Solidoodle Workbench (Page 1 of 2)

Thanks!  I'm so excited, yet I was super nervous about ordering worrying that I would be too tech dumb to figure it out lol. I'm hoping to get it ordered next week and then the long 2 month wait for it to arrive.

Has anyone received or tried out the new Workbench yet?

I've received the workbench... I've had several issues with it and am still working to get decent prints from it.

It arrived missing several items. The Y axis wasn't aligned properly and would just skip the motor, i had to realign the y axis belts to get it to even move.

The auto leveling feature sounds nice but i haven't had great results with this yet.  I'm still having issues where the print head is clipping the print and knocking it loose from the print bed.

The heated bed takes foreverrrrr to get to temperature.

I'm still looking for other ideas to gain better prints with this machine.

I also have a ultimaker 2 printer that I love. I get gorgeous prints from that machine with minimal effort.

Hi,
One of the things that bothered me about my Workbench was how close the filament was to the Z-axis rods while printing. I've even had the filament rub against the greasy rods. The first thing I did was to just re-route the filament over the top of the frame, then I drew up these filament guides in Sketchup and was just successful today in finally getting them uploaded to Thingiverse. Hope you find it useful.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:650789

Other than that, it took awhile to get the y-axis to stop skipping. Re-tensioning and aligning the belts helped with that. Still having problems with my circles. Working on that. In the process of building my enclosure right now, so that I can try a large print without it separating from the bed. i almost have the G-code where I like it. Thanks to help on this forum, the start code with the 16 point auto-level is done and working good, just need to tweak the end code.

Joe

For the heated bed issue, I have the same problem. The heated bed function seems unable to work. When I boost with hair dryer, this unit starts to work and maintain the desired temperature.

Right now try to make Y axis to work smoothly as well.

My Y axis won't move so I'm going to try the tension thing. X axis, and Z axis homed ok.

Is anyone using a Mac with their workbench? I want to know if I need to change some of the settings. Running RH MAC ver 0.56 that I downloaded from Solidoodle support page. Basically just have a lot of questions. Do I need to change the bed size? I added workbench as a profile and changed extruders to 2 and tested them and the heated bed, both heat up just fine.

There are just a lot of options to change and I'm feeling overwhelmed, as I've only used makerware to print on a Makerbot.

Can someone who has done the tensioning give me some tips and tricks? Ive gotten the y-axis to move towards the front of the printer however it won't move back, just binds up. In the video they describe the tension as not too tight and not too loose, well I've never changed tension on a belt before so those directions don't help all the much. How much tension should the belts have? Should I be able to push them below the rod?

Update: After checking the screws on the pulleys to make sure they are tight, I can get the Y-axis to move back 10 steps twice before it binds up again. Almost looks like the belt from the motor to the back rod is skipping.

I got it working!

Ran through the first few tension instructions about balancing the belts, thanks wardjr for letting me know to tension with the gantry in the center. Luckily after two days of tinkering the belts tensions were perfect so that when I tightened the screws on the pulleys and tested moving the gantry, it was way more smooth and didn't require as much force. Homed X-axis which was working fine already, and then the moment of truth... homed the Y-axis and it worked!!!

Just an FYI for anyone using RH with a Mac... I didn't notice at first but when it came time to actually print I couldn't find the extrude or retract buttons anywhere, well the window size for RH was too small and there are no scroll bars, so if you find yourself with the same problem, resize the window bigger and the hidden buttons will appear!

Congrats on getting it working! Yeah, RH is a bit confusing on a Mac; I had a similar problem with the window not being full size.

I've found the Workbench works great out of the box. The problem is that Solidoodle has posted NO GUIDANCE on how to get started with it. Mine is working great so far though. I am trying to post videos to what works for me.

ONE NOTE: I JUST found that Solidoodle's version of Repetier Host has an OLD (REALLY OLD) version of Slic3r built into it, which is supposedly slower and does not work as well. I just downloaded  new version of Slicer and am going to try it out. A bit challenging installing it in RH. I will see if it works better & try to communicate how to update RH if it works. Up until now most of the defaults have worked okay (I posted a video on Youtube about that too...).

Glue stick worked pretty well keeping the print stuck to the bed. Now I'm only having trouble with the edges of the filament guide someone posted warping and bending up, which eventually the dual nozzle will knock loose.

Trying this right now, the glue is leaving some bad residue on the bottom of the print so I hope this clears that up. Also we enclosed the bed with cardboard as a quick fix.