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I am angry at the bait-and-switch Bambu is pulling. I bought one of their printers in the Black Friday sale on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and

I am angry at the bait-and-switch Bambu is pulling. I bought one of their printers in the Black Friday sale on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and open. Now they're trying to lock it down so I can't print on my own printer without using their approved software and DRM chain. It's outrageous. More info on the hacking (the first in what may be a long stupid fight): https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/bambu-connects-authentication-x-509-certificate-and-private-key-extracted/ https://hackaday.com/2025/01/19/bambu-connects-authenticatio...

gjsman-1000 2y ago
> standing it was reasonably hackable and open Not sure where you got this idea from. Despite the hacking, print from SD Card remains an option, and the device does not need an internet connection for initial setup. Version 01.08.02.00 is the first firmware version that supports offline updating, even if it is also the latest version.
nialv7 2y ago
bait-and-switch? We, those who advocate for open source 3D printers, saw it coming from miles away. This has very very clearly been their plan all along, they themselves said as much (e.g. they are doing the "apple model"). They have been very transparent about this, yet people still fell for it.
- hooverd 2y ago
  Open source didn't compete on quality for price. I could pay 2k plus 40 hours of my time for a Voron or buy something that just works. I think Prusa only put out their CoreXY offering after they realized Bambu was eating their lunch. The Apple model works because people want to print rather than tinker.
  - nialv7 2y ago
    I paid ~$750 for my 350mm Voron 2.4 kit (and, sure, 40 hours of my time. But look, you want to do 3D printing, 40 hours are just a small initial investment).
    - hooverd 2y ago
      Damn that's cheap! What vendor did you use?
    - MindSpunk 2y ago
      > But look, you want to do 3D printing, 40 hours are just a small initial investment No. None of this crap. I want to 3D print. I don't want to service industrial machinery in my spare time. Why should 3D printing require spending weekends troubleshooting machines just to keep the thing working? I want to print models not play repair technician. Vorons are fantastic printers and a fantastic kit if 3D printing itself is your hobby. 3D printing is a fantastic hobby. There's tons of fun to be had building up and dialing in a printer kit. A well tuned voron can be up with the best of the best 3D printers. If that's what you want to do go for it! But for heaven's sake I want to print models, parts and other practical things. I have other things to do and problems to solve. My 3D printer is a tool. If I have to spend just as much time working on the machine as I do using to actually print things then I'm not interested. Bambu is still the best game in town for a turn-key, just works printer. Prusa can deliver the same experience at double to triple the ticket price. A voron is not a replacement for a Bambu printer no matter how good the printers actually are.
      - nicman23 2y ago
        because 3d printing is not there yet. the whole process is basically cnc but with z hops and extruding instead of removing material. we do not even have conical slicing yet.
        abtinf 2y ago
        > because 3d printing is not there yet Ya, it is, and it’s been there for quite a while now thanks to Bambu. The X1 just works. Coming up on a year of frequent use, I can count the number of failed prints on one hand. It’s incredible.
        nicman23 2y ago
        i do not believe you. it is mostly a material issue not a printer issue
  - seabird 2y ago
    There's a middle ground between the Apple model and assembling everything yourself.
  - harrall 2y ago
    Well Prusa was open and did compete. But for 3D printers that worked out of the box under $1000, Prusa had no real competition itself. The Mk3 came out in 2017 and I swear Prusa just sat on their laurels. I was a Mk3s+ owner (well, still am) and was pretty disappointed how little improved with the Mk4. Bambu’s competition was Prusa and they clearly strived to improve over what Prusa had accomplished.
    - bushbaba 2y ago
      I wondered if the bamboo was sold for a loss
      - GuB-42 2y ago
        Bambu Labs printers are not cheap. Even their entry level A1 printer is twice the price of an Ender3. Sure, it is a better printer, but it is clear that they are going for scale, and most of what makes them better is in the software rather than in using premium hardware.
      - esskay 2y ago
        initially maybe but the way the printers are built makes for cheap mass production. Theres no special sauce in the hardware, it's all low cost off the shelf stuff, it's just optimised very well.
    - nirvdrum 2y ago
      I wasn’t really sold on the 4/4S, but I recently upgraded a 3S+ to a 4S and am amazed how much improved. The new touchscreen LCD is a huge improvement over the old two line monochrome LCD. Remote access and wife printing is a nice plus — I don’t even run OctoPi anymore. Automatic bed leveling and no more Live Z tweaking for each sheet has been a major quality of life upgrade and eliminates one of the major pain points in swapping out nozzles. The nozzle is much easier to swap out and is now high flow. Add in Input Shaping and it prints significantly faster. I hadn’t had any experience with the new platform prior to this upgrade and I skipped over the MK4, but the 4S upgrade is a significant step up over the 3S/3S+. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the upgrade kit — that took much longer than expected to complete (about two days) and I regret not buying a new printer instead. But, I have a 3S I plan to upgrade to 3.5 just to get the new electronics; that upgrade is far less intensive. If you haven’t tried out a 4S you might be pleasantly surprised by how much nicer it is than the 3S+.
