Yeah I kind of want to compartmentalize the bigger/obnoxious functions, and the station functions so I can swap in/out those files when I change what parts the machine will be working on, as I learn this stuff it just seems better to "box off" each big role of the code from each other role so something like a missed bracket doesn't detonate code and report an error thousands of lines away.
I did find this tutorial though and am making headway now: A classy solution | Multi-tasking the Arduino - Part 1 | Adafruit Learning System
The only issue I appear to still be running into is with the liquidcrystal library and the header file not being able to use lcd.begin (not a type) so now i'm investigating what you said earlier.