The latest twist to the software saga happened last week. On Friday, I had a customer come in who needed an object scanned on the Makerbot Digitizer. After an embarrassing half hour or so of not being able to get Makerbot for Desktop to recognize the fact that the scanner was turned on and connected to the computer, the customer finally left.

Acting on a hunch, I uninstalled Makerbot for Desktop 3.3 and reinstalled Makerbot for Desktop 3.2, and presto bingo, all of a sudden the software now sees the scanner and I am able to do the customer's scan.

A couple days ago, I decided to fire up the printer and see what this new firmware did. I invoked Makerware for Desktop, I loaded an STL onto the print bed, and clicked Print.

Nothing happened.

Try again,

Still nothing.

Reboot computer, cycle power to the printer, try again.

No deal. Fire off angry email to Makerbot tech support, copying Bennt Mayrock, my reseller contact inside Makerbot. Within minutes the phone was ringing. Bennet thanked me for copying him. He explained that the email I was using, support@makerbot.com, was no long a valid email, as no one was monitoring it. Evidently, now you have to go through the form on their web site. Well, that's good to know. It would have been nice to have gotten some kind of automated warning email from them saying to stop using the support email. In all fairness, he was pretty apologetic, and I understand he's in sales, not in support. He also said that as a reseller, I am entitled to phone support, and all I have to do is identify myself as a reseller at the beginning of the phone chat with support. Very good to know.

But I still have a printer that won't print.

As above, acting on a hunch, I uninstalled Makerbot for Desktop 3.2, and reinstalled Makerbot for Desktop 3.3, and presto bingo, now the print button in active and I can communicate with the printer again! Glory be!

So I fired it up and after about 6-7 tries I finally got past all the homing errors and various sundry other error messages that would abort the build before it started, and got one going. Except it was about 200-300 microns too high and didn't stick. Grrrr. Okay, back to my twist the threaded bar with the pliers method of forcing a good z-home. I got the model to build, but there were tons of voids, still intermittently underextruding for no apparent reason.

To recap - Makerware for Desktop 3.2 will work with a Makerbot Digitizer, and 3.3 will not. Makerware for desktop 3.3 will work with the 5th Gen with firmware 1.4.0, but 3.2 will not.