  - beeflet 2y ago
    it just works until it doesn't
  - moooo99 2y ago
    > Open source didn't compete on quality for price. Well, Open Source did compete on one quality very well: being open, hackable and staying that way. With this being removed from Bambu lab printers it seems as if this is a very much valued aspect for many 3D printing enthusiasts, yet few people were willing to compromise for this aspect. Apparently it is true, you don’t know how much you value something until you don’t have it anymore
  - kamranjon 2y ago
    Curious if anyone has tried the Core XY printers from Creality? I think they use open source software and are generally in the same ballpark as the Bambu printers price-wise. Also saw they have a similar AMS style system as well.
  - pandemic_region 2y ago
    > The Apple model works because people want to print rather than tinker. Entirely this. I bought my A1 mini over the Christmas holidays and couldn't be happier with it, it's my first 3D printer. Searching for models on Makerworld, adjusting tiny bits here and there if needed and print. It just works and I don't really care about anything else, much like my Brother printer.
- DrBenCarson 2y ago
  AFAIK, Apple has never retroactively removed functionality from devices people already purchased Selling a walled garden is one thing, building walls around a garden you already bought is another thing entirely
  - ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
    This is the Google model then. Base everything on open source, even allow unofficial builds of your operating system (LineageOS, Graphene), but slowly introduce more and more device attestation and DRM so it becomes de facto impossible to actually use anything but the closed builds because everything from banking apps and electronic identification apps to streaming apps will refuse to run on your "unsafe" operating system.
    - Arch-TK 2y ago
      Currently the only thing which won't run on a non-google blessed android build is google wallet, although a lot of applications rely on google's proprietary services exposed through google play. I've not ran into any banking applications which won't run on a non-google build of android (as then they would only run on a pixel). That being said, I refuse to seriously bank with any bank which doesn't offer a functioning website. My main bank offers an app but you have to wholesale switch to it.
      - jumski 2y ago
        Revolut stopped working for me on GrapheneOS with an official message "Sorry, Revolut is not supported on devices with custom firmware".
        piaste 2y ago
        Do you have the sandboxed Play Services installed? It works fine for me on Graphene (just checked). That said, the recommendation I always give, and personally follow: keep a spare phone in a drawer somewhere, with official Android installed, a Google account, and use it exclusively for business purposes - banking, government services, and the email account you use for those (separate from the one you use for everything else). Nothing else, no messaging, socials, browsing, or games. Then you're free to keep your personal phone FOSS and as private as you like, without fear of getting locked out of important stuff due to a crappy Google® SafetyNet® upgrade.
- maverwa 2y ago
  As someone who recently bought a bambu printer, I have to agree: I am not surprised. Still disappointed, but in no way surprised. The "apple experience" is why I went for a bambu device (along with the price, and some excellent recommendations from friends). I was even surpised that the "LAN Mode" actually works somewhat good. Should have got a prusa...
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  Come on even makerbot wasn’t that blatant. I believe a lot of us haven’t seen it coming.
- LeoPanthera 2y ago
  "Fell for it" implies that everyone buying a Bambu printer expected some degree of openness. Maybe some customers actually want an "Apple model", where the device mostly looks after itself and "just works" as much as possible.
- stavros 2y ago
  I bought a printer. It had some stuff. I didn't want that stuff to be gone after I bought it. That's a bait-and-switch, because they didn't explicitly say "be aware, that stuff is going away on Jan 2025".
  - op00to 2y ago
    They never officially supported compatibility with Orca, or Home Assistant. Vendors break compatibility with unsupported stuff all the time. Don’t make purchase decisions on unsupported features if you’re gonna get all bent out of shape about it.
    - stavros 2y ago
      They officially supported me printing without an Internet connection, which is stopping now.
      - rickdeckard 2y ago
        Sorry to potentially pour oil into fire here, but I'm curious: did they really? "Officially support" printing without internet connection? Was this explicitly documented as a feature or did this just "happen to work" as you expected? A lawsuit may have some leverage to find that something could have been "reasonably expected" to work in a certain way, but that's quite uncertain territory. i.e. I would expect an Apple Watch to also work with Android Devices, but this was never officially supported by Apple and it's arguable whether it was reasonable for me to even expect this.
