Stratasys’ CEO David Reis, says the 5th gen is plug and play

[LyalC52]

“The MakerBot family of 3D printers is by far our top selling in terms of units, we worked to make them as accessible as ever, all you need to do is take a Replicator Fifth Gen out of the box and plug it in to begin printing good quality products,”

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my experience with a 5th gen Z18 is far from plug and play.
I've jumped through plenty of hoops and still struggle to get quality prints.

[Mjolinor]

The instant Stratasys got involved was the time to stop believing anything they said.

[LyalC52]

IMO MakerBot rushed the 5th gen to market to get a better price on the Stratasys buy out.
There are still a lot of issues that need to be resolved before they should claim its "plug and play"

[American 3D Printing]

IMO MakerBot rushed the 5th gen to market to get a better price on the Stratasys buy out.
There are still a lot of issues that need to be resolved before they should claim its "plug and play"

Stratasys completed their acquisition of Makerbot in April 2013. The 5th Gen was announced in February (maybe last couple days of January?) 2014 at the CES show in Vegas, and started shipping in May 2014, so it is doubtful that the rush to get it out had anything to do with the acquisition price negotiations that had already occurred nearly a year before that.

I have no doubt that the 5th Gen was put out on the street long before it was ready for prime time (it still isn't), but the reason it was rushed was likely that 3D System's new Cube line was poised to steal some market share if they didn't start shipping. It is impossible to know exactly how far along the development of the 5th Gen was When Stratasys and Makerbot were negotiating a price for the acquisition, but it certainly was nowhere near shipping. My own guess is that Stratasys themselves had a big say in the design of the 5th Gen, but that it was the marketing folks who pressured engineering and manufacturing into rushing the machines to market before they were ready.

I am told by my local Stratasys sales guy that Makerbot has been given some "big numbers" to make by Stratasys honchos, and that they aren't meeting them.

[Geoff]

I think If I said what I really thought about Makerbot, it would lead to a defamation case probably So ill just stick to the facts..

My experience with them has been only with purchasing assets off them, mainly a model of the Ship Endeavour.

Nowhere do they say you need the latest Makerware desktop software to both download and print the ship. No, I was naive and thought they would give me the model I paid for. It turns out, you never actually get the model. You have to use Makerware Desktop and then print directly from a 'library' of purchased assets.

THIS IS F********* USELESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I submit a support ticket to get my refund.

They reply 2 months later with

"oh we are replying to your ticket, could you please tell us what its about?"

WTF?? Does it not say that on the ticket??

"No sir, we don't have that information."

/facepalm....

[JohnA136]

Anyone that has followed MakerBot, was a member of their forum or was unfortunate enough to have bought their 5th Gen knows that the machine and their stupid extruder knows it is not a finished product. I was following it daily on their forum until Stratasys pulled the plug on it. The only smart thing they have done lately was to bench Bre.

It is no surprise they were afraid of the CUBE 3. It actually prints great right out of the box.

[American 3D Printing]

It is no surprise they were afraid of the CUBE 3. It actually prints great right out of the box.

Really? That's good to know - do you have one? After my experiences with the 5th Gen Makerbot and the Type A Machines Series 1, I have learned that you really can't know how good a machine is until you actually get your hands on one and build with it. I'm still trying to get my Stratasys reseller to let me demo a Mojo for a week or two.

[bongodrum]

I don't think they will reach those numbers. Customers are seeing the machines fail, and due to the closed nature of both the machines, their software stack and the company, world is getting around that Makerbot is dead. If they rushed the gen 5s out to take market share away from the Cube, then they have pretty much managed to run their brand thoroughly into the ground. It is unlikely that anyone who got a fifth gen bot will ever buy a Makerbot-branded product again.

As for Stratasys: if they thought they could just buy up Makerbot and make it profitable without spending at least a few years turning the company into a bona fide engineering organization their board of directors should be replaced. Because they are clearly incompetent.

You need only eyeball the Makerbot fifth gen while operating for the first hour after you have unpacked it to determine that this is not a product made by someone who is very good at what they do. There is a lot of engineering left to do and almost every aspect of the printer is ill designed or bear the hallmarks of being a rushed design. If Stratasys management cannot see that, and more importantly, doesn't understand why this happened, they are clearly no good at their jobs.

Of course, now that everything is closed off and corporatized, it is impossible for users to fix the product themselves. As they have been used to on previous models. It didn't matter that these models had rough edges and didn't really work. Because people MADE them work.

I think Stratasys management has to be realistic. They have a choice. They can push for profitability now, and end up losing whatever they have because they are about to screw over what little customers they have. Or they can pull back, make sure they do right by the customers and apply whatever resources are needed to engineer an actual working product line. If they opt not to do this, then I am almost certain that Makerbot is going to be a toxic brand and I think that Stratasys is going to be tarnished by it.

I am very keen to see what Makerbot Industries and Stratasys is going to do over the next few weeks and months.