tl;dr Don’t hate on people who got tricked into buying a Bambu printer. Direct your hatred to Bambu itself.
We all know about the anti-consumer Bambu Printer changes by now. But I think it’s important to remember not to make fun of people who already bought one. In fact, most agree with you that these changes are unacceptable. So those people already got kicked in the gut.
As someone who bought from Prusa instead of Bambu, I completely understand the feeling of “Ha, I told you so!” But spreading that on every post is actually counter-productive. Remember that most people who bought a Bambu printer did so because it topped every “best 3D printers” list, had tons of sponsored content, and were affordable easy-to-use printers. Not everybody heard about the potential for such anti-consumer changes to be made. And many who did know were often misled into thinking it wouldn’t happen.
Instead of being critical of individuals, be critical of Bambu themselves. Bambu are the ones who screwed over tons of people who love this hobby. If we want to see 3D printing be an open-source style hobby, then we need to help people see the value in that. So if anything, this is the chance for you to make more people aware of good, open systems. If you make fun of people and point fingers at them, you are just making them defensive. Don’t make them direct any hatred at you that could be directed at the company itself.
Hope this isn’t too preachy. I just wanted to get this out there.
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Instead of being critical of individuals, be critical of Bambu themselves.
Why not both?
The writing has been on the wall since the beginning. They had all the calling cards of enshittification. No one can pretend like they didn’t know this was coming, they just didn’t care.
Because they’re really good out of the box printers and prior to this for somebody that wanted something that “just works” it would be Prusa or Bambu I’d recommend.
I love tinkering and tweaking and I’m building a Voron but it’s hard to understand how overwhelming choices can be and it’s understandable that people would choose to lock into an ecosystem specifically because it lets them just print.
I would never buy a Bambu and wouldn’t recommend it for anybody building a company with essential components having them in the pipeline but then again most people aren’t that aware and their research, understandably, led them to buying one.
I agree with OP, this is an opportunity to be empathic and to help them. And they’re learning the hard way a lesson they’ll take forward. I’d prefer that lesson to be “more careful” and not “these people are snobs”
I’d prefer that lesson to be “more careful” and not “these people are snobs”
This sums it up perfectly! Don’t make consumer-friendly synonymous with “snobs.”
Great way of putting it!
I’m super for making hobbies accessible, and let’s be real, I’d be willing to assume most of us have probably been burned by something like this in the past. Probably not a bad idea to have some sort of community resource for information, guides etc, might help some people in the future avoid it if it’s something they care about.
Also going to be realistic, I absolutely care and advocate for open products that you fully control, but I know that it just doesn’t matter to everyone.
I bought my 3D printer like 6 months ago, and I didnt end up going with a Bambu printer. But I can assure you I had no fucking clue Bambu was bad, or ready to implement anti-consumer features. My choice was based on reviews, and websites exactly as this is saying that told me which printers were the best resin printers to buy.
Then you weren’t paying attention.
Reviews never report on anti-consumer features. When was the last time you watched a phone review that said anything about the massive amount of bloatware on modern Android phones? Or Apple’s locked app ecosystem? Or the fact that their devices are completely unrepairable? Because no one cares.
Then you weren’t paying attention
You really aren’t getting the point at all. Good for you feeling all superior to other people tho. I’m sure it’s good for your self-esteem at least.
It’s not about my self-esteem, it’s about watching people fall for the same trap over and over again, and seeing industries that all start out as open-source everything and consumer-friendly be trodden on by corpos who want to take away everyone’s options and drive up pricing.
Freaking paying attention? My dude, blame Bambu and don’t go victim blaming.
I do blame Bambu. But they couldn’t do what they were doing if their “victims” weren’t buying them in droves and recommending them to everyone while ignoring all of the very obvious calling cards of enshittification.
It’s an absurd concept that there’s only ever 1 party that can be at fault for anything.
I’ll say one last time, victim blaming is not cool at all. It tells more about your character than others.
Repeating yourself adds nothing to this conversation.
