3D printer company Makerbot lays off 20% of its staff all over again

boing
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Now they seem to have stuck themselves in the limbo between good enough to be industrial tools and cheap and engaging enough to be a great machine for a do it yourself enthusiast.

Good luck with getting through this.

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This is what happens when:

  1. You piss all over the open source community that spawned you.

  2. You piss all over your customers by giving them badly designed products and ending support as soon as the new one is out.

  3. Allowing one of the patent troll titans of the industry to buy you out as a brand.

  4. Having a non-technical idiot (Bre) as your spokesperson who screws at least one of his co-founders out of the company, only to walk away with millions later.

I hope people are taking notes.

I own and operate more than a couple 3D printers. I built one of the original Cupcake printers from Makerbot and both my hackerspace and work have had a Replicator 2 (which breaks about every two months). There are far far better products from many companies now. Makerbot alienated its customers, everyone watching, and shipped bad products. This isnā€™t a condemnation of 3D printing, just their shit company.

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Hopefully going back to teaching school children instead of backstabbing his co-founders.

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Yes, they were. They released an updated expensive printer using their parentsā€™ technology that was, by every account, shit.

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I hadnā€™t heard this. More info please.

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That he was a school teacher or that he backstabbed a co-founder?

Makerbot had three founders. After a couple of years, only two were left. The one that was out has made a number of comments over the years that make it pretty clear he was forced out by Bre.

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More about the backstabbing part. I knew the open hardware 3d community felt hurt when Makerbot went proprietary with their last generation, but I hadnā€™t heard anything about the founders fighting among themselves.

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Youā€™re not going to find a lot of public mentions of it. It has been three or four years.

http://www.hoektronics.com/2012/09/21/makerbot-and-open-source-a-founder-perspective/

[quote]For me, personally, I look at a move to closed source as the ultimate
betrayal. When I was forced out, it was a normal, if unfortunate, clash
of wills where one person must stay and one person must go. I swallowed
my ego and left, because I knew that the company I founded would carry
my ideals further into the world. Regardless of our differences, I had
assumed that Bre would continue to follow the principles that we founded
the company on, and the same principles that played a major part in the
success of our company. Moving from an open model to a closed model is
contrary to everything that I stand for, and as a co-founder of MakerBot
Industries, it makes me ashamed to have my name associated with it.[/quote]

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