Solidoodle Workbench

[ClintKC1972]

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!

I have also purchased a Solidoodle Workbench and have found MANY items that need to be corrected before the machine will print. Along with the Y-axis slide being locked up I also noticed the drive shaft along the top back wall (that drive the y-axis belts) has no way of retaining itself. What I mean is the shaft is just straight and can be pushed out of the bearing either way. This was remedied by two locking collars, one on each side inside the frame. Getting the correct software was a whole other ordeal. The XP software wouldn't communicate with the machine so I had to use a newer computer with Windows 7 to finally get that to work. Once the machine would jog I tried a print and found that the x-axis carriage when going to the home position interferes with the bed supports (where the z-axis screw drives the bed up and down). I made a sketch of what I saw and sent to Solidoodle and asked how to fix this without having to grind a notch in the z-axis bed bracket for the x-axis to clear....what a shocker! No reply from Solidoodle yet........I am giving this a few more days and then asking to return it. I guess I am spoiled by the first Makerbot I received that came out of the box and was printing parts a few minutes later. Yes this is cheaper, but with all the time and frustration, I am not sure its really worth it.