legacy boot.

If you compile on a better CPU than the installation will be used on, you can set the MAKE_OPTS="-j#" to the availabile resources you have. I am compiling this installation on AMD Ryzen 7 so I will be using MAKEOPTS="-j16". Make sure you will adjust the -j number to the CPU your installation will be used on after you are done with installing Gentoo.

This is optional, but if you want to use only Free Software, you could opt to set ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FREE". I personally set this on all my machines.

Example of my make.conf:

COMMON_FLAGS="-O2 -march=ivybridge -pipe"
CFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
CXXFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
FCFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
FFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
RUSTFLAGS="${COMMON_FLAGS}"
CPU_FLAGS_X86="aes mmx mmxext pclmul popcnt sse sse2 sse3 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3"

EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--ask --verbose"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="https://mirror.wheel.sk/gentoo"
VIDEO_CARDS="intel"
GRUB_PLATFORMS="pc"

MAKEOPTS="-j16"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="-* @FREE"
USE="device-mapper crypt elogind eme-free bluetooth wifi X wayland pipewire sound-server pulseaudio screencast cdda dvd dvdr -ppp -systemd -telemetry -gnome"

LC_MESSAGES=C.utf8

Installing the system

Before chrooting into your system, you should copy the DNS info to your new installation so you can connect to internet.

cp --dereference /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/

Then create a temporary chrooting script chroot.sh which will contain these lines:

mount --types proc /proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
mount --rbind /sys /mnt/gentoo/sys
mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/sys
mount --rbind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev
mount --make-rslave /mnt/gentoo/dev
mount --bind /run /mnt/gentoo/run
mount --make-slave /mnt/gentoo/run

# Uncomment three lines below if you are installing from non-gentoo installation media.
#test -L /dev/shm && rm /dev/shm && mkdir /dev/shm
#mount --types tmpfs --options nosuid,nodev,noexec shm /dev/shm
#chmod 1777 /dev/shm /run/shm


chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
source /etc/profile
export PS1="(chroot) ${PS1}"

And run the script:

sh /mnt/gentoo/chroot.sh

After running this script, you should be chrooted in your new gentoo installation enviroment.

Selecting profile

A profile is a set of specific use flags, variables and version ranges. You need to choose a profile that will suit your use case. This installation is intended for desktop use, so I will select the default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop profile. To view profiles, you need to run this command:

eselect profile list

Output example: (my output)

...
 [21]  default/linux/amd64/23.0 (stable)
 [22]  default/linux/amd64/23.0/systemd (stable)
 [23]  default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop (stable) *
 [24]  default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/systemd (stable)
 [25]  default/linux/amd64/23.0/desktop/gnome (stable)
...

It is most likely that the desktop profile is already selected if you have downloaded the desktop stage3 tarball. If not, then run the command below with the option number at the end. Then the blue asterisk should move to your selected option. For example, in my case I selected the number 23.

eselect profile set (your number)

Updating the packages

After doing changes to the use flags in make,conf, we will want to update our current packages so they are built in the way we wanted to.

emerge-webrsync

emerge --ask --verbose --update --deep --newuse @world

After the compilation is done, prune useless packages.

emerge --ask --depclean

Setting the timezone

If you want your system time to be correct, you should set your system’s timezone. You can look at all the timezones availabile by running this command:

ls -l /usr/share/zoneinfo

You can also ls deeper into the directory of your continent to see the availabile timezones.

ls -l /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe

And then echo the timezone into the timezone file. For example, I will use Europe/Bratislava.

echo "Europe/Bratislava" > /etc/timezone

And finally, finish it by emerging timezone-data.

emerge --config sys-libs/timezone-data

Installing better text editor

This is optional, but it is just much better fore editing files.

emerge vim

Generating locale

Now you will want to generate the locale by editing locale.gen. Just simply uncomment a line with your locale.

vim /etc/locale.gen

If you don’t know how to type in locale code of your language, run this command to view supported locales:

less /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED

And now just generate the locale.

locale-gen

Selecting locale

Now list your locales with eselect. It is likely that your locale is already selected.

eselect locale list

and set your locale

eselect locale set (number of your option)

And now reload your enviroment using following command:

env-update && source /etc/profile && export PS1="(chroot) ${PS1}"

Preparing linux firmware

Now it is time to install the core of the operating system, the kernel. It will have to be installed bit differently than it is being done normally. You will have to use the genkernel command with few use flags. You might want to use the linux-firmware package if you use proprietary drivers for wifi, bluetooth, etc.. But even if you don’t need it like me since I have atheros wifi card, you will need to set -firmware in the /etc/portage/package.use/sys-kernel file.

