New Solidoodle 4 -- are these issues normal?

Unfortunately that's all pretty normal.

I have answered your questions below. Contact us if your have any more questions, or issues.

1. Z-axis limiter: The metal tab was bent so badly that the Z-axis limiter did nothing. The pin could never be pressed. After pressing Run Job, the printer homed pre-print and made a horrible grinding sound as it continuously attempted to go up but was never limited.

You can simply bend this limit switch back to straight position. If the limit switch is not clicking, this means that the screws holding it may be too tight. By loosening them just a little, the switch will click. Once this swtich is clicking, adjust your Z offset and it will limit your print from raising too high. Also the grinding noise that you are hearing is from either poorly calibrated belts, or stepper chip voltage for the motor that is making the grinding noise. You may want to test your Solidoodle with a multimeter.

Please visit [Multimeter Testing Your Solidoodle] for more information.

2. X- Y- and X-axis limiters: Why is there no limiter in the far directions (Toward the door, Down, and Left)? The banging sound it makes when a gear attempts to go too far (and keep going) is rather obnoxious.

We only have limit switches where they are needed, there are three for each axis. Have you calibrated all parts of your printer. Belts and extruder.

3. Build Plate is not level: The front of my build plate, between the two set-screws, is not level. It's not off by a lot, but when the thickness of a piece of paper is important, being off by about that much is potentially bad.

If your print bed is level a close to correct as possible, this will not cause an issue. Have you printed a job yet, did you have any issues? If so, what issues?

4. Front Right corner inaccessible: The power/etc cabling that goes to the print head is not long enough to allow the print head to reach the Front Right corner of the build plate when the plate is at 0 mm in the Z-axis.

It should be long enough. Did you remove the zip tie placed on the extruder wire sheath for delivery?

These are all unfortunately pretty normal. FWIW, I solved the wire-to-short issue (at least somewhat) by pulling the wire bundle through the motherboard case. It is strain-reliefed with a zip tie that stops it from being pulled out of the case. You can get another inch or so if you remove this zip tie and pull it up a bit. You can put a ziptie back on there if you want. I didn't bother as there really isn't any strain on these wires as long as they don't catch on the bed.

The build plate not level. Well, I *tried* to fix this by removing the metal bed and using clamps to flatten the bed. It was good for a week or so, but went un-level again. The cause seems to be the thin metal used for the bed. Solved this by upgrading to a glass bed. I put a thermal conductive pad in between to fill in the gaps from the warped metal bed. That also help the glass stick in place.