This is a risk with any item that requires software to function. Companies can change software licensees, lock-in buyers, and even open source can flat out abandon a project.
I just bought a Bambu Mini to sit along side my trusty 6 year old Mk3s+ and this pisses me off to no end. I was expecting my mini to simply be abandoned rather than suffer a lock-in AND then abandonment. So, I guess I won’t be updating my firmware nor will I run anything through their cloud. I was thinking of uploading a few designs to their cloud. But that ain’t going to happen now.
I was looking at a mini, someone recommended Bambu. I might just stick with my old ender 3 pro until it stops functioning.
There is really no reason for your ender to stop functioning. 90% of it is off the shelf parts, and things like wiring harnesses and custom stuff are also available.
This is a risk with any item that requires software to function.
Absolutely not true, it’s only a risk on products with cloud dependencies. Which is exactly why I ensure every electronic device I own doesn’t have that.
You have never had older software devices go bad have you? It’s not only cloud connected stuff you lose.
To comment on one of your points, something that gets lost when people learn about open source (at least most traditional licenses): nobody can change the license of something that was released so you have the option to fix it yourself or hire someone else to do it for you. While it’s incredibly powerful thing to have, many people only look at open source as “free (as in beer) stuff with free support”. Thing is, even if there’s no chance in earth you’ll fix it yourself, it’s likely someone out there who’s in the same situation will do it and make available for others. Key here is having popular and open enough hardware that people can replace or the software completely or keep its development (if open).
As open source printers go, you can always use the parts to convert it to a different printer but that requires tinkering. Perhaps this move will piss off enough some Bambu users that they’ll make the switch away from the “I just want something that works” mindset into tinkers.
There are licenses can be changed. Even you admit it.
I just got their new 3d printer and was having a great time with it… Won’t be updating firmware or buying anymore products with them until they fix this
Are you also preventing it from automatically getting an update?
They don’t automatically update.
Unless that’s something new, mine has never updated automatically, it always asks me.
Rossman pointed out that they said they’re going to stop you from printing if you don’t upgrade the firmware. Maybe a timeout built in?
According to the bambulab blog (on the official bambulab website) they explicitly state that you are free to downgrade or not upgrade and your printer will still work.
Edit: they even have a specific note about users that never want to upgrade and it states that it is fine, and their printers will still function.
Their TOS seem to state otherwise, if the screenshot in Louis’ video is to be believed. Looks like they are keeping themselves an option
In another thread on this enshittification, someone pointed out a similiar enclosed CoreXY brand, Qidi, that just runs FOSS Klipper. Looked very comparable, with the upcoming generation looking to have an AMS-like multifilament feeder.
Seems like most of the models include a chamber heater for better prints, especially on ABS which I’d given up on without a heater. Comes with brass nozzle for regular filaments, and a steel nozzle for CF filaments. This has replaced the Bambu on my wishlist.
Offtopic, how are you doing abs? An enclosure is a must, with one you should be able to do successful prints so long as you have a heated bed. Give it a good long heat soak at a high bed temp (I do 105-110c on the prusa) for an hour before you even start will go a long way. If you have enclosure or bed fans, even better, you’d be surprised just how hot you can get an enclosure with just the bed, this on my v2.4 so it’s a higher than the prusa
Make sure your surface is oil free, dish soap and water if your surface allows it, some of the smooth pe surfaces I’ve had better luck roughing them up a bit with a scotchbrite pad or brass brush. I use a Buildtak surface these days but had success with standard sheets and a brim.
I eventually built a coreXY printer with a chamber (had to build my own since the patent wasn’t off for heated chambers yet, but then I’d built half a dozen printers already so no big deal) and I got pretty good prints with that, but I’d have to replace the hotend fan fairly often as it would get cooked and usually every time that would happen I’d have to do a coldpull.
I would use bluetape and gluestick to keep it down. When PETG came out, I just mothballed all that because it gave me everything I needed in ABS except maybe the rigidity, but I’d just design to compensate.
I have a Qidi Q1 Pro and I’m pretty happy with it. Very fast precise prints and pretty reliable. There’s definitely some strange design decisions and weird quirks to it and Bambu machines feel way more polished. Overall I’d definitely recommend the Qidi machines but they are not quite as simple for people with no 3d printing experience. They are very feature rich and amazing printers for the price.