Exactly my thoughts with your rephrasing.
I don’t think the printer got any worse …
I’ve put it in LAN mode, blocked it’s internet access in my router and I don’t plan to ever update the firmware. Also using orca slicer instead of bambu studio.
Prints perfectly fine. Worth every penny from my point of view.
( I agree though, that their move is extremely shitty and I won’t be revommending it to others because of that )
Glad to hear you’re able to keep using it! No reason to get rid of good hardware. I hope other people do the same.
Bit you know what you are doing, and based on the terms of service, which says they can require updates for use, could be in violation.
I agree, everyone should do this, but everyone won’t know how.
Well I almost bought one. I had to buy a cheaper one bacause of, you know, no money, but I was really sad that I wasn’t able to get the best one. Now I’m a bit happy that I didn’t
Yes, but…
I do agree partially with your statement. But (as always) it’s a little more complicated.
BambooLab was known for their walled garden approach and that they have apple as their idol. So in that sense, people buying it, did so oftentimes willingly and therefore enabled the company to pull these stunts. I’m not blaming the people for going with the most comfortable solution, but that’s usually what you get
That’s a very fair point. I also think the massive amount of outrage shows that many people didn’t know the full extent of what they were signing up for. So I think is varies from person to person.
I won’t buy my wife a Cricut for the same reason, it is a closed system that the company can decide to nickel and dime at will.
Surprised that they switched to Evil mode so soon, now everyone talks about this, and just a few days ago nobody cared and those who did were the loonies talking crazy.
Presumably now that the security keys are known, it is possible to jailbreak your printer and never deal with Bambu ever again.
Others are prepared to invest a lot of money with the knowledge that they are promoting open source. So since companies like Bambu only use open source for their closed source without the cost and without giving back to the open source community, the buyers of closed source actively harm the opensource community. As example Bambu is part of the reason why prusa, for example, is partially moving away from open source. So yes the bambu owners deserve it and I am happy.
They are good printers. It is just a crappy company showing their true colors… Which is sad for the consumers. Consumers are just the victims here. I never bought or owned a Bambu though. I always went with Prusa and now moving to Voron.
I run a repair shop, and don’t own a Bambu Labs printer - also never will. I’m not their target.
However, out of the easily 100+ customers I know that use a Bambu; maybe 2 of them use a different slicer. Most people won’t be affected by this change and it’s only communities with enthusiasts like ours that will end up caring.
That said, Bambu printers are still a MASSIVE step ahead of even their closest competition. This probably won’t stop me from recommending them to consumers in the future, because while I am a zealot; first and foremost is that my customers are able to print reliably and easily.
Additionally – The community always figures this stuff out. Bambu Slicer is open source, and I’m sure it won’t take much for them to get around this tiny little speed bump.
This was my initial worry with them to begin with, and it seems to have been founded now; but until someone comes up with a comparable ecosystem, at the same price and quality of Bambu Labs, then it’s still a no-brainer to be purchasing them for 99% of people.
You should still get mad, be vocal, and complain - they’ve reversed course before on other things (Linux Firmware) - so enough of an outcry should poke them into doing something different.
What makes you think they’re not going to do something worse in the future? Knowingly pointing people towards an abusive company is signaling to that company that this is fine and we’re willing to bend over further.
Because I’ve seen every open source company I love do the same thing over time.
Makerbot. Ultimaker. Prusa.
Remember the “Dogbone” you have to break on the buddy-boards to be able to flash your own bootloader? None of you people stopped buying Prusa back when that happened…
This hasn’t been implemented yet, so we don’t know the full details - I’m gonna wait and see where the chips fall before being so reactionary. I’m also going to be a pragmatist, and not pretend that other machines out there don’t exist. Bambu will have competition soon - the K2 already seems to be picking up steam, and Creality has a pretty good history when it comes to this kind of thing. There’s plenty of competition in the market, and Bambu printers are good enough for most people for now.
Kinda like the Glowforge (a laser cutter) when it came out - it’s got all the proprietary locked down stuff, and their users don’t care. But real C02 lasers still exist, and are popular too. There’s room for both.
