Solidoodle Workbench

[Tonesy]

Thanks for sharing your experience, Tonesy.

I just got home from work and checked my Workbench. You're right, the drive rod for the Y axis is not fixed in place... I can push mine left and right inside the sintered bronze bushings as well (even though I've noticed zero lateral movement during operation). A person could purchase two 8mm split collars to prevent this, if it became an issue... as it sounds like you did.

My X-axis carriage does not interfere with anything, but I can see why yours might. I have noticed that the Y-axis will only travel far enough to put the nozzles about 1/4" in from the rear edge of the glass build plate. (So I am losing a print area of roughly 3 square inches and a volume of about 36 cubic inches.)



However, my Y axis will also travel almost 1/4" past the front edge of the bed... so I could modify the bed position forward [whatever that exact distance is] and regain that print area.



Now, here is why I think your printer's X-axis carriage might be interfering with the Z-axis bed supports. In the picture below, I've drawn a red arrow to show a small raised boss that is located on the back side of my Y-axis carriage. This boss protrudes 0.291 inches, which is ALMOST exactly the distance that I'm losing in print area. My guess is that either my printer is an 'updated' version, or the raised boss on your printer has somehow been broken off.



I say this because if that boss was not there, the Y-axis would be allowed to travel rearward another 0.291 inches before hitting the limit switch... which would CERTAINLY cause my X-axis carriage to interfere with the build plate support. As you can see in the picture below, my X-axis carriage clears the bed support bracket... but not by much.



You'll also notice (2 photos above) that I drew a light blue line that indicates the front face of the left Y-axis carriage. It is not flat at all, so I'm assuming this was the bottom side of their 3D print... which obviously curled. The back face of the left Y-axis carriage (or the "top" of their 3D print) is perfectly flat, less the boss. This is why I don't like that Solidoodle included 3D-printed objects to be part of their design. And yes, I'm assuming that the misalignment caused by warping is what causes the Y axis of these printers to 'stick' upon arrival. (At least that's one theory.)

At any rate, I do plan on keeping my Workbench and working out all of the issues myself. (Which is my only option, since Solidoodle seems to have zero customer support.) I will be demanding a refund of my SoliCare purchase, because I no longer desire to pay for this sort of "service"... if you can call it that, at all.

But thanks so much for pointing these things out, Tonesy... much appreciated!

OK So I took a picture of my Solidoodle and you can see that once the Y limit switch is depressed the nozzle is right at the edge of the bed. BUT what I do see is you limit switch lever seems to be slightly bent out, which would stop it sooner. Trust me this isnt a bad thing (to avoid hitting the bed support). What I think I will try today is to bend that limit switch lever out slightly so the y-axis doesnt move back as far. I agree printed parts shoudl not be the way to go on this machine. With the quantities they have sold you would think a decent investment of injection molds would be more efficient with regards to speed, quality & manufacturability.