What would you say are the quirks? I come from building my own printers for the last 15 years, so I’d say I’m fairly experienced.
What are the interesting features?
Weirdness: The default g-code for the machine does silly things like park the nozzle over the build plate letting it ooze, instead of over the nozzle wiper/waste container.
The filament change routine is strange, requiring you to remove the bowden tube to cut the filament every time. This is easily fixed by printing a filament cutter and using that to cut the filament.
The bowden tube rubs against the top plexiglass lid for the machine, requiring you to print a riser for the lid to avoid it getting all scratched up.
The door for the machine is an odd shape design with no handle making it a little annoying to get a grip to open it.
The filament holder they include is a very bad design, flexes heavily with a full roll of filament and I have had spools fall off several times while printing.
The touch screen menu isn’t very intuitive and it can be very laggy at times.
Good features for the price point: Fully enclosed with built in chamber heater.
Pretty decent auto leveling system.
Timelapse camera.
Runs klipper/mainsail and input shaping is pretty cool.
I have around 500 hours on mine and I haven’t had any prints fail that were the fault of the machine so I’m pretty impressed by that. And I find the features and capabilities to be pretty great for the price point. They just could use to do some polishing of the design
Q1 pro has a filament wiper and a poop trashcan that you need to empty. You’ll do fine using them, they’re a great tool to use as a beginner, just get “quirks” that someone that googles can solve. For the x-plus for instance, the nozzle fan only blows from one direction so you need to print out a two directional one for better printing stability. Honestly, it was my first printer and I did great with it.
That was me!
I think. Your link doesn’t appear to go to the comment in question, or else I am blind. (Either is possible.) I just finished a large drawer shell print with my X-Max 3 mere minutes ago, in fact.
Fixed, I was 1 level too high to show your comment easily.
My wife has an older QIDI X-one 2 printer and it’s been really great. We load the g-code to the SD card and it just prints. The one she has we rarely have to even level the bed. I have another printer with a larger print bed but have to level it every print and it’s a pain.
Have an x-plus 1 and a q1 pro, both great printers that serve me well. Built a cnc machine on the x-plus lol. Abs works even with the non heated chamber, but the q1 pro has the heater for more reliability and more engineering plastics to print with. Also cheap as hell compared to bamboos. Ama if you guys want
MPCNC?
Nah that one sucks ass. Root 4 and later a PrintNC which I use currently to mill out molds n’such
I built an MPCNC for building kitchen cabinets, then managed to wreck it moving it, it was pretty fragile. I’ve been considering building a Lowrider since all I really would use it for is more cabinets and that seems pretty portable/storable with a full sheet print bed.
Lowrider sucks too. Cncs are all about rigidity. You need a serious gantry to do stuff accurately. Root is the cheap way because it uses rollerskate bearings. Printnc is the expensive option, which uses linear rails.
I do like that my Aquilla can be modded so I can use whatever firmware (and literally any other hardware that fits) I want because it’s open source and based on the Ender 3.
Saw this from the moment they did the rfid nonsense, doubled down on my beliefs when they started burning cash on advertising like crazy. Tons of youtubers and such shill this shit
They had a series b round in 2023 of an undisclosed amount with several chinese vc companies and they’ve had investments in 2021 and 2022 as well. I don’t know how chinese vc works but I assume it’s similar to american vc where there is a strong demand from the backer(s) to monetize in this fashion
Why do you think reddit went to shit? Series b in 2014. Those people drop serious cash. Reddits seed round in 2005 at y combinator was for 100k. That’s serious money to you and me, but to vc people that’s not worth getting out of bed. Reddits 2014 series b was fifty million. They suddenly had a gigantic influx of cash to grow infrastructure and compete with the big dogs like meta and twitter. They were fairly successful with this. They then raised 1.2 billion over 4 rounds from 2017-2021. That’s why they had a relatively quick turn to shit; that money was to try to make the site bland and profitable in preparation for ipo. It worked out because the stock made investors a ton of cash at the expense of making the site dogshit
Bambu will have a similar trajectory. Investors will give them an amount of money that is frankly obscene, they will use that money to develop (and probably to party, ridiculous salaries and/or fluff jobs, and have really fancy offices), then they will actively make the product worse. 5 years from now they will have used that money to entrench themselves in the market space. Don’t be surprised if the average person thinks “bambu” when they think “3d printer” because they pissed away 10s of millions on advertising. But their printers will have more consumer hostile bullshit (finally fully locking out 3rd part filament instead of just requiring you to do a pain in the ass respooling seems inevitable) like this and it would not be surprising to see the build quality suffer too.