        nullc 2y ago
        Yes, "lan mode" is an officially supported advertised feature, where you can happily print on an isolated network. (though as of this morning it now sounds like they're backing off after public backlash)
        rickdeckard 2y ago
- junon 2y ago
  Good for you. Kind of a non sequitur, though, and gaslight-ey at that.
- nullstyle 2y ago
  no, it hasn't been their clear plan all along, and blaming the victims is not advocating for open source 3d printers. Fully open source, DIY 3d printers that are available today suck compared to Bambu. The commercial offerings built on top of Orca (I have a magneto X) suck compared to bambu. The 3d printing community just slapped down heygears for similar BS to what bambu is pulling right now. Once Bambu hire some better software devs and sort out their issues, open access will return, I bet.
  - cap11235 2y ago
    Apologists are crazy. It's clearly shit
    - nullstyle 2y ago
      Its clearly shit, but you're delusional if you think I'm an apologist.
    - nullstyle 2y ago
      oh, and look, the backlash is already starting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91kfolYkRNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91kfolYkRNM I'm not saying I wouldn't love for an fully open source printer company to have the quality and velocity of development that the bambu has (AMS-compatible TPU, delicious), I'm saying people who are making "It's clearly X... You should have known Y" aren't providing useful perspective nor are they accurate. Looking at your post history shows this.
- asveikau 2y ago
  I got into 3d printing a few years ago and noticed the same, bambu made me nervous for exactly this. But the fanboyism and shilling in the 3d printing community is intense. If you mentioned these misgivings you'd get flamed. If you bought or enjoyed another printer people would advise you to sell it and buy Bambu. Lots of people in various threads seemed to defer to that kind of expert advice. I think there is/was a similar fanaticism for Prusa going on, but it seems a little less at the forefront since Bambu.
Gigachad 2y ago
You can print of an SD card without any special software or online services, the same as you can on Prusa printers. It's just the server/internet stuff that's locked down. Which I wish was open too, but it's still has fully unrestricted local printing functionality.
- hatsunearu 2y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1i548m9/this_is_pathetic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1i548m9/this_is_p... Looks like it's not true?
  - Aaron2222 2y ago
    I _think_ that's browsing the SD card from Bambu Studio when the printer's set to LAN Mode, not printing from SD on the printer itself.
    - Gigachad 2y ago
      Yeah this looks to be the case. All of this change was prompted by the fact that malicious software was triggering prints over the network. So now they have locked it down so the printer can verify prints came from the actual account owner. Printing directly from SD cards via the little touch screen is unchanged since networked computers can’t do that.
      - hatsunearu 2y ago
        I really really hope people saying this is a nothingburger is actually right, because I do have a P1S, use orcaslicer, and would like it to continue to work. Hoping this is just a miscommunication.
        wongarsu 2y ago
        Bambu Connect is explicitly about allowing you to continue to use your favorite slicer. They make it less convenient (instead of pressing print you now have to save, load the file in Bambu Connect and then press print), but they don't prevent you from doing it. Once the update actually rolls out to the P1S obviously. Which may not even happen with the current backlash
mattclarkdotnet 2y ago
That makes as much sense as saying you bought an Apple laptop expecting it to be hackable
i5heu 2y ago
Is this a defect under the EU law? If so one could get a refund :)
NietTim 2y ago
> on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and open I, honestly, have no idea why you thought that. Bambulab has been under fire from the very beginning about not being open at all and not contributing back to the open source community they're build on. I bought one of their printers during black friday too, it took me a long time to get over the fact that it isn't an open printer, and I never want to go back to tinkering for hours to get meh quality prints.
- mls-pl 2y ago
  And let them be closed-source as long as they give you ability to print without calling home or even without internet connection.
  - btreecat 2y ago
    I didn't realize that closed source means you the end user get to dictate how the manufacturer implements features.
madeofpalk 2y ago
> on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and open Where did this understanding come from? I'm pretty happy with my Bambu printer, but I was never under any understanding that it was hackable, let alone open. Since the beginning I was slightly frustrated at the RFID fillament spools not being open-enough for others.
nico 2y ago
If you are looking for alternatives, I highly recommend the Qidi q1 pro Despite an initial issue with the hot end (which was easy and fast enough to fix with help from support). I’ve been really happy with it It prints pretty much anything. Fast, reliable and very cheap compared to equivalent printers in the market
- ActionHank 2y ago
  Voron for life
