I made the tragic mistake of getting a Bambu printer (an X1C, with AMS even...) right before they gave all of us the middle finger. I now have it offline, running out of date firmware, connected to a special WiFi network that is isolated from the Internet.
That upset me, but now I'm pissed. Now I don't even care about their stupid printers. Now I'd like to waste Bambu Lab's time and cause problems for them.
And also, while this X1C should be going strong for years, my eyes are on Prusa should I want another printer any time soon for any reason. Less polished or not, they seem like they're still better for consumers even though they are apparently less open than they used to be. But I'm of course interested in hearing what people recommend, too. (I got an X1C because I knew it would be simple, but I don't particularly mind getting my hands dirty or anything. I did build an Ender 3 kit before that.)
Once you have a reliable printer, the workflow is mostly to slice -> send to printer -> wait and check on it every couple of hours until it's done ime. Imo it no longer super matters how much better the on-screen ui or webcam are.
Mutli-color though is where Bambu has a good leg up.
(Diluted) Vision Miner Nano Polymer Adhesive and a good bed leveling probe has done a lot to make my printer set and forget, no matter which print sheets I use.
Wasn’t the main hassle in calibrarion and Bambu was good in that and is major reason for popularity? So ”once you have a reliable printer” is kinda big thing.
What Prusa is that? Last one I've used (not my own, community lab), I had to level the bed using the sheet-of-paper-method. Which is the reason why I got a Bambu for myself.
Can anyone in the commentariat recommend a great, locally available adhesive in Japan? Vision Miner is import-only and pricey. I’ve been using glue-sticks but am ready to level up as I’m moving away from PLA.
I just have a layer of Cape hairspray, on a hardware store aluminium sheet, taped onto the moving down Z frame with Daiso acrylic foam tapes, on a RAMPS1.4 + SERVO42B modified i3-style Cartesian build, works for me.
Depending on your level of DIY-ness and willingness to handle powders, you could make some Super Goop. I've heard good things about it but haven't yet had enough bed adhesion issues to make it yet.
I don't trust it anymore. I'm using LAN mode today, I have little incentive to update. If I update to anything, it will certainly be third-party modified firmware.
I'm running my P2S in LAN mode. But I also blocked it on my router from connecting outward. Sure I can no longer use the mobile app. But BamBuddy solved that for me. It has a web UI that is mobile browser friendly.
I'm also in the same boat of regret, but for other reasons. Their support team is beyond awful. I purchased an H2S AMS combo just shy of two months ago (mostly because I saw it being praised by HNers a while back) and found out recently that the AMS they've sent me is defective. It's been truly a bizarre experience trying to deal with customer support. They told me to disassemble the AMS and swap a couple of modules that they mailed me. I did, provided them evidence that I did, and provided evidence that it didn't fix the problem. Their response was to claim that I didn't actually swap the modules and that because of that my warranty no longer applies, and then they said they'd give me a free roll of filament for my troubles (lol). At that point I began the process of invoking the consumer protections afforded to me. Called my credit card company and opened a dispute, invoked Massachusetts law M.G.L. c. 93A, and I'm about to contact my AG.
It's a shame they're going in such an anti-consumer direction, both with their gaslighting customer support and the lawfare against Orca.
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is your friend. Furthermore, the idea that you could be expected to perform technical labor to repair something is ridiculous: grandma is protected, too, and this type of service falls far outside the scope of what is reasonable.
Odd - I bought an H2C about a month ago - and the nozzle-swapping Vortek rack just wouldn't calibrate or operate - blocking even calibrating the left-nozzle from proceeeding.
However - yes, they did have me perform multiple disassembly/re-connect steps and document, and then of course every question/answer was at least a 24-hr turnaround (some delays were because I keep my printer at my office and chose to work from home a few times), eventually they sent me an entire new Vortek rack - which, once installed worked perfectly.
I was not looking forward to packing the entire thing up and shipping it back.
hmmm - they never asked for the old one back... (hmmm, harvest the servo motor? drag-chains and rods for other projects? Mount it on the wall and use it to store extra induction nozzles? Ideas?)
I have seen one YouTube video that seemed to indicate a problem with pulling filament was because of a little flap within the new 4-1 PTFE filament adapter. There is a little rubber valve/flap (apparently it is a consumable, because the printer came with extra) - which he found if left in-place would cause filament jams, so he removed it, and no more feed problems. (Unfortunately, I cannot find the exact video - I have seen/bookmarked too many)
I had the same experience with their shitty customer service but for something much smaller. I had red filament from bambu that was constantly getting clogged and they had me go through so many hoops. they had me measure the filament thickness in 10 places WITH CALIPERS and also FILM IT. all this shit was a waste of my time. After they asked for even more steps, I just gave up. I felt it wasn’t worth it for a $16 exchange.
But it left a really bad taste in my mouth about the company.
Consumers are used to stuff like Amazon customer service. I wasn’t expecting to waste all that time to exchange 1kg of filament. I thought they’d send it out no hassle and take back the defective filament to research it themselves.
So now when I recommend Bambu, I say the printers are great but their customer service is horrible. So be very careful.
I was offered to return it or try to fix it myself. In the end the fix was even easier than initially thought and it's working great since. No idea if that's because I am in the EU market and not US. They did take their time to respond but otherwise service was ok.
> I was almost just like you I got some recommendations from HN, all of them were for Bambu.
Bambu has spent a ton of dough on paid advertising via YouTube shills (it is absolutely rampant in that scene - I like the channel Maker's Muse as a notable exception, who also has some funny videos up where he reads emails from various vendors trying to bribe or intimidate him in various ways), and many in the HN crows were happy to parrot their talking points to justify their purchases. A winning marketing strategy.