thank you for making me aware of this, and thank fuck for louis rossman. no idea how we deserve that guy. as a new BL printer owner, I just opened a complaint on their websites support portal, as advised by this reddit post
Open source followers: what are bambulabs fans wondering about? It was clear from the beginning that closed source would end up like this and that the buyers would massively harm the open source community and the 3d print community.
I was about to pick up an a1 mini. Are there alternatives for beginners in that price range?
All other alternatives in that price range you will need to tinker a lot more with. Just a fyi
Check creality’s offerings. I’m happy with my ender v2, and it was about $130…before I started sinking a bunch of money into the hobby lolzzzzz
I love my elegoo neptune 3 pro. I don’t know how they compare though.
For everyone in the EU who bought their product within the last two years directly from Bambu Land or from a German reseller:
Stay calm. There is a very highly probability that German customer protection laws will cover your asses - Bambu Lab EU is based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and German customer protection laws goes beyond EU rules and applies to you.
I am currently working with three other enthusiasts, one being a lawyer -working in a different field, though- to clarify our options and will also talk to a customer protection agency.
Short explanation:
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German customer protection laws enable the customer of any online shop to “check” the sold product for 14d in a way they would check the product at a real world shop. The feature set and sales claims provided at this time do provide the base for finalization of the sale.
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The seller (!= Manufacturer!) has to provide a warranty for two years - for 6 months the burden of prove that the fault was not present at the delivery falls towards the seller, for the remaining time to the buyer. As BL does communicate the chanhe openly this is not an issue.
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BL furthermore claims that some uses fall outside the “intended use”. This is completely irrelevant - that is only relevant if they claim that they cannot provide warranty due to use outside the intended use. They still cannot reduce the feature set.
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Which holds more merit is the claim of BL that they are reducing a side feature/unintended feature. This explanation has, in the past, been used a few times in court successfully,but lately it has not been accepted anymore - even App connections for cars have been deemed a “base feature” that might play a significant role in choosing a car. It especially has not merit in cases when this defence is used to force a user to give up their (sensitive) data.
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BL also has a five year update policy in their TOS (which is mostly invalid otherwise,though) - and blocking users from updating if they don’t want to loose features and give up data is also very likely a breach of contract.
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There are also GDPR and market law implications that need to be considered.
What does that all mean? What can happen in the end?
It is highly unlikely that this proceedings can change the course of BL - these companies don’t give a fuck. But it might force them to basically reverse the sale (you would need to pay them for the actual use, though - but that is miniscule). Of course BL can also close their office in the EU and try to only sell from outside the EU - but that will put a very large crosshair on their back in terms of customs and taxes.
I keep you updated.
thank you for looking into this and sharing your findings!
Update in the main post above
The updated blog post does change the legal position they have maneuvered themselves in within the EU.
Also,they are basically lying in their post:
We want to make it absolutely clear that all of these claims are entirely false: Bambu Lab will remotely disable your printer (“brick” it). Firmware updates will block your printer’s ability to print.
While:
Due to the importance of these updates, your product may block new print job before the updates is installed, and will immediately provide update notifications to help you understand the related information.
(TOS 7.4)
Additionally the required certificates of course have a expiry date and after that you won’t be able to connect outside of developer mode.
Legally, they are also in hot water with their “no support” developer mode at least within the EU. First of all they can’t remove support for functions that were present at the time of the sale. Additionally denying support within the warranty period for use that is within the normal use even if developer modes,etc. are used is considered illegal - they can ask Samsung, Google and Sony about their experience in court for those cases, they all failed.
