I’m facing a strange issue with our Replicator2X, then I decide to make a video to show it:
Other guy faced an issue even worst on Replicator 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8y-dQVgoM
My conclusion is MakerBot Replicator has many issues that needs to be fixed in the new versions.
Our company bought a Makerbot Replicator 2X that damaged its X axis in the first working week. It was a very intensive usage, but it damaged in less than 100 hour of use. I suspect they didn’t validate it well.
I fixed that issue following the suggestion from this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8y-dQVgoM
I *should* have bought an Ultimaker printer instead of a Makerbot. The Makerbot parasites the open-source and don’t contribute nothing back. The Ultimaker in the other hand contributes to open-source development and created Cura, the best and easy to use software to slice and control your printer.
Case you are looking for a 3D printer, please consider Ultimaker instead of Makerbot Replicator printer! This is my warning for you!
Alan C. Assis 
I don’t know the current state of affaifs but makerbot started off with Zac as a co founder and it was a difficult decision for him, he had been heavily involved in the original arduino adaptions and reprap, but he had the opportunity to split and work his dream job.
Makerbot has been bought out now, but it’s a hard thing to draw the line between open source and commercial. as I understand it, makerbot would be leveraging the power of the open source community development by continuing to develop compatible hardware, but trying to show value added on their brand of hardware.
The open source community has done some amazing things on the software side, to take an 8/16 bit Atmel AVR Mega microcontroller and produce code for ramped acceleration/deceleration, multi temp sensor, matrix translation arc printing, multi hot end support etc. Zac would probably tell you the advantage of their approach is that you aren’t locked in to makerbot software. Probably the best way to handle your problem would have been to complain directly to Makerbot first and then relay your issue to a forum if they faled to resolve it for you.
Ultimaker are a bit different, I think they run custom firmware and one of their developers is right into solving the performance issues at the embedded SW level. Right now it’s great, but it gives them a lot of power to have people prefering to use cura. Let’s just hope they keep cura friendly to non ultimaker 3D printers… such as my own development on an ARM STM platform.
Hi Graham,
Completely agree, it is very difficult to have a commercial and still open-source. BTW Redhat proved it is possible (well, they sale not only product but mainly service).
As Adrian (the creator of reprap initiative) said: when you decide to leave the open-source development and became a proprietary development company you are loosing all power from open-source community. Then these companies are alone in the dark. They need to pay all their innovation and development without having many hundred or thousand people testing and improving it.