To this day you end up encountering a lot of people who are under the impression Bambu printers somehow made 3D printing accessible or are the only ticket to a problem-free experience. And you know, the product might do that, the problem is the message that they're the only game in town, which has never been true and which they largely achieved on the back of work already done by others for them in software, designs and ecosystem development.
To contrast this: You often hear this about Apple, that they didn't necessarily invent the stuff, but they did the last-mile integration really well. It's incomparable. Apple did far more work on their products than Bambu ever did.
You can use their slicer (which works well!). If you don’t want to, you can use one that sends through their Bambu Connect software, which Orca Slicer doesn’t want to support for…reasons. Or you can use it in LAN mode. Or you can just transfer the gcode via an SD card or flash drive like ye olde days.
Despite the tone of the other reply to your question, they are absolutely the easiest printers to work with. I don’t love their new multicolor solution for how slow it is compared to other options, but that would be the only real fault with their newest line.
Speaking about Prusa, my experience has been that they’re very condescending to users.
Extremely basic features (like serial printing) are considered “nice to have”. Some tickets have remained open for over 6 years now and ignored by prusa:
It is well-known that Prusa is rather slow and hesitant to implement new features in their firmware because they really want new features also to work on their very old printers if possible. And Prusa really wants to avoid introducing regressions with new firmware versions (even though they are not perfect regarding this).
Thus, because of this basically promise by Prusa, the pace with which new features become available is much slower.
Prusa is for people who really want their 3D printers supported for a very long time.
After my initial Ender 3v2 (which was my entry point to 3D printing, but a terrible printer otherwise), we bought a Prusa even thought it was much more expensive than Bambu because we wanted to support a European company and because as a European company they are under the GDPR.
It has been absolutely great and low-effort. I haven't needed it yet, but their printers seem to be focused on easy maintenance by their owners.
Meh. I use bambu and I am a maker but it's not a big thing in my opinion.
I bought a bambu precisely because I don't want to mod the thing with a gazillion custom upgrades like I needed to do with my previous printers to make them work reliably. I just want to press print and... print. Bambu totally delivers there. They really commoditised 3D printing and brought the price down. And if you do want to go off the beaten track they have options.
My hobby is not 3D printer tinkering. It's printing stuff to use. This is clearly what bambu market towards and they do the job really well. I know many people in the makerspace community that spend weeks tuning their perfect Klipper setup. Cool but I prefer spending those weeks perfecting my designs instead. It's hard to overstate the difference they made in out of the box capability especially for the price. And their spare parts are decently priced too.
Now if they start locking down the consumables like other evil companies like 3D Systems and Da Vinci XYZ did then yes. Then they deserve all the blame they can get.
The orcaslicer thing I don't know what to think about yet (I have to read up on it) but the discussion here was more about the local mode.
Ps Bambu isn't the only brand I have. But I do like what they've done. It was exactly what I needed.
My daughter is an architecture student and needed a 3d printer to help with making models for her studio class. She had no desire to learn the ends and outs of 3d printers. She wanted something easy to use and reliable. The Bambu Labs printer I bought her has been just that.
i tossed my ender 3 for this reason alone. it’s just not worth the headache. it’s like the physical manifestation of vim, endless ways to tweak it and you could get lost with the tool instead of getting anything done. and i don’t even have a replacement, i’d rather have nothing than have a headache inducer
I’m about to toss my ender 3 s1 pro. The damn print won’t adhere to the bed. Z-probe calibration, temp towers, bed leveling, wash the plate, use a glue stick, turn the fan down, increase flow rate. I’ve tried it all. Still get spaghetti when I try to print a catamaran toy for my kid.
Ironically I started using orcaslicer recently. It seems cool. But I really just want a working printer. Probably getting a bambu in spite of the angry noises online.
> She had no desire to learn the ends and outs of 3d printers. She wanted something easy to use and reliable. The Bambu Labs printer I bought her has been just that.
Where is this coming from? You absolutely need to know the ins and outs of a 3D printer. Nozzles wear out, build plates wear out, components need to be regularly cleaned properly and lubricated, you have to keep filaments dry, certain filaments can only be used with certain components, you constantly tweak slicer and temperature settings, ... The list goes on.
3D printers, including Bambu Lab printers, are definitely not easy to use nor are they reliable. They're maintenance heavy. Sometimes you have to do a print multiple times because it'll fail for a myriad of reasons. Maybe you oriented it wrong, maybe your slicer settings are off, maybe it didn't have proper supports, maybe the filament is messed up, ...
The maintenance needed is minimal, and Bambu make it easy to learn in their wiki. It even sends you reminders to lubricate the Z-axis (the others don't need it). I've never had a clogged nozzle on my bambu printers but that is also clearly documented.
I've been doing 3D printing for 15 years so I've been through all the heavy maintenance printers. But most of that knowledge I don't need anymore. First layers are always perfect as long as the bed is properly grease free. The only knowledge I still really need is the design for 3D printing, like overhang orientations, seams etc.
That hasn't been my experience. Bambu's documentation, including the guides and wiki, is disjointed and inconsistent. You'll often find contradictions between pages or information that isn't appropriately fleshed out. Sometimes bits and pieces on a topic are spread across several wiki pages and guides. You'll also find that there's now an increase in AI slop in some of the introductory guides (e.g., tons of emdashes and sentences that don't seem to make sense).
Having the printer give you reminders to do something doesn't mean that maintenance is minimal.
Outside of Prusa - how would you compare Bambu's documentation against it's competitors?
In my experience, having owned 2-other printers prior to an X1C - there is absolutely NO comparison - EVERYTHING was community, Reddit, forum or random YouTube guidance from non-manufacturers.