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If you were buying Bambu you already didn’t care about this
I care. I bought Bambu anyway, because there’s a LAN only option. I enabled it today. I am also not going to upgrade firmware.
I’ve been considering a Bambu until today. From what I learned today, there is no Lan only option. It now must connect to their servers to let you print. They also said they will disable your ability to print if you don’t upgrade the firmware.
I wouldn’t buy a new Bambu now. But the one I have has a LAN only option, and i assume it will keep it as long as I don’t upgrade my firmware.
I don’t see how they would disable my printer without updating firmware. Maybe I should block all internet communication just to be sure.
You should definitely block it from having internet access. I don’t see any way how they’d prevent us from printing when not on the latest firmware if it can’t phone home.
For how long? 3d printer firmware upgrades often bring some meaningful enhancements. Imagine that might be hard to resist forever
Forever is a long time. I’m sad I won’t get upgrades, but I didn’t expect any when I bought it. I’ll be fine for a while.
When I feel that big an itch for a new thing, I’ll buy a new thing. Probably something Prusa branded.
there’s a LAN only option. I enabled it today.
Do you trust it to not “phone home” anyway?
That’s a separate issue from requiring internet access / cloud / their servers to be online to print.
I assume it does. If I had a big problem with that, I wouldn’t have connected it to the internet in the first place.
However, the talk about disabling printers without this update makes me think I should probably block it.
It’s not that difficult to go into your router and just block all external traffic from a device so yes I trust mine not to phone home.
You would think that everybody owning a 3D printer would at least be somewhat of a tinkerer and therefore oppose this. Looking around however I’ve already seen a frustrating amount of people ridiculing the people calling this out. You’re probably right though and the people who don’t care will probably mostly have gathered around Bambu.
The whole point of bambu was that it was a 3d printer for people who didn’t want to tinker.
The people on this sub assume everyone who buys products do a ton of research on the companies making those products instead of just watching a couple reviews.
Most people are not as informed as those that appear in a dedicated 3d printing sub.
This may sound like a dumb idea. But cant we just fork there firmware and flash our own? It runs klipper under the hood which means its a gpl license?
–edit there is X1plus firmware which is opensourced
They have their own closed firmware I think. So someone has to create a new one from scratch for each product.
Prusa for the win yet again. I recently upgraded to MK4, and the thing just keeps. On. Going. Great customer support. They work with 3rd party suppiers instead of against them. Worth every cent.
I had a side gig as the printer mechanic for a small company that 3D printed bracketry for their product. They used both genuine and “knockoff” (open source ftw) Prusa Mk3s. I’d kinda like to staple Josef Prusa’s foreskin to the ceiling. I think it would make him have better ideas than the extruder-and-hot-end-assembly that those machines currently have. Deal breaking issues I’ve had with them in service:
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Nothing is connectorized at the business end. If you need to replace either of the two fans, the extruder motor, the PINDA probe, the temperature sensor, the heater cartridge, you have to partially disassemble the extruder mechanism and unwrap the wiring harness. The filament runout sensor is connectorized at the tiny little board, but…
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The wiring harness passes through a hole in the back of the carriage plate and most of the wires have to fit into one of two little slots as the extruder mechanism is attached to the carriage. It’s really easy to pinch or sever wires like this, and it means you can’t replace a broken fan or something without partial disassembly.
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The PINDA probe mount is about 3 planck lengths thick. It’s subject to some load from the thickness of the PINDA probe’s cable, it’s rather near the hot end and the heat plate, so I’ve seen them warp or break under continuous use. And it’s built into a foundational part of the mechanism so it’s not a quick swap, it’s a 100% teardown and rebuild from scratch.
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The whole thing is a demented sandwich with like 25 printed plastic parts. It’s a convoluted thing to work on, even if it’s not printed in gloss black so you can make out the shape of everything. But they print it in gloss black.
-It’s not designed to be built up as an assembly that can be easily and quickly attached and detached from the printer. In service, this makes it impossible to have a spare extruder assembly built up so when you get “Number 3 needs a new nozzle” you can swap in the spare assembly, return the machine to service, and then work on the part at your leisure. No, the production manager is breathing down your neck with a machine in many pieces. Hand me my stapler, I just want to talk to him.