dspillett 2y ago
> on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and open While this lock down doesn't seem right it is far from unexpected, I question the amount of research done prior to your Black Friday purchase (BF and well-thought-out-decisions often do not go hang-in-hand!)… I bought one (an A1 with the multi-material add-on) some months before that in full knowledge that the company would prefer to funnel people into a walled garden because if you look anywhere you'll find proponents of other makes warning that exactly this is possible & likely, with the "must take many steps to print without talking to their servers" being the key evidence in those warnings. Good reasons to buy a BBL machine (at least my reasoning when I did): * They work out of the box more so than many of the competition (many will say "X is better or better value, if you spend Y amount of time tuning" which while often correct, I wasn't looking to spend that time tuning), certainly more so than others at similar prices. * QoL features (good auto leveling, dynamic flow control) that weren't exactly ubiquitous on similarly priced or cheaper machines. * Certainly in the case of the newest A1/A1-Mini line: a working MMU option cheaper than you find in other ranges (some manufacturers have started addressing this and the out-of-box experience, in their product lines, 2025 could be an interesting year), and very easy nozzle changes (useful if you want to both do detailed minis (without going resin) and mostly larger items). * For me, the handling of the A1 issues early last year (quickly acknowledging a potential safety issue and publishing mitigation guidelines, full recall or fix-at-home options when it became clear the issue was more significant) was a point in their favour wrt after-sales giving-a-shit. Obviously not a point against others as we don't know how they'd react until it happens, of course. There are regular complaints of slow support response more generally, but there are for other printer manufacturers too and, well, pretty much all consumer facing industry these days. * The official documentation & videos, maintenance & troubleshooting guides etc, seemed to me to be more coherent than some other offerings (though searching for "<my problem> reddit" is still a thing!). Absolutely terrible reasons to buy into BBL, long before this storm: * Openness (software). From the get go their offering has the trappings of a more controlled garden than the 3D printing community were used to. * Openness (hardware). While there are some compatible 3rd party after-market parts, there isn't the able-to-build-your-own feel you see elsewhere with people using different extruder nozzles, cooling options, and so on. -------- This isn't a great analogy, but: BBL is an Apple (though not quite on price) to the rest of the 3D printing industry's Linux and it only takes a small amount of information to see that before buying. If I upgrade (or have to replace, or just decide to get a second) then maybe I'll go elsewhere. I'm more confident I could get other others working well, manufacturers are addressing the points that have allowed BBL to take so much of the market & mindshare in a short time, but the key thing against BBL (not being open like much of the rest of 3D printing) is something I was well aware of when buying (it did make me think twice) so I can't be too mad about it. Now if they try stop people using 3rd party filament, like the traditional printing industry with ink & toner, which is far from impossible, then I'll feel they've conned me.
op00to 2y ago
“Hackable” and “open” were never advertised or officially supported by Bambu. It is foolish to make a purchase decision based on an unsupported and unadvertised feature, and while you can be angry that seems silly.
dagmx 2y ago
I don’t understand why you think it was hackable or open? Since the launch of the X1, it’s been closed firmware and tightly controlled. That’s always been the compromise people make to get one. I’d really like to understand what bait and switch you think has happened, and what you could do before with officially sanctioned methods that you can’t now?
ActionHank 2y ago
They were selling at or sometimes below the price point of printers that you build yourself. They're good products, and they are clearly selling at a low enough price point to push for market capture. The pricing, special features tied into their own AMS + filaments, special features tied into their own slicer. These all indicate that they were building towards this sort of behaviour.
nuforia 2y ago
[dead]
gamblor956 2y ago
Bambu has never advertised their printers as hackable or open. Indeed, they advertise the exact opposite: that you won't need to do anything to it to get it to work. That people can hack the Bambu printers is a bonus.
snapetom 2y ago
Sorry, but if you did research on Bambu's and came away with them being open and hackable, you didn't do enough research. I dove into 3D printing a year ago. I settled on the P1S because its reputation for "just working" and good for beginners. I wasn't interested in attaching a Pi to it, run Klipper on it, I wasn't interested in steep learning curves and choosing from a myriad of slicers. I wasn't interested in "calibrating more than printing" with the Enders that one friend warned me about. I needed it for one simple, but big project and it worked great. Since then I expanded to getting the enclosure, AMS, and messing around with Orca. The Bambu is very accomodating to learn and grow more and I don't regret the decision at all.

