One thing we learned a long time ago is that you have to be very patient when building a 3D Printer. You seem to be doing a great job!

My first Cupcake build took me 14 hours. I think I spent about an hour just getting the Kossel calibrated. It is indeed tedious but once it is done, it seems to print very well. We built this one with mostly "left over" parts from other builds and the Stepper motors are a little small (the shorter the motor, the lower the torque?). The axis work fine but I just got a larger one for the extruder, which seems a little too weak for the direct bowden extruder. I was going to go to a geared extruder like on my Prusa i3 builds but will try a larger stepper first.