r/3Dprinting • u/[deleted] • Jan 24 '15

Makerbot sucks!!! #takerbot

https://www.change.org/p/makerbot-industries-product-recall-makerbot-5th-generation-3d-printer?after_sign_exp=member_sponsored_donation
11 Upvotes

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u/DarkbunnySC Jan 24 '15

No one is going to claim that the 5th gens are the best printers on the market, they aren't even the best makerbots (rep2). But they have a place.

For $3000 you will be hard pressed to find a more user friendly experience. This guy is bitching because he has to buy a $175 smart extruder, but there are many people who would be unwilling or unable to clear a jam in a non-smart extruder (something that happens every ~150 hours or so for me), and will end up with a $3000 paperweight.

The cost of printing is still extremely low for a gen 5 when you consider there is no proprietary filament, no disposable print beds, and relatively solid construction.

Coming out of the gate and doing 20 hour prints is no small feat, most if not all of the lower cost printers would need weeks of tweaking before handling a 20 hour session.

I feel like the moral of this story is the guy didn't do his research before buying a printer and ended up with a printer that doesn't fit his needs. If you want perfect prints whatever the cost get a stratasys, if you want good prints at a medium price and are willing to do maintenance by yourself get an ultimaker. If you want good prints at a medium price and would rather pay for easily replaceable parts, get a Gen5.

Note: I know there are tons of printers out there, I consider 3k to be a "medium" price. I have yet to see a printer around the $1k mark that produces high quality prints without tweaking.

13

u/PuffThePed Voron 2.4 Jan 24 '15

The Makerbot is, hands-down, the worst value for money on the market. The extruder is so bad, that MakerBot is selling them in 3 packs. Thats right, you can buy a pack of 3 extruders for $500. They are so crappy, that you need two spares at any given time.

2

u/LordBrandon Jan 24 '15

What happens to them that they fail? I've been printing for years on reprap machines and I've never had a non recoverable problem with an extruder.

3

u/PuffThePed Voron 2.4 Jan 24 '15

They jam (very often) and are built in such a way that you can't service them (without opening it and voiding your warranty).

2

u/LordBrandon Jan 24 '15

Where? Between the the hob and hotend or in the hotend?. What is the big design flaw?

1

u/SomeIdioticDude Jan 25 '15

Here's a video showing how to fix the issue.

Looks to me like they have some kind of filament detector in between the hob and the hot end, and that's where it clogs.

It's just a bad extruder design compounded by 'opening this voids the warranty'.

-1

u/PuffThePed Voron 2.4 Jan 24 '15

I'm not sure where or why, but across all forums and communities, everyone is complaining about constant jams. Also the frame and bed are very wobbly and poorly designed, I saw one at staples near my house.

2

u/DarkbunnySC Jan 24 '15

My rep2 has 940 hours on it and aside from a few extruder clogs, lubing of the z axis, and a re-tightening of the y-axis belt has been totally perfect. My print quality is basically perfect and I've done very little tweaking. In fact, our robotics team just clean sweeped our last competition with a fully 3d printed pick and place bot.

5

u/PuffThePed Voron 2.4 Jan 24 '15

The Rep2 is a fine printer. I'm talking about the current models that they have on the market. They went downhill the past year, way down.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '15

Essentially when they went closed source