gjsman-1000 2y ago

> standing it was reasonably hackable and open Not sure where you got this idea from. Despite the hacking, print from SD Card remains an option, and the device does not need an internet connection for initial setup. Version 01.08.02.00 is the first firmware version that supports offline updating, even if it is also the latest version.

nialv7 2y ago

bait-and-switch? We, those who advocate for open source 3D printers, saw it coming from miles away. This has very very clearly been their plan all along, they themselves said as much (e.g. they are doing the "apple model"). They have been very transparent about this, yet people still fell for it.

hooverd 2y ago
Open source didn't compete on quality for price. I could pay 2k plus 40 hours of my time for a Voron or buy something that just works. I think Prusa only put out their CoreXY offering after they realized Bambu was eating their lunch. The Apple model works because people want to print rather than tinker.
- nialv7 2y ago
  I paid ~$750 for my 350mm Voron 2.4 kit (and, sure, 40 hours of my time. But look, you want to do 3D printing, 40 hours are just a small initial investment).
  - hooverd 2y ago
    Damn that's cheap! What vendor did you use?
  - MindSpunk 2y ago
    > But look, you want to do 3D printing, 40 hours are just a small initial investment No. None of this crap. I want to 3D print. I don't want to service industrial machinery in my spare time. Why should 3D printing require spending weekends troubleshooting machines just to keep the thing working? I want to print models not play repair technician. Vorons are fantastic printers and a fantastic kit if 3D printing itself is your hobby. 3D printing is a fantastic hobby. There's tons of fun to be had building up and dialing in a printer kit. A well tuned voron can be up with the best of the best 3D printers. If that's what you want to do go for it! But for heaven's sake I want to print models, parts and other practical things. I have other things to do and problems to solve. My 3D printer is a tool. If I have to spend just as much time working on the machine as I do using to actually print things then I'm not interested. Bambu is still the best game in town for a turn-key, just works printer. Prusa can deliver the same experience at double to triple the ticket price. A voron is not a replacement for a Bambu printer no matter how good the printers actually are.
    - nicman23 2y ago
      because 3d printing is not there yet. the whole process is basically cnc but with z hops and extruding instead of removing material. we do not even have conical slicing yet.
      - abtinf 2y ago
        > because 3d printing is not there yet Ya, it is, and it’s been there for quite a while now thanks to Bambu. The X1 just works. Coming up on a year of frequent use, I can count the number of failed prints on one hand. It’s incredible.
        nicman23 2y ago
        i do not believe you. it is mostly a material issue not a printer issue
- seabird 2y ago
  There's a middle ground between the Apple model and assembling everything yourself.
- harrall 2y ago
  Well Prusa was open and did compete. But for 3D printers that worked out of the box under $1000, Prusa had no real competition itself. The Mk3 came out in 2017 and I swear Prusa just sat on their laurels. I was a Mk3s+ owner (well, still am) and was pretty disappointed how little improved with the Mk4. Bambu’s competition was Prusa and they clearly strived to improve over what Prusa had accomplished.
  - bushbaba 2y ago
    I wondered if the bamboo was sold for a loss
    - GuB-42 2y ago
      Bambu Labs printers are not cheap. Even their entry level A1 printer is twice the price of an Ender3. Sure, it is a better printer, but it is clear that they are going for scale, and most of what makes them better is in the software rather than in using premium hardware.
    - esskay 2y ago
      initially maybe but the way the printers are built makes for cheap mass production. Theres no special sauce in the hardware, it's all low cost off the shelf stuff, it's just optimised very well.
  - nirvdrum 2y ago
    I wasn’t really sold on the 4/4S, but I recently upgraded a 3S+ to a 4S and am amazed how much improved. The new touchscreen LCD is a huge improvement over the old two line monochrome LCD. Remote access and wife printing is a nice plus — I don’t even run OctoPi anymore. Automatic bed leveling and no more Live Z tweaking for each sheet has been a major quality of life upgrade and eliminates one of the major pain points in swapping out nozzles. The nozzle is much easier to swap out and is now high flow. Add in Input Shaping and it prints significantly faster. I hadn’t had any experience with the new platform prior to this upgrade and I skipped over the MK4, but the 4S upgrade is a significant step up over the 3S/3S+. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the upgrade kit — that took much longer than expected to complete (about two days) and I regret not buying a new printer instead. But, I have a 3S I plan to upgrade to 3.5 just to get the new electronics; that upgrade is far less intensive. If you haven’t tried out a 4S you might be pleasantly surprised by how much nicer it is than the 3S+.
- beeflet 2y ago
  it just works until it doesn't
- moooo99 2y ago
  > Open source didn't compete on quality for price. Well, Open Source did compete on one quality very well: being open, hackable and staying that way. With this being removed from Bambu lab printers it seems as if this is a very much valued aspect for many 3D printing enthusiasts, yet few people were willing to compromise for this aspect. Apparently it is true, you don’t know how much you value something until you don’t have it anymore
- kamranjon 2y ago
  Curious if anyone has tried the Core XY printers from Creality? I think they use open source software and are generally in the same ballpark as the Bambu printers price-wise. Also saw they have a similar AMS style system as well.
- pandemic_region 2y ago
  > The Apple model works because people want to print rather than tinker. Entirely this. I bought my A1 mini over the Christmas holidays and couldn't be happier with it, it's my first 3D printer. Searching for models on Makerworld, adjusting tiny bits here and there if needed and print. It just works and I don't really care about anything else, much like my Brother printer.