The most common failure in my printing experience is just plain old dirty bed, especially when human hands interact with it. That takes operational discipline especially if you're printing lot of models over time.
I honestly get that, architecture is such a time intensive degree. It is drilled into you to produce results more than to care about the process.. and to spend more time on exploration and resolution than on learning.
I do think though, that a little learning and understanding of your tools is such a useful thing practically and creatively speaking, but also ultimately time saving.
The price is a huge factor in the commoditisation of 3D printing. The design quality too. A 3D printer looks the part, that is important if you have it on your desk.
> A 3D printer looks the part, that is important if you have it on your desk.
Good design is only very partially objective, it's often an acquired taste. I, for example, find Bambu printers with their "glossy Apple-inspired look" incredibly ugly, and strongly prefer the look of Prusa printers.
> Bambu totally delivers there. They really commoditised 3D printing and brought the price down.
Prusa's MK3S delivered consistently good, zero fuss, straight out of the box prints with auto bed leveling for $999 before Bambu labs even existed at all.
Bambu brought Core XY & multi-filament to the "mainstream" (for however mainstream 3D printing is at all), absolutely, but if you just wanted a 3D printer that consistently worked for an affordable price? Prusa beat them to that by years. They just didn't advertise the shit out of it on YouTube like Bambu did.
Prusa unfortunately then kinda just... relaxed? Not sure what happened, but MK3 -> MK4 was pretty meh, the XL was delayed, the Core One a good response but still lacking on the multi-material front, etc...
The MK3S still looks like a kid's science project. The Bambu A1 is much more polished and it costs 1/3 of the price. That price alone is a huge factor in commoditisation. I never considered a prusa for that reason alone.
Prusa is still doing silly things like having 3d printed component manufacturing. I get that they really want the aesthetic and they do make very good products but for a consumer a Bambu printer is just outright a better choice
Dude, the only reason you can be a maker is because of the many hours of work provided by the open source community. The very same one your support is trampling on since it's in favor of a company profiteering from them. All because you don't want to be inconvenienced.. Educate yourself on the issue and start having some respect.
And the open source community is open source precisely to drive the state of the art further.
Having respect for other makers doesn't necessarily mean agreeing on everything.
I'm just giving the other side of the story. If you wish to choose another brand you're free to do so of course. Not all my printers are bambu, in fact my latest one isn't either.
No, dude, open source and more specifically GPL is intended to keep things open and accessible to everyone and out of control of monopoly actors, not to drive state of the art.
Can you agree on not stealing? That's the equivalent of what BL is doing.
What stealing? Their slicer code is in turn published back and made accessible, orcaslicer itself has merged a number of their changes and vice versa.
What you are complaining about is access to their proprietary, and optional cloud control functionality. I'd like for access to be open there too, but them trying to gate what apps can access to that isnt "stealing" from the open source community.
I was lucky enough to have seen the initial controversy and install the X1Plus firmware on my X1C about 2-weeks before lockdown. It has worked flawlessly with OrcaSlicer ever since. For monitoring when I am away from my office, I setup VPN, HomeAssistant and could do it from my computer - but there was also a "Bambu Companion" app released pretty quickly in that timeframe (there are probably others now) which allowed my to replace the "Bambu Handy" functionality on my phone.
So - of course, I swore I would not buy another Bambu. But, when looking at the various pricing and other aspects of competitors - about a month ago I did end-up buying an H2C with double-AMS and an HT - mainly to reduce filament waste, have a larger build volume, be able to use multi-materials for support "quickly" and have active chamber heating for more "engineering" type filaments. Don't believe the hype about the chamber filter though - I have found with ABS, you still need external exhaust or air filtering as even though the chamber "closes" and recycles via the filter, you still have the "poop chute" venting fumes...
... and of course... even if I wanted to switch to LAN-mode, unfortunately OrcaSlicer does not yet support the H2C... perhaps it never will unfortunately...
But.. the good news is that any future potential buyers ( like me ) know to avoid that particular vendor. The issue, as it appears to be common lately, is that the number of buyers gets smaller and smaller as regulatory frameworks get more and more onerous. Otoh, I am more than happy to lend a helping hand. This is probably as good of a fight as it gets.
If you’re eyeing Prusa, that’ll probably be ideal.
...but it does look like Sovol is teasing an INDX alternative (I have a Sovol SV08, it’s a “good value” tinkerer printer based on the Voron)
And if you really want “open”, there’s isn’t much better than a Voron in that aspect.
Same experience. Wanted to get an X1C after I had saved enough, then I was lucky enough to be able to send it back within the 2 weeks time frame. I live in the EU so I was able to demand the refund.
Now I am rebuilding my old Ender 3 with Openbuilds parts into a CoreXY setup, all metal hotend, sturdier metal frame, and the newer RAMPS board with a raspberry pi and klipper setup. Don't know enough about the multi tool related things, but maybe I am gonna focus on that afterwards.
I am having tons of fun while doing so, it has been quite a while since I rebuilt my Anet A8 into an AM8 with a custom Marlin firmware back then.
> my eyes are on Prusa should I want another printer any time soon for any reason.
Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.
Bambu made real engineering improvements: linear slides, servomotor for feed, accelerometer tuning, etc. Has Prusa finally decided to compete again? A lot of us are willing to give a company more money for being open source, but the basic product can't be too significantly inferior.
It looks like there is at least one linear slide on the Prusa Core One+ so that's a start...
>
Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.
This was the time when Prusa produced the MK3... printers. The MK4S was already a huge step forward: in my opinion - privacy topics aside - already better than Bambu's offerings for some applications (even though these applications were possibly not the ones that the masses care(d) about).
