Makerbot will certainly remain in history as the 3D Printing company that perfectly failed to deliver on its promise with the worse product launch.
While the company succeeded in 2012 to introduce 3D Printing to a larger audience with the Replicator 2, the company has since then failed to innovate. While rushing to bring a product to the market in order to impress Stratasys looking at taking over the company in 2013, the management totally forgot to properly test the product before its release.
Rapidly the trusted community of Makerbot followers express its discontent, culminating with a class action in the USA. The new owner tried to answer with some limited improvement on the machine. Attempts to patch a structurally poor product could only result in further issues. After 18 months of an impossible road to progress, Makerbot has taken the decision to dump its latest generation product with a 60% discount on the Makerbot Replicator Mini Compact 3D Printer available for as little as $550.
I’m not sure if the brand will ever recover from such a fiasco.
