First experience with SD Press

I received the SD Press on Tuesday night and setup it up Wednesday morning. The printer looked like it was in good shape, with no visible signs of wear and tear. The plate had a sticky coating on it.

I couldn’t get the Windows version of Soliprint to install properly on either my Windows laptop or Surface 3; however, it would install on my Mac air. It recognized the printer with no problem. I ran the calibration and picked the best looking result (which was about the middle one).

I downloaded the Solidoodles model of the chair.stl from the website. The software loaded the chair correctly and I clicked the print button.

The printer does make a horrendous noise when it first prints. This is because the large black cable drops behind the plate and prevents the head of the printer from moving all the way to the back.

The chair prints with the legs separate from the body of the chair. The chair has 4 square holes on the underneath side which allow the legs to be inserted. I set the chair to print on the high resolution (.1mm). The chair ultimately printed very nicely—it is quite smooth. One problem I noticed was that it appears that a thin raft was printed with the body of the chair, but the raft is too dense and will not peel off of the chair. Also, the holes for the legs were not quite square or uniform, so the legs don’t fit in, but a little sanding will fix this problem.

I then tried to print the chair again. The plate crashed into the head when it was auto-leveling and would not stop – making another horrific sound. I tried using the software to move the plate down, but the plate would not move. I turned the printer off and rebooted the software. Turned the printer back on, and tried to use the Tools \ printer config \ “home” command to recenter the plate and head. This caused the plate to continue to jam up against the head.  Turning everything off and trying again, I was able to use the software to move the plate away from the head.

I then tried to print the chair one more time. This time the sensor operated properly and auto leveled the plate and the chair started printing. About 10 minutes into the print, the filament snapped and stopped feeding. So, I stopped the print. The “home” command again did not work and crashed the plate against the head.

So, there seems to be some software glitches or the sensor seems to work intermittently.

I experimented a bit with the sofware and loading models that I have succesfully printed on other printers. I didn't have much luck -- some models would not open, others opened but the model was place too high and I could not move it to the plate.

This is the third 3d printer that I have. I started with an Afinia, and then a Makerbot 2, so I have some familiarity with how to use them. I have done many successful prints using the Makerbot (pla) and some with the Afinia (abs). But I don’t know enough about how the electronics work to specifically know what is going amiss with the Solidoodle. There definitely seems to be an issue with the autoleveling sensor, but it may be more of a problem with the software.
--Rayne