I need proprietary firmware

If you use proprietary drivers, you will need the firmware. You need to add ~amd64 keyword to the package.accept_keywords file.

echo "sys-kernel/linux-firmware ~amd64" >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/sys-kernel

Only with @FREE ACCEPT_LICENSE option: Adding license of the package to portage config.

echo "linux-fw-redistributable license(s)" >> /etc/portage/package.license/package.license

And then you just install the package.

emerge sys-kernel/linux-firmware

I don’t need proprietary firmware

If you are based and you use devices with free drivers, then you will need to put -firmware flag to the package.use.

echo "sys-kernel/genkernel -firmware" >> /etc/portage/package.use/sys-kernel

Installing the kernel

To install kernel, you will need to download two packages. The genkernel which is a tool that automates building the kernel. And gentoo-sources which includes the kernel source.

emerge genkernel gentoo-sources

Before you can compile the kernel, you need to select it with the eselect command. Do this command to list the availabile kernels:

eselect kernel list

And then select the kernel. In most cases it will be 1 in new installation.

eselect kernel set 1

After selecting the kernel, run this command that will start the compiltion of the kernel. The command contains necessary flags for encrypted installation. Note: This might take long time

genkernel --luks --lvm --busybox all

Generating Fstab

All of your partitions that will be used in your system must be in the /etc/fstab file where are all the mount points and options on how they should be mounted set.

Run the command blkid to find the UUIDs of your partitions.

Output example (my output):

/dev/sda3: UUID="52121e1c-c51c-4ffc-92bc-eb6423e736c8" TYPE="crypto_LUKS" PARTLABEL="Linux filesystem" PARTUUID="389956c6-89c7-4122-b45f-17e6256be3c9"
/dev/sda1: UUID="8bee939e-50f2-41ba-b359-2070ec1511f1" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="Linux filesystem" PARTUUID="eccfcd37-5a98-4e4b-ac18-f1194a9679b9"
/dev/sda2: UUID="75fca4da-eb35-47f7-8696-ae9bbcf1c75c" TYPE="swap" PARTLABEL="Linux swap" PARTUUID="c99f141c-3cea-440c-beb6-cf7fa9c74a89"
/dev/mapper/root: UUID="1e0b2067-8937-47c0-9a5c-f200fe4607b8" UUID_SUB="1ff8b4f2-f1bb-4916-aea9-bdb7f0111584" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="btrfs"

You will want to put your LUKS parition as root partition in the fstab, in my case it is /dev/sdb3.

Fill in the fstab file so it looks like the example below, just input your own UUIDs instead of the one shown in example.

# /dev/sda3 (root)
UUID=52121e1c-c51c-4ffc-92bc-eb6423e736c8       /       btrfs   rw,relatime    0 0

# /dev/sda1 (boot)
UUID=8bee939e-50f2-41ba-b359-2070ec1511f1       /boot   ext4    rw,relatime     0 2

# /dev/sda2 (swap)
UUID=75fca4da-eb35-47f7-8696-ae9bbcf1c75c       none    swap    defaults        0 0

Setting a hostname

Setting a name of your device which is viewable on your local network.

echo ClawPad > /etc/hostname

Enabling DHCPd

If you want to use internet on your device, you will need to install this dhcp server and set startup of the service on the system boot.

emerge net-misc/dhcpcd

rc-update add dhcpcd default

If you want to use wifi on your computer, you should also install this package.

emerge --ask net-wireless/iw net-wireless/wpa_supplicant

Setting the root password

To set your root password, use the passwd command.

Installing useful tools

You can skip this step, but it is pretty useful to install some of these packages. Especially these progs packages

emerge sys-fs/btrfs-progs sys-fs/e2fsprogs net-misc/chrony app-shells/bash-completion sys-apps/mlocate sys-process/dcron

Now enable the chrony service if you have installed it.

rc-update add chronyd default

Installing the bootloader

After succesfuly finishing all the previous steps, you shall proceed to the installation of grub. Grub is a software that helps you boot your system upon pressing the power button on your pc.

Install the grub package and make sure you have GRUB_PLATFORMS="pc" in your emerge configs.

emerge --ask --verbose sys-boot/grub

Configuring the bootloader

Now you will need to configure your grub to work with encryption. You can find the configuration file at /etc/default/grub/grub.

Your grub config should look something like this, change only the shown parameters. Make sure to put your LUKS partition instead of the one in my example. It is the same UUID as in fstab root parition.

