My name is Marc, and I have had countless problems with my Makerbot 5th Generation 3D printer. I am a Mechanical Engineer and I have also studied Industrial Design so I believe I am well qualified in this field, and have a background from which I can comment on the reliability and quality control of this product.

I purchased this product some time ago from the perspective that it was simple to draw a product to print and simply print it. This is far from true, despite what I believed at the time.

Typically when I try to print a product it takes about 4 trials on average to get a print to start. Following that during my 6 month warranty period I have had a part replaced 3 times and the company believes this is acceptable for use. This problem is not limited to me, and most of the other users I have spoken to experience similar issues.

I have been in touch with Makerbot Support and they advise me that typically an extruder (or a print head from a 3D printers perspective) lasts between 200-500 hours on average (I have a reference for this from Makerbot Support). This may seem like a long time, but many of the prints I do (and Im sure a lot of people do) take over 20 hours. Ie Makerbot believe that it is acceptable to print 10 models and have the printer fail, and purchase a new print head worth $175US. I'm sure if most customers knew this at the time of purchase they wouldn't spend the $2899US on the product.

My goal with this Petition is that either Makerbot be required to let customers know that their product needs an Extruder Replaced regularly with the product (i.e. quite possibly with less than every 10 prints) and gives customers who purchased the product the ability to return the product, because many of them would not have purchased the product, had they have known about this defect.

Be mindfull, this is one problem, and after speaking to many others with the product there are others. Typically a product should not be released without adequate testing, and if a company makes this mistake, the end customer should not be the one to suffer the consequences.

Links to some of the issues: (note you can no longer post to that forum as it has been stopped by makerbot)

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/makerbot/h0aed9hqj38

http://nicklievendag.com/makerbot-replicator-5th-generation-review/#comment-125

http://www.davidleeking.com/2014/06/17/makerbot-replicator-5th-generation-not-ready-for-primetime/