Hi guys, so I got my printer today (3 days from China to California - pretty good) and I am totally stumped about many aspects of it. Hope someone can help
1. Are the filament guide tubes supposed to sit so loosely against the back of the machine? I know there are clips but they are not very secure. Is that why there are pieces you can print out on Thingiverse?
2. For the front acrylic door panel, the way it attaches to the machine with the hinges - are you supposed to use the nuts inside the cutouts of the plastic hinge to secure it with the screw? The reason I ask is I used 4 nuts and four screws to attach the panel to the pair of hinges. But then now I am short 3 nuts to attach the door/hinge assembly to the machine (at the top). Does anyone have any spare nuts? I think they are size M4? I thought about emailing the company but it seems really inefficient to ship 3 nuts from China. Could I find them in a hardware store? Last time I tried to buy 1-3 single pieces of screws, nails, nuts, bolts, etc, it was practically impossible. I don't need 500 of them. Any idea where some others might be hiding? I don't think I used the wrong nuts for anything else. 4 for each side window, plus the smaller ones for the prism shape acrylic top.
Now let's get to printing
3. I have no idea what I am doing. To start off easy I am trying the Makerware software (Makerbot Desktop). I loaded a spool of PLA that came with the printer on the LEFT (facing the machine) extruder. I used the machine's LCD controls to load the filament at 200C. The plastic started coming down pretty cleanly (as far as I can tell). Once some came out, I cut it off. Then I loaded a 20mm test cube. It took me a while but I finally figured out how to choose which extruder would be used (it defaulted to right unbeknownst to me). Anyway, I set it to PLA, 200C, 60C bed and told it to print. Now here's the weird part - it starts heating up BOTH extruders (I had the other set to ABS 230C). It also heated up the bed to 60C (correct, it's what I set in the program). Anyway, both are heating up then it starts printing. It lays down a horizontal line across the front of the bed. Then it looks like it's printing but nothing comes out. Makes me think it's using the RIGHT extruder. I cancel the print and notice not a single thing is printed. So then I used the menu to load LEFT filament again. Once it gets up to temperature, a nice string of plastic comes out. What's going on?
4. If I primarily want to print with one head, is it easy enough to set this in each program? I am having a hard time understanding this setting in MakerBot and Slic3r. It seems to want to use both extruders.
5. When I am choosing the type of machine, and QIDI isn't listed (obviously), what should I choose? Replicator Dual? Replicator 2? Replicator 2X? Sailfish (Makerbot)?
6. Instructions say to remove all the covers including sides for ventilation when printing PLA (i think) and the opposite (all covers on) for ABS. Are they serious? It seems really time consuming to undo 8 screws and nuts for the side panels each time I want to print a certain plastic. Do you guys just leave them off always?
Thanks and sorry for all the newbie questions.