...
GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES='part_gpt part_msdos luks lvm'
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX='dolvm crypt_root=UUID=52121e1c-c51c-4ffc-92bc-eb6423e736c8 root_trim=yes rootfstype=btrfs'
GRUB_ENABLE_CRYPTODISK=y
...

Now generate grub config.

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Creating an user account

You will probably want to create an user account. Refer to the Gentoo’s user creation section in their installation handbook for more information.

Create your account with basic groups:

useradd -m -G users,wheel,audio,wheel -s /bin/bash waffelo

Now set the password of your user:

passwd waffelo

You will most likely want to use sudo. You will have to add your user to the sudoers file. You will need to go to the /etc/sudoers file and uncomment one line so it looks like this:

# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%wheel   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

You will have to save and exit from the file using :wq!.

Leaving chroot

Now that you are done, you will need to exit your installation enviroment safely.

exit

cd

umount -l /mnt/gentoo/dev{/shm,/pts,}

umount -R /mnt/gentoo

Now you can reboot into your system..

Using XMPP

Mon, 19 May 2025 07:15:31 +0200

I have been using XMPP couple years ago pretty commonly, I would say It was my main communication platform that I have been on. I had couple friends on and people I knew. But I have switched to Matrix because of it having better clients.

My experience with Matrix is kinda mixed. I like a lot that it has more clients and even better ones than XMPP does. It also has more communities and people on it. But the issue is, that it feels overengineered sometimes, dealing with the encryption system is quite annoying often. Even after I understood how it all works, it just was pretty random sometimes with decryption. Having bigger rooms with encryption is not that great because you need to deal with random bugs and also have to babysit new Matrix users on how to manage the keys.

Another annoying thing about Matrix I found is that with more users come more skids that lack their parents’ attention, doing dumb things like spamming rooms with gore, porn and even cp. That’s why I try to keep my rooms private and add people to them manually. But it was also because of some people being quite weird and larped with the “plural” mental illness thing.

Will I use XMPP as main chatting solution?

Altough I would love it, I probably won’t be using XMPP as much as I would like. I will still be on Matrix, but maybe not as often as I used to. I want to keep track of both platforms. But I will consider XMPP as my primary chat option.

I will be adding my OMEMO and JID address to the contact page and keeping my device list updated, so you can know when to trust my messages.

New Website!

Thu, 24 Apr 2025 08:53:12 +0200

For the last couple weeks I have been thinking about starting a new website more than usually. It was in my bucket list, however I never really got to it because I didn’t want to spend too much time figuring confusing Hugo out. I could make purely html blog website like I did many times before, but I didn’t want that anymore. Not being able to manage blog posts properly was a huge deal for me. If i wanted to change something in website structure, I would have to edit every single page, and I had many journal posts. This demotivated me a lot in continuing with my websites and blogging.

Recently I have moved and got a new job. I finally got a tech related job where I can also use computer. In this new job I sometimes need to wait for some things for some periods of time, so why not use it for things like learning, managing my server and redoing my website. So I quickly set up neovim as IDE on my server and started doing it trough SSH. This might seem strange, but I am forced to use Windows at work, which is unusable for me. I don’t really know how to use it, it feels dumb and on top of that it is restricted as heck. Everything is connected to different systems and Microsoft ecosystem. I barely can install software because of the restrictions. I really would rather use bare TTY on Linux than Windows itself.

What now?

From this point, you can finally bookmark my website and check on it once in a while, since it is set up in a better system which motivates me now. Or you can also add this blog to your reader with RSS. I will be actually trying to keep this blog alive now, since it is also giving me some benefits like learning how to write better, finding interesting people, expressing my ideas and some more.

Is the website finished?

Absolutely not. I still have a lot of things to polish and change. I got the theme from some randomg repository on Github (it is GPLv3) and it helped me understand HUGO more, I would attribute the creator more but I feel like I changed the theme nearly completely to my likings. But I think it was called Plague.

So, as some might know me. I am almost never pleased with the things I create, so my website will keep getting edits and improvements. Who knows how long it will be until I decide to create a new theme. But it certainly won’t make the website inaccesible like it did before. So don’t worry, if anyone even worries.

What else is to be done?

There are quite a few things that need to be done on this website, like creating couple new pages like store, fursona info, favorite pages, etc.. But I also need to tweak the theme more, I need to figure out the layouts which I want to use, colors and shapes. I want to redo the about me page completely, for now there will be text from my old website as placeholder. I also want to play more with the index homepage more. You will see by the time.

I will be also getting more stickers and illustrations for this website, I am currently talking with my artist about the things like logos and icons.

So now that I have a better start, I am ready to resume my website dingly tingly dragoning. Thank you for readhing this post, and stay tuned for more things I will have to yap about :D