- Those goddamn pressed in square nuts. If you want to re-use the hardware because one of the many plastic pieces partially broke in a way that means you HAVE to replace it, re-using the hardware is just one more jumper cable to the cornea.
It’s not specific to the Extruder mechanism, but because nothing is connectorized at the business end, you end up having to open the main board’s enclosure and dealing with shit in there, and there isn’t room. It’s turned the wrong way; the connectors and shit should be on the OUTSIDE of the printer so you could get to them easier and most of the cover should hinge or bolt off.
For an 8-bit AVR-based Mendel pattern machine they work surprisingly well when they’re in good shape but they are a PAIN IN THE TAINT to keep running in a production environment. I have the skills to do better than this but I’m not doing it for free.
Ouchie. OK, I get all that, not gonna argue.
But I’m in a completely different position as a hobbyist, I have completely different criteria.
Thanks for sharing!
Some of this I think still goes for hobbyists if they plan to buy the printer as a kit. The first (of like, eight) Prusas I built I had a hell of a time assembling the extruder mech because it’s not designed to be easy or sane to assemble, I still pinched wires, not bad enough to break anything but still. And I had built several 3D printers and a couple laser engravers prior to this.
And that PINDA probe mount is still hilariously delicate.
As a hobbyist machine that will spend most of its time powered off, they’re fine. For their gantry mechanism and the 8-bit control board, they’re surprisingly high quality if slightly slow printers.
Oh there’s another thing: The Prusa community is in the bad habit of sharing G-Code rather than STLs, because everyone everywhere has the same printer, right?
My personal printer is still my first manually leveled Folger 2020 i3 with some customization of mine, and I don’t need another.
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Yep, and the fact you can upgrade to new versions is amazing, only paying for the new parts, not a whole new printer.
Lol knew it was only a matter of time before bambu did something stupid. Always had a funny feeling about them in the back of my head, like too good to be true.
Never go proprietary when great open source alternatives exist, honestly people who bought Bambu deserve what they’re gonna get.
Y’all, I fell for it.
I bought a Bambu X1C and fully regret it. Just sent them a return request and called their product Defective by design in my RMA. I don’t expect them to acknowledge it but I figured I would send them a hefty fu first. I’m spending the rest of my afternoon downgrading firmware on this thing until I can install X1plus on it. Where am I buying my next 3D printer? Prusa? Do they have a bigger one that can print ppa-cf?
- “They played us like a damn fiddle!” Kazuhira Miller
Just did this yesterday. You won’t need the whole afternoon. It was surprisingly simple.
Could also go down the voron route as they’re big but don’t know if someone’s made cf capability but I’d bet so
Are you within the EU? If yes, there is a good chance you can force them to return it - they fall under German law as Bambu Lab EU is based in Germany and German consumer protection laws are very strict in that terms.
I’m infuriated by this change, but I’m also frustrated because they really are very good printers. There’s a reason so many people bought them and they became so popular, they are very very good.
But this change is utter bullshit, I won’t be upgrading my firmware any time soon.
As Rossman points out, they said they’ll stop you from printing if you don’t upgrade your firmware.
It’s insane.
They can fucking try.
I’m curious: what will you do then?
It’s already possible to make the printer work entirely offline but even if by some stroke they were able to disable them anyway, I’d sell it in a heartbeat.
No, they didn’t. They explicitly said that you’re free to not upgrade for now in the announcement.
They have a section in their TOS that says they can block you from using the printer if you don’t upgrade, which sucks, but that is a generic clause, doesn’t mean they’ll make use of that here, and from their communication I don’t suspect they will, at least for the time being.
If they ever advertised a use case for it, then took that use case away, they can be sued. My most recent memory if the class action against Sony when they dropped Linux support on the PS3.
A lawsuit would be the cost of doing business. They’ll raise prices by $10 to make up the loss. For reference, Sony sold 87.4 million PS3’s at a $500 each. That’s $43 Billion dollars. Sony had to pay a grand total of $3.75 million to settle the suit. That’s 0.007% of sales.
