I finally went on an impulse purchase on black friday and bought a CR-10 max at 20% rebate. I can say that this printer (for now) simply works, which is all I asked. I don't have to fight for bed adhesion (at first parts would not stick strongly, but my 1st layer was a bit too high; I lowered the "zero" level by .1mm and from there on good adhesion).

I did a simple mod: remove the loomex that makes the wire/tube dangle down over the printed parts and add a little support made out of .120 aluminum wire I had in reserve for making chainmails (don't ask!)...

The other mod I did was print this cover over the filament detector switch: thingiverse

Apart from that, it worked out of the box. I've made a few prints (test cube, a few whistles, a vase I designed and a Kirby model for my daughter). For the rest, time will tell.

Now I'll make my wombot work (making parts on the CR-10 as needed) and sell it.

I also upgraded from Slic3r for the wombot to Cura for the CR-10 max (Cura 4.4 now has a profile for the CR-10 max) and things are also far easier. I was thinking about shedding some dough for Simplify3D before trying Cura, but so far my results are very satisfactory so I'll keep my money for the time being.