The Core One+ and the Core One L that were released after that are really good printers. Also the Prusa XL is a great printer for what it has been designed for if you give it some maintenance love (note however that the Prusa XL was from a time when less people wanted to print filaments that strongly profit from a heated chamber, so the Prusa XL was - in opposite to the Core One and Core One L - not designed with a focus on this).
Bambu won with relentless free giveaways to every YouTuber on the planet, cheap prices, and a consumer friendly looking design.
I don’t think they earned it.
I suspect there is a huge number of people out there who bought them who don’t even know what else exists. They saw a YouTuber advertise one on a video making something and decided to buy that.
Prusa is equally guilty there, I think. Every time I see a Youtuber receiving multiple free Prusa printers, while I continue to save and delay on the high price of getting one myself, I curse them a bit more.
In the last two years I could easily count on one hand the number of Prusas I’ve seen given out. Yeah, it happens.
Bambu is straight up sending them to everyone breathing. 3D printer people? Given Bambu. Tinkerers? Bambu. Lego channels? Yeah seriously Bambu. Way outside the traditional maker channels.
I’m not saying no one should give out free printers. But Bambu is carpet bombing YouTube, and they require the videos be turned into Bambu ads to do it. Having to show it multiple times, talk about its great features multiple times, etc. i’ve never seen the script but I’ve seen enough videos have conspicuously similar elements promoting the printer to know it must a condition.
The videos I’ve seen where people get a free XL mention that fact, maybe one other, but that’s about it. It’s not hammered on like Bambu seems to want.
I think you’re trying to rewrite history. The Bambu printers were really, really good for their price point when they came out. It wasn’t looks or giveaways. The printers were seriously much better hardware than what Prusa had at the time.
I was recommending Prusa to everyone who inquired about 3D printers for many years before Bambu launched, so I’m not unfamiliar with the market.
Trying to criticize Bambu for sending a lot of printers to YouTubers is ironic when Prusa has always done the same thing.
1) The people around me who bought a Bambu P1S or P2S weren't swayed by marketing. Some of them even owned Prusa machines. They bought those Bambu printers because they had products they needed printed, and the Bambu got it done while the Prusa failed prints and made them dork around with things.
2) The A1 minis are cheap and look good to consumers; they also work remarkably reliably. Prusa doesn't have anything even remotely in the same class. That is squarely the fault of Prusa.
3) A lot of people who don't know any better can go to Best Buy and buy a Bambu in stock, off the shelf, with a return policy. Again, the fault lies squarely with Prusa.
4) The Bambu printers had fundamentally better components like linear slides and servo motors, for example. Again, fault to Prusa.
Prusa got caught with their pants down and refused to adjust for far too long. Bambu did genuine engineering while Prusa rested on its laurels.
3) is marketing and access to capital that Prusa don't have. 4) Prusa is of similar quality in my experience, or both machines have their problems for different reasons. I would need to run a scientific experiment.
There is no argument in which Bambu succeed solely on technical merit alone. Bambu can outspend Prusa due to access to venture capital funding and state support. That is a structural advantage that cannot be easily overcome.
Bambu showed their true colours last year when they would've eliminated offline access altogether if not for public outrage. You don't own your Bambu printer, you're leasing it at a subsidised premium.
This move does not surprise me at all, and I'm genuinely happy that Louis is willing to shell out money to help those that can't defend themselves.
I'm happy that Bambu finally made Prusa care, but I will not cheer them even if they consistently innovate. It's just sad.
I bought a Prusa several years ago that I had a rollercoaster of feels on. It's reliable, works great, but also cost me $900. For the next 3 years or so I was wondering whether I should have just bought a $250 Bambu and gotten almost same results. Now I'm happy I didn't.
Both friends with Bambu printers bought them because they were cheaper than Prusa, and they wanted "a tool, not a hobby" (which I think is marketing invented to disparage an open source, repairable printer).
Three years later, they have unreliable printers that are difficult to maintain.
I have a five year old Prusa, still working very nicely, and it's still a tool and not itself a hobby.
Without looking it up I’m guessing I’ve had my P1S for 3 or more years and I’ve never had a single issue with it, to the point where I wonder what issues your friends have?
Prusa are clearly tools: you can fix it, modify it, and still have warranty apply. You can get after-sales parts, and service.
Bambu are appliances. They can work great out of the box, but appliances do not have upgrade paths. You do not upgrade a microwave, you throw it out and get a new one. Or maybe it's more like a fridge, you can limitedly repair some bits, but you cannot wholesale upgrade from V1 to V2.
Anyways bought the core one a few months ago, on kit, and did the whole assembly. The assembly was fun, and the resulting printer has been great. The print fails I had were all easily understandable, entirely due to adhesion issues to a dirty print plate.
I also ordered the indx and am looking forward to capabilities that are not possible with the AMS system. I'm more of an artist though, so I'm looking for interesting and cool ways to make things, not just 3D printing figurines or sculptures etc.
I have four Prusa printers for my business with thousands of hours of print time. The worst issue that I have had is a finicky filament sensor that I temporarily disabled until I could fix it.
I see it as buying printers design for industrial usage versus printers for hobby. Prusa is selling me a tool that just works every time.
I'm not sure if he still does it, but last time I checked he maintains a giant warehouse of these things in Prague that assemble themselves. That's the biggest advertisement for their industrialness that you can make - the printer literally manufactures itself in an industrial setting.
And the yet again I got told over and over again that Bambu didn't really mean to, and if they did they learned their lesson, and after all you can still keep them offline. And spending more for a prusa obviously is silly.
