This week MakerBot announced the ending of support for their very first personal 3D printers.
The official announcement said:
MakerBot will be discontinuing phone and email support for the MakerBot® Thing-o-Matic® and the Cupcake CNC.
While the company will continue to maintain online videos for support aspects, “live” support of any kind seems to now be gone forever. It’s not clear whether spare parts will still be offered, but we suspect not.
It could be a sad day for some, as the CupCake was really the first prominent personal 3D printer made widely available to the public. In fact our lab boasts both of the discontinued devices (image at top). But we haven’t used them in some time.
The two machines were sometimes maddening to use, as they required significant effort to calibrate – including setting the Z-level on EVERY PRINT! Really, if you own one of these devices you definitely should consider moving to a new machine. Today there are dozens of much more capable devices to choose from.
MakerBot is making it easier for their early adopters as well: they are providing significant discounts on purchasing any of their existing gear if you own either a Thing-O-Matic or a CupCake.
Coincidentally, this announcement is made at the same time MakerBot’s 2014 line of Replicators hits the store shelves.