This experience is a positive one. The z-offset screw being out of position can definitely be blamed on shipping.

I'd much rather it be a simple matter of adjusting things like it was; than actual broken parts which I've heard horror stories of (not just with Solidoodle, in general that is).

As it stands now I seem to be printing rather well; I'm slowly getting my calibrations dialed in, and now have plenty of ABS sludge for my mirror ;-)

Yeaaaaahhhhh; don't know about THAT.  I'm still very much in the "noob" stage, both with 3d printing in general, and 3d design.  I'm slowly easing into this as a hobby to replace the woodworking I used to do.  Not being able to stand for prolonged periods kind of makes turning on a lathe hard.

That said, I do kind of have a leg up on a total novice, as I'm (reasonably) familiar with gcode as I used to program and run an old CNC punch press long before there was software that would do the pathing for you from a cad design.  I still remember the offsets I had adjust for various parts in order to keep insane tolerances on a machine that was older than I was and hadn't seen a factory rep for maintenance since Regan was in office :-D

Good to hear the printer is intact and working The Z stop thing is pretty common with the leveling screws 'walking out' during shipping vibrations, when you relevel the bed I would suggest going pretty tight with them don't bottom them out but within a turn or two of bottoming out will keep things tight with less 'wobble' showing up in your prints.

+1

This experience is a positive one. The z-offset screw being out of position can definitely be blamed on shipping. Glad all is well though. Looking forward to seeing some new blood in the stl/print showoff section.

For starters; everything arrived in one piece; which from what I've heard isn't always the case with some people; particularly if the unit was shipped overseas.  Of course I'm only a few hundred miles away from the point of origin so take that how you will.

My Z-Stop however was not set properly; and caused a minor gouge in the kapton when trying my first print to calibrate.  Partially my fault, I should have inspected things better; though in my defense it appeared as though a test print had been done on the kapton prior to shipping.  Contrary to what I've seen in other threads; I wound up having to almost bottom out my Z-Stop screw before there was a proper gap.

An alternative to the above, is my bed might have loosened during shipment; as the 3 bolts securing and leveling it were almost completely out; causing severe bed wobble during printing.  I was already planning on ignoring the kapton and going for a glass bed anyways; so this allowed me to "lower" the stock bed, regain z-stop screw adjustment AND get prints that stick far easier than the test prints I was trying on the kapton.

On the plus side, it appears as though I have a SD 3.1 as it were.  Based upon youtube video's and various pictures, the bed assembly has been redesigned (mine is a metal frame attaching the bed, not plywood); and even with my glass bed, my bed temp reaches 85-95C in <10 minutes; not the 20+ I've seen some people report.

Overall (and so far) I'm quite pleased with what I received.  As a side note; I'm not entirely sure what control board I'm supposed to have; some sources I've seen state a 1.3a Sanguinololu; others state some version of Printrboard.  From a little bit of research it seems as though I have a Printrboard since I have what (appears) to be a micro sd-card reader; however without some sort of LCD interface such as a Panelolu there isn't any way to utilize it is there? Regardless to the sdcard reader; is soliwiki DOT com/Updating_Solidoodle_Firmware  (sorry, apparently too new to post links) the proper method of updating the firmware even though I have a printrboard (I think)?  It directly mentions downloading the Sanguinololu repo but nothing about printrboard.