I'm really getting too old dealing with morons who didn't learn anything after the same patterns repeating for decades now.
Louis is one of the most passionate YouTubers you can watch. I don't think he gets it right 100% of the time, but when you are that vulnerable (and what appears to be authentic) you're bound to not make the the right call every once in awhile (as we all do).
I support him even though people can pick him apart.
As a matter of fact he's a never-ending source of drama and outrage, all of which are his own opinions. His repair channel isn't even about repair anymore, it's all drama, all the time. I can hardly believe people fall for his shtick anymore.
90% of his content is about advocating for consumer rights like ownership and repair, most of which is documented and sourced on his wiki [1]. If the only thing you see here is "drama and outrage" then you're not the target audience and you should return to mindless consumption until such a time that you find yourself affected.
It may be advocacy for a noble cause, but it is still drama and outrage. It is an effective technique used by politicians worldwide. If it works, I guess that's a positive, but that's not for me.
Lois Rossmann has always been ranting in his video, but originally he did so while repairing Macbooks. I actually learned a few tricks watching his videos. Now, he is just sitting down talking, adding drama and outrage to news stories relevant to what he advocates for.
I mean, we need people like him, like we need people like Richard Stallman, but I personally prefer more nuanced approaches.
When you care so little about consumer rights that you see advocacy as just "drama" then what are you if not a mindless consumer, in the most literal sense?
This story is at the heart of everything that's wrong with consumer rights these days - digital locks, coercive upgrades, removing features after the sale, AGPL violations, and legal bullying of independent developers, enthusiasts, and hackers.
The original title was needlessly inflammatory, Louis put up $10,000 to cover this person's legal fees should they fight Bambu's bullshit threats. It's in all of our interests to fight this, as consumers and as members of HACKER news.
They never said they don't care about consumer right, but that your over the top comments and ad hominem attacks smell more of drama than of consumer rights. I hope I never produce the words "return to mindless consuming" just because someone dared to criticize my idol. Ditto for "when you care so little about consumer rights". Pretentiousness is not a virtue.
> They never said they don't care about consumer right
They didn't need to. Describing it as "just" drama means that you find the subject matter performative and unwarranted, that's what makes something "just drama".
> I hope I never produce the words "return to mindless consuming" just because someone dared to criticize my idol
I invoked "mindless consumption" because of how ridiculously dismissive they were acting towards the discussion about consumer rights, i.e. mindful consumption.
Criticize him all you want, but don't get upset when someone calls you out for criticizing a baseless straw man.
It would be difficult to judge me as being upset because of your criticism since I've never responded to your criticism before.
And for not needing to say it: actually yes it is needed. Nobody said consumer rights are performative, it was said that Rossmann is performative and trying to generate drama and clicks. Even if not true, it's a valid opinion that doesn't make anyone a mindless consumer, quite the opposite. But regardless, those are not the same things, unless you see Rossmann (and possibly yourself) as the gatekeeper of this issue.
dns_snek never said any specific person as a mindless consumer. They argued that if you see nothing but drama then that implies you are a mindless consumer.
The argument is that a mindful consumer would see that Louis Rossman is, in his way, arguing for consumer rights.
I have trouble understanding how the opinions of the historical right to repair guy are surprising or even considered drama, it’s not drama because it’s not interpersonal gossip, it’s right to repair activism.
The channel has been about a lot more than right to repair. He jumps on every tech controversy that will generate traffic, including wading into drama between other YouTube channels.
> it’s not drama because it’s not interpersonal gossip, it’s right to repair activism.
He has definitely engaged in dramas that have nothing to do with right to repair activism, including weighing in on dramas between other tech YouTubers.
He hit a niche with right to repair and has produced a lot of content about it, but he has also ranted about a lot of completely unrelated topics. Does nobody remember his old videos rambling about women and gender topics, for example? This is going way back, so possibly before many new converts were introduced to his channel.
His channel has definitely not only been right to repair.
Right up there with the Not Just Bikes guy on YouTube who used to talk about how transit-oriented cities are great or would show some positive stuff from somewhere. Now it's just endless videos about how cars suck, cities suck, even a lot of transit sucks. The constant negativity is such a put-off.
The difference is that the Not Just Bikes guy is actually doing what the parent commenter is claiming Louis (only) does and Louis in reality does a lot more than that like what's in TFA.
Not Just Bikes makes reddit posts for redditors in YouTube form, basically. Louis actually supports people and projects. There's no 'schtick', consumer repair is core to his business and his channel.
Yeah I agree, it’s almost a political drama channel at this point and his opinions lack nuance.
I don’t understand why an article from Tom’s Hardware about an opinion of Louis Rossman who tells a 3D printer maker to go fuck themselves is currently the most upvoted article on HN.
And yet he’s having an effect. Are either of you pledging $10k to defend hackers in court?
I can hardly believe headlines like these are met with anything but cheers. It’s literally the hacker spirit in the classical sense: a big company is trying to legally threaten a project offline, and people like Louis are helping prevent that.
You could at least throw in a “it’s cool that he’s pledging money” before insulting his channel. And if his channel wasn’t as political as it is, it’s doubtful he could rally the kind of support we’re seeing here.
The comment at the top of this thread was literally defending Rossmann based on his style (passionate, vulnerable) over his substance (factual accuracy)
FWIW that's also how I interpret it. That said, it doesn't bother me because it's YT not HN. They're very different environments. As long as the ensuing discussion here exhibits a reasonable approximation of proper discourse then all is well I figure.
I, for one, appreciate communication that has a point of view, one that actually champions an ethical opinion and calls out unethical behavior. I don't think doing this necessarily counts as rage. If I wanted to read a "proper" dry, impartial dissertation on some technology, written by Spock, there are plenty of places online to do this.