DrBenCarson 2y ago
AFAIK, Apple has never retroactively removed functionality from devices people already purchased Selling a walled garden is one thing, building walls around a garden you already bought is another thing entirely
- ulrikrasmussen 2y ago
  This is the Google model then. Base everything on open source, even allow unofficial builds of your operating system (LineageOS, Graphene), but slowly introduce more and more device attestation and DRM so it becomes de facto impossible to actually use anything but the closed builds because everything from banking apps and electronic identification apps to streaming apps will refuse to run on your "unsafe" operating system.
  - Arch-TK 2y ago
    Currently the only thing which won't run on a non-google blessed android build is google wallet, although a lot of applications rely on google's proprietary services exposed through google play. I've not ran into any banking applications which won't run on a non-google build of android (as then they would only run on a pixel). That being said, I refuse to seriously bank with any bank which doesn't offer a functioning website. My main bank offers an app but you have to wholesale switch to it.
    - jumski 2y ago
      Revolut stopped working for me on GrapheneOS with an official message "Sorry, Revolut is not supported on devices with custom firmware".
      - piaste 2y ago
        Do you have the sandboxed Play Services installed? It works fine for me on Graphene (just checked). That said, the recommendation I always give, and personally follow: keep a spare phone in a drawer somewhere, with official Android installed, a Google account, and use it exclusively for business purposes - banking, government services, and the email account you use for those (separate from the one you use for everything else). Nothing else, no messaging, socials, browsing, or games. Then you're free to keep your personal phone FOSS and as private as you like, without fear of getting locked out of important stuff due to a crappy Google® SafetyNet® upgrade.
maverwa 2y ago
As someone who recently bought a bambu printer, I have to agree: I am not surprised. Still disappointed, but in no way surprised. The "apple experience" is why I went for a bambu device (along with the price, and some excellent recommendations from friends). I was even surpised that the "LAN Mode" actually works somewhat good. Should have got a prusa...
BoredPositron 2y ago
Come on even makerbot wasn’t that blatant. I believe a lot of us haven’t seen it coming.
LeoPanthera 2y ago
"Fell for it" implies that everyone buying a Bambu printer expected some degree of openness. Maybe some customers actually want an "Apple model", where the device mostly looks after itself and "just works" as much as possible.
stavros 2y ago
I bought a printer. It had some stuff. I didn't want that stuff to be gone after I bought it. That's a bait-and-switch, because they didn't explicitly say "be aware, that stuff is going away on Jan 2025".
- op00to 2y ago
  They never officially supported compatibility with Orca, or Home Assistant. Vendors break compatibility with unsupported stuff all the time. Don’t make purchase decisions on unsupported features if you’re gonna get all bent out of shape about it.
  - stavros 2y ago
    They officially supported me printing without an Internet connection, which is stopping now.
    - rickdeckard 2y ago
      Sorry to potentially pour oil into fire here, but I'm curious: did they really? "Officially support" printing without internet connection? Was this explicitly documented as a feature or did this just "happen to work" as you expected? A lawsuit may have some leverage to find that something could have been "reasonably expected" to work in a certain way, but that's quite uncertain territory. i.e. I would expect an Apple Watch to also work with Android Devices, but this was never officially supported by Apple and it's arguable whether it was reasonable for me to even expect this.
      - nullc 2y ago
        Yes, "lan mode" is an officially supported advertised feature, where you can happily print on an isolated network. (though as of this morning it now sounds like they're backing off after public backlash)
        rickdeckard 2y ago
junon 2y ago
Good for you. Kind of a non sequitur, though, and gaslight-ey at that.
nullstyle 2y ago
no, it hasn't been their clear plan all along, and blaming the victims is not advocating for open source 3d printers. Fully open source, DIY 3d printers that are available today suck compared to Bambu. The commercial offerings built on top of Orca (I have a magneto X) suck compared to bambu. The 3d printing community just slapped down heygears for similar BS to what bambu is pulling right now. Once Bambu hire some better software devs and sort out their issues, open access will return, I bet.
- cap11235 2y ago
  Apologists are crazy. It's clearly shit
  - nullstyle 2y ago
    Its clearly shit, but you're delusional if you think I'm an apologist.
  - nullstyle 2y ago
    oh, and look, the backlash is already starting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91kfolYkRNM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91kfolYkRNM I'm not saying I wouldn't love for an fully open source printer company to have the quality and velocity of development that the bambu has (AMS-compatible TPU, delicious), I'm saying people who are making "It's clearly X... You should have known Y" aren't providing useful perspective nor are they accurate. Looking at your post history shows this.
asveikau 2y ago
I got into 3d printing a few years ago and noticed the same, bambu made me nervous for exactly this. But the fanboyism and shilling in the 3d printing community is intense. If you mentioned these misgivings you'd get flamed. If you bought or enjoyed another printer people would advise you to sell it and buy Bambu. Lots of people in various threads seemed to defer to that kind of expert advice. I think there is/was a similar fanaticism for Prusa going on, but it seems a little less at the forefront since Bambu.

