Solidoodle 4 - to up grade or not to upgrade

If you're running the stock extruder, and the filament is getting stripped by the drive gear(are there little pieces of filament all over the gear?) that could be causing your inconsistent issues. Also, if your running the stock extruder, the teeth on the drive gear might be worn down enough that it isn't gripping the filament well enough to push it through.

If you want to get the most of the machine, I strongly recommend spending the cash to upgrade the HotEnd to a Lite6 or v6 from E3D. Additionally, I recommend replacing the extruder gear with an E3D Hobb Goblin. Lots of us on this forum use this combination because it is a far more consistent experience. Using the stock HotEnd, extruder and gear, your frustrations will never really end with regards to extrusion. It's the best set of upgrades you could possibly make to your machine.

Regarding your overall question - your Solidoodle is actually just as mechanically capable as the machines you linked, if not more so after your upgrade to the Lawsy set of carriages. The frustrations you're experiencing now are simply a result of Solidoodle cutting corners to save on cost. Those cheap machines are tempting, but bear in mind machining capability hasn't had some dramatic improvement in the last two years. Those machines just cut costs in more ingenious ways than Solidoodle. I can almost guarantee any machine under $1000 is going to require modification to make it production quality.

Fair enough, I'll make some more upgrades.... I thought I'd start by installing the latest version of Repetier Host. I designed a 20x20x20mm calibration cube with .3mm walls, and sliced it with the "Spiral Vase" option. When it printed, the brim was very poorly defined, lots of skipping of filament, but the walls of the cube were beautiful... nice and straight and uniform. I think the new carriages and guide rods really helped with this. The walls of the cube are .59mm thick though, so maybe I need to play with the feed rate settings some, as it seems there is too much filament being fed. I'll do the extruder calibration exercise. Do I need to edit the firmware to adjust this, or can I just depend on Repetier Host feedrate multiplyer? Also, with the new software, the printer won't go to the park position at the end of the print, even though I have checked the box in the Repetier settings to do so. Is there something I'm missing?
I've ordered some new feed gears, we'll see if that helps. I'll also play with the print speeds... I suspect there may be an issue there too.
Thanks for the input.

another vote for the E3D here..
I have two SD4s, both completely upgraded to Lawsy carriages, E3D v6 hotends and Hale heatbeds... LOVE them! They are my workhorse printers without a doubt.

for calibration it is more about the settings used than it is the model... you can use a solid cube, set slic3r to 1 perimeter, 1-2 bottom layers, 0 top and 0 infill and actually get more accurate results than using a specially designed model

for proper calibrations you may want to take a read through these.. I gathered up all of the information I had gleaned from this forum in various places , and put it together in a couple of blog posts...

Part one: http://northwoods3d.weebly.com/blog/fil … ion-part-1

Part two: http://northwoods3d.weebly.com/blog/-fl … coming-out

Thanks, very useful info, and a great description of the process. I found right away when I tried to calibrate that extrusion was a problem...The mark I made at 100 mm kept stopping and starting, so definitely a problem with the feed gear slipping on the filament. The gear looks fine, no wear, but I remembered that I have a spare extruder with gear from spares that I ordered from Solidoodle. I thought I would change out the gear, only to find that the setscrew is stripped, so I'll have to cut it off. I have some new gears arriving tomorrow anyway, so I'll do it then. In the interim, I stretched the tension spring out to about 50% more length... may not last forever, but should do for now. I recalibrated the extruder and am doing some test prints now. Here is one I am printing now:

Looks pretty good, and I'm not getting a lot of filament chips, so we'll see.

I never bothered to make mine adjustable, but i DID swap out the spring for a better (stronger) one that I picked up at my local hardware store. Still running with it to this day and i have a LOT of hours on it. 

You can't tell the software because it only sends commands and g-code, but you can tell the firmware that you are using a thermocouple w/ or w/o a conversion board. Marlin has a config file with numbered options for this, Repetier-Firmware has some MAX conversion chips in the drop down menu. Unless there is a command to change this that I am not aware of, you'll have to recompile and re-upload the firmware to the printer board.

As for the thermocouple itself: The lettered "type" determines the metals (and hence range and sensitivity) that are used. All K-type thermocouples should read the same until they fail.

There are also plenty of thermoresistor options as well, but thermocouples are linear and consistent, so long as the temperature reading is at the junction of the two metals.

if you are upgrading to an E3D you WILL need to update the firmware with the correct thermistor table settings, as well as max temp setting.

The stock thermistor (not thermocouple - two very different things) is table 1, the E3D will need table 5.

it is a relatively simple procedure to make the needed changes and then flash them to the controller board.