I’m not discounting those users who bought, and then had a ‘feature’ removed. I believe that’s terms for a class action if they don’t allow third party slicers to be used; but I don’t think that’s the full story of what’s going on here.
As someone who does own an X1. I haven’t yet tried the other options of slicer or gone deeper down the g-code rabbit hole. I’ve only had it a few months. I bought knowing that this was a possibility but did so because of the simplicity, quality, and not wanting to spend endless hours tweaking.
One oversight I did have was the possibility that this could eventually lead to a cricut type situation of having a subscription model to even use the hardware. This means I will not be upgrading and will be keeping a closer eye on the changes that are made.
For those out of the Loop, what happened?
DRM They limit who can talk what to their printers.
Most noticeably you can only send and start prints (g-code) with their own program over the network. Either bambu studio or a “cloud” gateway from BambuLab. It is no longer possible to do this from within Prusa- or OrcaSlicer.
my take:
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for the X1C they allow to install X1Plus firmware. The community asked for it. BambuLab allowed it back then and still does.
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BambuLab sad that this will come. Only now that they have done it, most people are starting to notice.
So it sounds like you’ll still be able to put gcode on the SD card and start it from there, no?
Certainly. But that’s not what the vast majority of users want to do though.
I hope I’m wrong but it looks like they disabled the ability to do opt into the program.
I cannot join my X1C to the program currently. It just errors out or leaves me in a CloudFlare “are you human” loop.
To be fair, that’s most likely a CloudFlair problem and not a malicious action from Bambu. CloudFlair is a curse on the internet and websites that use it should be shunned and ridiculed.
This was happening a lot yesterday but I eventually got through to opt my machine in.
Interesting.
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I bought one recently enough I don’t even have it yet. Hope it’s on old firmware when it arrives 🤞
Since your printer will be drawn from “old stock” on the shelf, it’s more than likely it will have the old firmware included. Now, the new slicer versions may not function with it anymore-- and that may include Orca. But that remains to be seen.
looks like the firmware is only X series for now anyway, and i’ve purchased a P series
Bambu has stated the same is coming for us with P and A series machines also as they roll out the new protocols.
it’s true, but it means my printer definitely 100% won’t ship with this new firmware
At some point as the old stock inventory is sold out, the new inventory WILL ship with the new firmware. I’m willing to bet, new machines are being built with the new firmware as we speak. I have no idea how soon those hit the pipeline. Might be a few weeks, might take a couple months, might be today.
Printer arrived and isn’t on the latest firmware. I’ll update it to whatever the current version is, it doesn’t have the bad update on my model yet ofc. Prints really nicely though 🤠
Good luck. Hope you return it if not, and tell them why.
I’m more likely to just use it offline only via SD card. It’s my first printer and I don’t think I have it in me to tinker with them like I’ve seen is often required on some others
I’m unconcerned. I knew what I was getting into with a walled garden ecosystem, and though I didn’t expect them to dive straight into the enshittification deep end, I figures they would eventually do something fairly shady. The real question is how long it will take to release the first X1C-Klipper refit.
Same here which is why I jumped on the X1C now. Companies like this always release the good shit first and each future model always lose features and usability bit by bit.
This change is annoying but not the end of the world. I don’t regret my purchase one hit because the machine is top notch compared to what I had previously.
As it turns out, there’s already a project… https://github.com/ChazLayyd/Bambu-Lab-Klipper-Conversion/blob/main/README.md
it topped every “best 3D printers” list, had tons of sponsored content, and were affordable easy-to-use printers. Not everybody heard about the potential for such anti-consumer changes to be made.
There are a few lessons here folks… We all have to get better at consuming that’s something that we can actually control at least with respect to discretionary markets.
Deny these parasites the profit and engagement as much as possible.