Gigachad 2y ago

You can print of an SD card without any special software or online services, the same as you can on Prusa printers. It's just the server/internet stuff that's locked down. Which I wish was open too, but it's still has fully unrestricted local printing functionality.

hatsunearu 2y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1i548m9/this_is_pathetic/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/1i548m9/this_is_p... Looks like it's not true?
- Aaron2222 2y ago
  I _think_ that's browsing the SD card from Bambu Studio when the printer's set to LAN Mode, not printing from SD on the printer itself.
  - Gigachad 2y ago
    Yeah this looks to be the case. All of this change was prompted by the fact that malicious software was triggering prints over the network. So now they have locked it down so the printer can verify prints came from the actual account owner. Printing directly from SD cards via the little touch screen is unchanged since networked computers can’t do that.
    - hatsunearu 2y ago
      I really really hope people saying this is a nothingburger is actually right, because I do have a P1S, use orcaslicer, and would like it to continue to work. Hoping this is just a miscommunication.
      - wongarsu 2y ago
        Bambu Connect is explicitly about allowing you to continue to use your favorite slicer. They make it less convenient (instead of pressing print you now have to save, load the file in Bambu Connect and then press print), but they don't prevent you from doing it. Once the update actually rolls out to the P1S obviously. Which may not even happen with the current backlash

mattclarkdotnet 2y ago

That makes as much sense as saying you bought an Apple laptop expecting it to be hackable

i5heu 2y ago

Is this a defect under the EU law? If so one could get a refund :)

NietTim 2y ago

> on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and open I, honestly, have no idea why you thought that. Bambulab has been under fire from the very beginning about not being open at all and not contributing back to the open source community they're build on. I bought one of their printers during black friday too, it took me a long time to get over the fact that it isn't an open printer, and I never want to go back to tinkering for hours to get meh quality prints.

mls-pl 2y ago
And let them be closed-source as long as they give you ability to print without calling home or even without internet connection.
- btreecat 2y ago
  I didn't realize that closed source means you the end user get to dictate how the manufacturer implements features.

madeofpalk 2y ago

> on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and open Where did this understanding come from? I'm pretty happy with my Bambu printer, but I was never under any understanding that it was hackable, let alone open. Since the beginning I was slightly frustrated at the RFID fillament spools not being open-enough for others.

nico 2y ago

If you are looking for alternatives, I highly recommend the Qidi q1 pro Despite an initial issue with the hot end (which was easy and fast enough to fix with help from support). I’ve been really happy with it It prints pretty much anything. Fast, reliable and very cheap compared to equivalent printers in the market