> My point is that I have an issue with his tone and rhetoric, not with the thing he’s advocating.
This is often a hand wavy excuse by people who simply don’t agree with a cause and/or think it’s not important, but won’t admit it. If you don’t think what he is advocating for is important just say so. If you do, support him. You can’t possibly believe he’s so out of line that it’s worth prioritizing that opinion over the cause itself.
To be clear: I really do agree with his message, and I appreciate the tremendous impact he has had in the right to repair, DRM and all these things. So in that sense, I support him.
It’s just that his style is really appalling to me. Am I not allowed to criticize his style while at the same time supporting his stance?
I think it’s unfair to then imply I must not be admitting that I’m against his cause and using it as an excuse, because nothing I have said indicated this.
I don’t doubt that but the issue is you’re doing the work for detractors when you put more emphasis on his an exact approach rather than focusing on the quality of the cause and the fruits of his efforts.
I am completely against the outrage and drama cycle of all media. But as a matter of fact, this is clearly what drives views in today’s world so it’s nice when someone consistently getting millions of views at least chooses to support something good once in a while.
I much prefer channels that don’t use this way of gaining views, but they, because of that, don’t gain nearly as many views.
I have no skin in this game, but it’s pretty clear what the majority of viewers want.
His passion does manifest as drama 90% of the time, but it’s somewhat necessary to build momentum and attention to the causes that he promotes.
Also, he has to toe the line of opinion to avoid being slapped with spurious legal challenges.
I often find him a bit much myself, but don't doubt his passion, and even if I did, I would only express that opinion publicly accompanied by supporting evidence, because using phrases like "people fall for his shtick" is essentially implying deliberate fraud, and that doesn't seem to be something you should throw around lightly.
I don't think an opinion becomes more based in reality by sticking the words "As a matter of fact" in front of them.
It isn't necessarily but I think it often qualifies. IMO (approximately) activism describes motivation while drama is a characteristic of an action. Thunberg for example is undoubtedly very dramatic.
Although I have to say, I think Louis was making better videos when he was in New York. I understand the financial situation where New York really abuses people, but I am just looking at the videos. I can't say whether that decision was what changed, but I noticed that the content changed a lot once he relocated outside of New York.
However had, I disagree with the "drama" comment. I would call it more that the movement became more important, which is fine, in my opinion. Right to repair isn't that different from many other movements where we people try to get more rights back again. See the right to videotape public officials in performing their public jobs and so on. It is all connected.
you’re making me wonder if i should start using the term financial abuse to describe the excessive rent seeking behaviour of landlords that bleed us dry
When there is drama as far as I can tell he always had pretty solid reasons to be dramatic. It isn't drama when you have real reasons. Drama implies making shit up. Point to the shit he made up. Go ahead. Be specific.
Your accusation there makes it sound like he makes up some minor personal issues and blows them up as rage bait. As if the lock in and enshittification he advocates against are just his personal opinion. They are not. The vast majority (last time I checked >80%) of the public shares the opinion that you should own the equipment you buy and that it should be repairable.
If you happen to be a person that tries to establish neo-feudalism at the cost of everybody else, a public figure successfully making that an issue, might be problematic for your goals, sure. But then your goals may just be beneath contempt anyways and you should working on becoming a productive member of society instead.
If you think it is a shtick because you haven't really looked into it that much and you have a contrarian reflex, maybe try to bring the receipts next time. You know, like:" Louis Rossmann is a drama queen because remember when he said X about Y? Remember when he said Y about Z? It turned out to be Q and Louis had to know it was Q" etc.
Rossmann turned his YouTube fame into political advocacy for a popular topic, that he politically represents. Don't like that topic? Don't watch his content. People change and so does the focus of their life.
I run an university electronics workshop and the issues he mentioned are the issues I have to deal with every week, be it some shitty vendor lock-in on some gear or equipment where just the part that dies first is proprietary and service-hostile.
Thank you. My Bambu printer works excellently. The previous one I bought years ago is still going strong with a friend now. When parts wear out, I can easily get official, known quality replacements.
I have never had a problem with the software, the outrage is totally manufactured to have something to complain about. Louis was fun to listen to for a while, but his schtick is so tired now.
Your off-topic remarks about Bambu printers and their replacement parts tell me that you didn't even take the time to read what this story was about. In the same breath you're accusing Louis of "manufacturing outrage just to have something to complain about" while you're the one doing that.
I don’t recognize the name and for some reason the article never gives a single sentence of context just expecting you to know the same way things expect you to know who Trump or Taylor Swift is.
I even watch a few 3D printer and maker YTers, but I guess not him.
He isn't specifically related to the 3D printing or maker space (in this sense) niches. He got popular at first for repairing Apple devices that Apple Stores claimed were unrepairable or quoted enormous repair fees for. He made videos about those cases, and then transitioned into right-to-repair efforts in general. He also started the Consumer Rights wiki: https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
His channel isn't really about 3D printing or maker projects, which is maybe why you have not heard of him.
He has (or had, not sure) an electronics repair shop where he showed laptop and phone repairs on his channel. Recently he is one of the people who push right to repair regulations and consumer rights. Which is probably why he is interested in this case.
Louis Rossman is right for repair activist and consumer rights advocate. He's an owner of a repair shop, that's mostly focused on fixing macbooks.
On Youtube he started by posting repair tutorials, but then his content shifted from repair videos to macbook rants to him lobbying for right to repair law across many US states to covering general anti-consumer practices and offering money and support to people who fight against it.
