MakerBot Sketch Single-Printer Setup 3D Printer with Cloud Printing File Management Software for One Teacher and Five Students

A solid 3D printer. Not super easy to customize settings and limited in presets. But a good workhorse for lots of standard prints. For the price I'd really like to see better features, more robust software, and better customer support. But it is definitely a good out of the box solution, especially for a school.

I have seven of these printers. I am a Technology Coach and serve 140 teachers across 5 educational sites (K-6). I also have a MakerBot Replictor+. I really like these machines. It is not my plan to print wildly complex projects. I serve students who are just learning new engineering strategies.For this to work, you must use MakerBot Print. The Print software will slice your projects for you so you are ready to print. You cannot print unless you slice your project. The G-Code must be constructed for that model to render properly.CloudPrint is also another feature that you have access to. For example, I can ask my librarian at Site A to turn on the printer for me. I can be halfway across town at another site and drop a file into CloudPrint and print projects at other sites. Likewise, I can monitor all five printers at the same time (five sites). The embedded video inside each printer allows me the freedom to watch that progress. And, I am notified when each print is done.The screen on the front of the machine is easy-to-use. I can calibrate my machine easily. I can store print files on the internal hard drive. And, I can use the thumb drive to process other projects as well.As an entry-level machine, this is splendid. I am glad I purchased them.

I'm so happy I get to review this publicly! The machines suck. I have been using 2 makerbot sketches side by side. I've run through about 4 1lb reels through them both. Lots of heat warping. There is no way to print without using a raft, but I cannot get quality prints-- when the rafts are very high quality. I don't get it. Each setting is on a slider and there is no way to edit the G code to do a mid-print stop-- you have to hit pause and trick the machine when standing there counting layers. The first layer of every print is fuzzy and scrambled because 1st layers never grab the raft well enough. The print area is only 150x150 and the enclosure looks like it keeps in the heat, but it doesn't.2 stars because it's good enough to do basics but I've seen better prints from $200 printers.

I bought a Sketch for college level instruction. The plan was to print out molecules to show to the students as a teaching aid. The salesman I spoke with before buying told me that the printer was capable of doing this, but after over a month of emails and troubleshooting I'm sending the printer back because it can’t do anything that I was promised.Any model of remote complexity is too big for the printer. Not in physical size, but in the size of the print file. In order to make models that can be handled and are rigid enough to remove the breakaway support you must increase the number of shells from the default of 2 to 4 or 5. The printer cannot do this, which means all the models I printed would just break apart in my hands. No matter how I change the physical dimensions there is no way around the file size being too big for the printer if I want a model robust enough to handle.Another serious problem is the software. You cannot use .stl files, but instead have to convert them into .makerbot files. You do this using their cloud print server (which is very slow and mostly fails) or download makerbot print to your PC or Mac. The PC version occasionally works, but recently fails every time, and the Mac version will not install on my computer running Big Sur.Finally, tech support seems very inexperienced with both the printers and software. They gave me a list of "hacks" - none of which worked. When I sent my .stl file for them to work on they never even attempted to see if they could get it to print, or figure out why the printer was saying the file was too large. They sent me a .makerbot file to try but forgot to include the base support which caused the print job to fail.Overall it was a big waste of my time. I was hoping that 3D printing had come a long way since I first saw a printed molecule about 10 years ago, but this company has failed to make any progress. Unless you are printing out Lego bricks, find your 3D printer elsewhere.

Bought this for the classroom, and I am immediately disappointed.The STL files will print from my computer, but put that EXACT SAME file onto a USB and it can't be read by the printer.Just change that file to a stupid .makerbot file? Sure, but try to print from the USB and you'll get an error message.It should not be this difficult...

I have 2 Sketch machines. They will no longer log-in to my account, which I can log-in to fine on my computer. I've tried resetting to factory settings and changing my password. They also stopped printing from flash drives. I only get errors when I insert a flash drive into a USB. I've tried contacting support twice. They have not gotten back to me. I tried calling, but their support lines are down. I wish I would've spent the money on something else.

Quality for the price you pay is not worth it. Software is lacking. They want you to use online slicer. Hardware is buggy and constantly need to be restarted.

I've now been trying to get any form of customer service for a week now. The Sketch extruder simply stopped heating one day. No error code. It will state that it's heating, but it will never actually heat. I use this in an educational institution setting and have only managed a few prints on this expensive machine.Might not be so bad if it were not for the horrendous customer service.