ActionHank 2y ago
Voron for life

dspillett 2y ago

> on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and open While this lock down doesn't seem right it is far from unexpected, I question the amount of research done prior to your Black Friday purchase (BF and well-thought-out-decisions often do not go hang-in-hand!)… I bought one (an A1 with the multi-material add-on) some months before that in full knowledge that the company would prefer to funnel people into a walled garden because if you look anywhere you'll find proponents of other makes warning that exactly this is possible & likely, with the "must take many steps to print without talking to their servers" being the key evidence in those warnings. Good reasons to buy a BBL machine (at least my reasoning when I did): * They work out of the box more so than many of the competition (many will say "X is better or better value, if you spend Y amount of time tuning" which while often correct, I wasn't looking to spend that time tuning), certainly more so than others at similar prices. * QoL features (good auto leveling, dynamic flow control) that weren't exactly ubiquitous on similarly priced or cheaper machines. * Certainly in the case of the newest A1/A1-Mini line: a working MMU option cheaper than you find in other ranges (some manufacturers have started addressing this and the out-of-box experience, in their product lines, 2025 could be an interesting year), and very easy nozzle changes (useful if you want to both do detailed minis (without going resin) and mostly larger items). * For me, the handling of the A1 issues early last year (quickly acknowledging a potential safety issue and publishing mitigation guidelines, full recall or fix-at-home options when it became clear the issue was more significant) was a point in their favour wrt after-sales giving-a-shit. Obviously not a point against others as we don't know how they'd react until it happens, of course. There are regular complaints of slow support response more generally, but there are for other printer manufacturers too and, well, pretty much all consumer facing industry these days. * The official documentation & videos, maintenance & troubleshooting guides etc, seemed to me to be more coherent than some other offerings (though searching for "<my problem> reddit" is still a thing!). Absolutely terrible reasons to buy into BBL, long before this storm: * Openness (software). From the get go their offering has the trappings of a more controlled garden than the 3D printing community were used to. * Openness (hardware). While there are some compatible 3rd party after-market parts, there isn't the able-to-build-your-own feel you see elsewhere with people using different extruder nozzles, cooling options, and so on. -------- This isn't a great analogy, but: BBL is an Apple (though not quite on price) to the rest of the 3D printing industry's Linux and it only takes a small amount of information to see that before buying. If I upgrade (or have to replace, or just decide to get a second) then maybe I'll go elsewhere. I'm more confident I could get other others working well, manufacturers are addressing the points that have allowed BBL to take so much of the market & mindshare in a short time, but the key thing against BBL (not being open like much of the rest of 3D printing) is something I was well aware of when buying (it did make me think twice) so I can't be too mad about it. Now if they try stop people using 3rd party filament, like the traditional printing industry with ink & toner, which is far from impossible, then I'll feel they've conned me.

op00to 2y ago

“Hackable” and “open” were never advertised or officially supported by Bambu. It is foolish to make a purchase decision based on an unsupported and unadvertised feature, and while you can be angry that seems silly.

dagmx 2y ago

I don’t understand why you think it was hackable or open? Since the launch of the X1, it’s been closed firmware and tightly controlled. That’s always been the compromise people make to get one. I’d really like to understand what bait and switch you think has happened, and what you could do before with officially sanctioned methods that you can’t now?

ActionHank 2y ago

They were selling at or sometimes below the price point of printers that you build yourself. They're good products, and they are clearly selling at a low enough price point to push for market capture. The pricing, special features tied into their own AMS + filaments, special features tied into their own slicer. These all indicate that they were building towards this sort of behaviour.

nuforia 2y ago

[dead]

gamblor956 2y ago

Bambu has never advertised their printers as hackable or open. Indeed, they advertise the exact opposite: that you won't need to do anything to it to get it to work. That people can hack the Bambu printers is a bonus.

snapetom 2y ago

Sorry, but if you did research on Bambu's and came away with them being open and hackable, you didn't do enough research. I dove into 3D printing a year ago. I settled on the P1S because its reputation for "just working" and good for beginners. I wasn't interested in attaching a Pi to it, run Klipper on it, I wasn't interested in steep learning curves and choosing from a myriad of slicers. I wasn't interested in "calibrating more than printing" with the Enders that one friend warned me about. I needed it for one simple, but big project and it worked great. Since then I expanded to getting the enclosure, AMS, and messing around with Orca. The Bambu is very accomodating to learn and grow more and I don't regret the decision at all.