I mean, that's sort of all it is, some dude ranting on his YouTube channel. Often "reacting" to some other dudes rant. Closely related to the format of a bunch of bros "podcasting".
It would help if he wouldn't throw fits like a high schooler in a lot of his videos. For his brand and for the causes he champions. Its almost only drama on his channel now.
> I don't think he gets it right 100% of the time, but when you are that vulnerable (and what appears to be authentic)
Saying anything less than glowingly positive about Rossmann is dangerous due to his fan base, but I think this mentality of pre-forgiving his misinformation is not healthy.
Being passionate and putting on a vulnerable schtick shouldn’t excuse someone from misleading their large audience.
Rossman is a drama YouTuber, like many others. This is an entire YouTube genre. Most of them have the same schtick where they appear to be the most passionate, vulnerable, on-your-side narrator of a story. His schtick is common in the drama YouTuber genre.
You shouldn’t develop such a parasocial relationship with a person that you reflexively defend every topic they engage in. Discuss the topics each on their own factual merits and be prepared to look for second sources. Don’t align yourself with someone because they are passionate and appear “vulnerable”. At the end of the day, you need to remember that putting on this display is how he makes his money. It’s a show.
I dont see how he is “like many others”. A lot of YouTubers cover controversy for controversy sake, or just as material for another sponsored video. He does not do sponsored content, and usually seems to push for something concrete around consumer rights. So I think the comparison to other drama Youtubers is unfair.
In my view, the drama is more a way to draw attention to his activism. He does tend to put his money and time where his mouth is.
But perhaps my view is biased, since I only see the videos the YouTube algorithm suggests to me, and those may be the ones that are more focused on consumer rights than drama. Still, that has consistently been my impression.
Favoring emotion over facts while advocating for a cause is still a sugar high of advocacy, regardless of the cause's righteousness. A short burst quickly forgotten, with a chance of discrediting what you're trying to advocate if the facts aren't right.
Even amongst YouTubers, you can favor facts over emotions (without discarding emotion!) and be a more effective advocate who arms others with both motivation and useful, effective knowledge.[1]
Rossmann is still relevant and to my knowledge has not discredited his cause. Your comment about him needing to get his facts right or risking irrelevance is wishful thinking and clearly not reflective of the reality of his impact on Right to Repair legislation (if you are suggesting that he does not get his facts right).
Technology Connections is an educational channel that occasionally offers political commentary. Telling his audience to vote is a call to action, but not the same as organizing. Rossmann is an organizer who engages with policymakers. To treat them as being on the same level is to misunderstand what they are each doing.
I don't follow Rossman very closely but I am familiar with his grumpy, griping style. To be clear, is the claim here that his advocacy work frequently features factual errors, or just that his presentation is too emotive?
Aside: What does "facts over emotion" mean? Aren't facts and emotions orthogonal?
This is an uncharitable take. Rossman has actual repair expertise, founded the consumer rights wiki to help organize activists that want to forward right to repair, and attends public meetings to discuss these topics with local governments. His YouTube channel raises awareness, but there's a lot of substance behind the style.
OrcaSlicer supports Bambu printers already. Does anyone have any better sources for what this other fork supposedly did?
EDIT: I’m not going to sit through another angry Louis Rossmann video, but from what I can see someone tried to make a branch of OrcaSlicer that interacted directly with Bambu’s private cloud APIs to impersonate Bambu Studio. I don’t agree with the legal threats but this case is about connecting to their non-public cloud APIs, not connecting to the printer directly.
Where is the proof for that? I am interested in learning more about the network plugin! I was under the impression it did not use any AGPL code at all, and that it basically just talked HTTP.
Some time ago the printers were able to communicate over both cloud and local protocols. Then, in a firmware update, they created distinct modes for those. You can still use the printers with OrcaSlicer, but in a mode that prevents being controlled by cloud too.
This is a feature. When I enable LAN mode I do not want Bambu to be able to control my printer.
It remains astonishing to me that this is controversial. Not everyone has the knowhow to block internet access to their printer, so having a toggle in firmware is terrific. I've verified after turning it on that it never phones home. Couldn't be happier.
It’s fully understandable to want that and exactly what I use too. It still sucks for people that did want to start their prints locally and control them over the app.
The issue isn't that there's a toggle to turn off the cloud protocol in firmware. The issue is specifically that they now require you to turn off the cloud protocol if you want local access.
Almost no one meaningfully isolates their bambu-- lots of people isolate the printer but bambu makes you run their mystery meat 'network plugin' on your host.
Unless you're running qubes or some other virtualization setup their network plugin punctures whatever airgap you put around the printer and also gives them access to your system as well.
I’ve been meaning to look into what the network plugin does more.
I see in my dns logs lots of repeated blocked requests to a Bambu labs domain whenever I have orcaslicer open. I assume it’s so many because it’s getting blocked and retrying.
I just print over lan though. Not using the Bambu servers (or the fork mentioned in OP) It works flawlessly.
Not that contain any information not covered in the above, or aren't LLM summaries of summaries of the matter, unfortunately. At least not that I've seen thus far. Such is the current timeline, where everything has to be a monetizable video, slop, or both…
No, it doesn't. It used to, but then Bambu Labs "for security reasons" (as always) removed access to their "network plugin".
There is a lot of confusion around this, so: you lose access to bambu cloud, so quick upload, remote printing, remote monitoring of prints, synchronization of filament data, and lots of other useful features.
You get a half-baked "throw it over the wall" way of sending files to your printer using a standalone Bambu executable (largely neglected). Note that this does not provide a way to synchronize the filament list to your slicer before slicing, which is useful and important.
You also get a "developer/LAN mode", which is an either/or proposition. If you turn it on, you lose cloud features. No more remote monitoring of your prints using your phone.