Most of the people posting angry rants about this news are not Bambu owners. On the other hand, most Bambu owners have no idea anything has changed, because we didn’t buy these printers to mod or install custom firmware on or use whatever slicer tickles our fancy this week, we bought them because they Just Work™, work great, and are very reliable. I owned a hobbyist machine before and I just don’t have the time anymore. I knew exactly what tradeoff I was making when I purchased from them, so condescending assholes can keep their patronizing I Told You So to themselves: this is not for you, you have other options and that’s OK.
Side note: I also run Windows and Linux on my PC. You can diss Windows all you want but it has its uses and you’re not winning any friends outside the Linux circle jerk community by being a raging asshole about it. The Bambu hate feels exactly the same.
The people that own them will definitely notice if they start making features require a subscription or deciding that you can’t print certain objects.
We can certainly display plenty of outrage when/if that happens. Most of their engineers are ex DJI-drones guys… do DJI drones have a subscription model to fly their drones?
The engineers aren’t the ones who generally get to make those decisions.
I agree with you though, no point jumping the gun and getting angry about something that might happen
slippery slope
Kinda hard not to when every 3d printer hobbyist I know of warned people about this. But you right.
I f-in knew it from the start. I kept telling everyone. But it’s hard to listen when every youtuber and their mom switched to bambu. I don’t like Prusa all that much either, but they are A LOT better than bambu. So I blame Bambu, but also YouTubers and influencers who started peddling them from the start. I’ll stock up on E3d v6 hotends and generic extruders while they are still available.
I don’t like Prusa all that much either, but they are A LOT better than bambu.
In what aspect? Because it’s not reliability. Or speed. Or ease of repair. Or features. Or price.
Jo’s been throwing shit at the wall as fast as he can to catch up to Bambu; and that’s good for all of us - certainly. But this isn’t a Bambu vs Prusa thing here. Prusa added the dogbone that voids your warranty if you want to flash a new bootloader to the buddyboard – did you have a problem with that? Did you cry ‘slippery slope’ back then?
What about all the other great machines out there that are quickly catching up to Bambu’s feature set? The K2 seems to be quite interesting. There’s room for everyone here.
In terms of being open source and maintaining that model. Also having some of the parts actually be 3d printed. Other than that, I don’t know, Ive never owned one, never used one. It is too expensive for me for the features it has. Also xl seems to be a unique thing. Too expensive, though.
As for flashing the Prusa, I don’t follow Prusa, so I didn’t know about that one, but voiding a warranty vs locking you out isn’t the same thing really. Though I wouldn’t consider it a good move, I understand it somewhat.
If I was buying a new printer, which I won’t, I’d go for a Sovol SV08, which is somewhat of a Voron clone.
I would be highly suspcious of anything running proprietary software and connected to the open internet, especially now that you’ve got ignorant states like NJ and NY looking to prosecute people who might be making anything that vaguely resembles a gun part.
Same goes for slicers. Some of those don’t respect privacy either.
I was looking at getting the A1 with the multi material thing because it was fairly cheap and I wanted a printer that got good quality without me having to constantly tweak it like my Ender 3. Is there something else that offers similar at that price range? I just want to print good in multiple materials out of the box.
There really isn’t. That’s why Bambu has such a strong stranglehold on the market. The price/feature set balance is just sooooooo tilted in their favor right now that it’s hard to legitimately pick something else unless you are a stone wall when it comes to compromise in open source philosophy. If the open source philosophy and dogma aren’t really part of who you are, there’s no reason this change will affect you in the first place.
Prusa has a good 3d printer with it their version of the mmu but it’s more expensive. Kinda what you get when your company pays everybody fair wages.
Does anyone have 3rd party firmware, or produce a board that would compatible with existing 3rd party firmware using stock bambu wiring? Because it seems like that sort of thing could quickly be pretty popular…
Up until this change you could install and root the firmware with Bambu’s permission.
One idea that crossed my mind is that the open(ish) firmware started to edge into future product territory.
Bambu’s pages for third party firmware are still up but seem to no longer work: (I tried today) https://bambulab.com/en-us/third-party-firmware/plan?ref=blog.bambulab.com
