Workbench Apprentice First Attempts

Howdy~

I am a professor at a small university in the midwest. I received a grant to purchase a 3D printer and went with the Solidoodle Workbench Apprentice, since it seemed to be a good starting point. I have never worked with 3D printers before I received this one a few weeks ago, so this is all new to me.

I unboxed the printer and followed the directions that were on Solidoodle's website. It was a little frustrating because all of the directions were for the older printers and I wasn't exactly sure if all of these directions applied to my specific printer. I made it though all of the steps after going around in circles for an hour or so. I tried to set the "home" for the print head and the print bed crashed into the extruder head. I did not know about the z-probe, that it had to be lowered before beginning a print or calibrating. I then exacerbated the issue by not understanding that + was down and - was up in the z-axis. This meant I was trying to lower the print bed by moving the manually by +mm instead of -mm. After restarting and reconnecting and doing some scouring of the internet I discovered that it moved in the opposite direction. Once I was able to lower the bed and learned about the z-probe, I was able to make a few simple prints that I downloaded from thingverse. I was having trouble with the printer printing off of the print bed. I realized that the printer settings in repetier-host were set up for the Solidoodle 3, which had a larger print bed. I resized the print bed in the preferences and was able to print another simple .stl file. I thought I had it pretty well figured out. Then things stopped sticking to the heated glass bed. I researched and found that a little bit of purple glue stick would solve my problem and it did. I have been able to print a few things fairly easily since then.

Here are a few issues that I am still having trouble with:

My spool keeps over-rotating, this leads to the filament spooling off of the spool and getting tangled on the pvc and the mounting brackets for the pvc. I have found a print for a spacer that will fit between the pvc and inner diameter of the spool. I will print it tomorrow and see how it works.

The glass plate is held onto the print bed with spring clips. The extruder kept crashing into them when I would print things. I have remover the silver part of the clips to make them smaller. Also, setting the print bed to the correct size has helped immensely.

I haven't even tried to set up the second extruder head. Like I stated above, it is configured to a Solidoodle 3, which of course has only one extruder.

The filament seems to run into the wiring for the extruders often, this has yet to cause a problem, but I am nervous about it.

i do not really understand how the g-code works yet. I understand that I can enter commands by typing codes into the command text box, but I am not sure about editing an existing .stl file or editing a start code.

I have experience with SketchUp for other applications and have used it to model a print and print it. I think it works ok, I might start playing around with 123D, as I have experience in Autocad as a drafting software.

I would really like to know the optimal setting for repetier-host for the workbench apprentice. It has worked fairly well for me as a complete noob, but I also feel like I am just scratching the surface of potential for this printer.

Any help or suggestions would be awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks,

Nick