I find it very annoying that Bambu managed to implant this shallow take of "you can use LAN mode so things are fine" in people's minds.
I just use the bambu plugin to home assistant and I have 90% of the relevant cloud functionality.
Is it perfect or the ideal solution? Not quite, but it does let me have a fully local bambu printer with any theoretical calling home blocked at a network level.
Very useful comment. I’ve had an A1 Mini for a year now and it has been my favourite purchase in years. Like when I got my first mobile phone, I feel like I’ll have some sort of 3d printer for the rest of my life. Bambu made it super easy and inexpensive for this to happen.
I’m completely against bullying and attempts to lock out open source software from using 3d printers directly; if they locked out OrcaSlicer from direct control I’d have a big problem with that.
But trying to interact directly with Bambu’s private infrastructure/APis seems reasonable for Bambu to block. I think a cease and desist might backfire on Bambu but i don’t think it’s unreadable. (Didn’t watch the video. Just getting context from parent comment. )
> But trying to interact directly with Bambu’s private infrastructure/APis seems reasonable for Bambu to block.
Even if they have taken away other routes that used to exist so that this is the only way?
I've also been very happy with my A1 (bought ~18 months go), and have since bought a U1 (which has networking problems of its own, but is otherwise a great upgrade) alongside it. Unless Bambu changes its tack significantly I'll not be buying another of their machines or more of their materials¹.
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[1] well, maybe the light grey PLA as I've not yet found anything similar enough easily available in the UK, and it is perfect for prints that I want to look neutral or for some scifi ships & similar…
> Even if they have taken away other routes that used to exist so that this is the only way?
I’ve only been in the system for a year so I don’t know about the history beyond that. Based on some downvotes + your comment I will look into it further.
It's not like you have a choice, the printer doesn't work locally unless you enable LAN mode, and then it only works locally. Bambu make you pick either "closed servers" or "the mobile app doesn't work" for no reason.
I'll chip in to this developer's legal defense fund because I want to be able to do whatever I want with my printer, and "I can't do what I want with my printer" is a bigger problem for me right now than "the developer made a TCP connection on my behalf to a server he didn't own".
But we’re geeks, we can run tailscale on the local lan and access it anywhere, no? Obviously that’s not for everyone, but that’s workable for savvy users, no?
Yeah man I don't know, if the argument is "it's fine for Bambu not to make a trivial change to allow openness because I can set up a home Linux server that runs 24/7 with OpenVPN and iptables", I'll say this is the reason everything's closed now, because geeks like us didn't shout about it until the last of our hacked-together spit-and-duct-tape solution stopped working, by which point it was too late.
I don't accept any "it's fine because you can hack around it". If it needs me to choose between their phone app working or privacy, it's not fucking open enough.
On the one hand, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying here.
With that said, I don’t think it’s reasonable to describe setting up Tailscale as similar to “Linux server that runs 24/7 with OpenVPN and iptables”. Sure, you could go that route, but a Tailscale setup is extremely simple and lightweight. A raspberry pi is plenty if there isn’t already a system running 24/7. I personally have this set up on my router.
I point this out while still sharing the general sentiment of negativity towards Bambu here.
Given that you do need a machine that runs 24/7 to run Tailscale, I think it's very reasonable to describe it like that. Sure, maybe you can install it on your Windows machine, and figure out all the networking bits that will get it to talk to the printer, but for the average person that might as well be sorcery.
Have you set up Tailscale and have you set up OpenVPN from scratch? Because these two things are not alike. That’s why I’m pushing back a bit.
I find it difficult to imagine equating a raspberry pi in a closet with “running a server”. Is it technically a server? Sure. But it’s not as if we’re talking about running a power hungry rack.
Bottom line is: there are very cheap and simple/easy options for maintaining a private connection to your home stuff.
> and figure out all the networking bits that will get it to talk to the printer
With something like Tailscale this is already figured out. My mostly non technical brother does this without issues.
This is entirely separate from whether or not you should need to do so for Bambu printers, which again I agree the answer is ideally “no”.
The motive appears to be to get tax credits as opposed to becoming a full-on patent troll, though with how quickly China is speedrunning their version of capitalism I would not be surprised if it turns into patent trolling.
Their behaviour overall is really giving me mixed feelings, because the Bambu A1 I have is an absolutely amazing machine for the price, and I've been casually in this since the Printrbot days.
If you invent something and publish it (including by offering it to the public in product) your work constitutes prior art and is an absolute bar against the subsequent (valid) patenting of the invention by a third party. F2F vs F2I has no impact on this.
What F2F means if that if two people working in secret create the same invention and show up at the patent office at the same time-- the first one to file gets it. The earlier F2I scheme instead had a contest where the party that is the most ambitious in fabricating lab notebooks to backdate their invention gets the patent.
Because of a poor choice in naming many people wrongfully assume F2F means you can go pick up other people's inventions out of the public sphere and claim them as your own because you filed first.
The misunderstanding is exacerbated because fraudulently patenting other people's inventions is commonplace-- as there is no consequence for doing so except losing the patent after getting defeated on review/litigation-- but the practice isn't meaningfully influenced by F2F vs F2I.
> The earlier F2I scheme instead had a contest where the party that is the most ambitious in fabricating lab notebooks to backdate their invention gets the patent.
The implementation of F2I is then the issue. It should be the first to fulfill all of the following requirements:
(1) physically show at least 2 patent clerks the invention,
(2) that the invention works & operates as outlined, with the clerks being the ones to operate the machine, and
(3) a detailed step-by-step guide to the clerk about how the machine works
The date that the patent is awarded should be the date where the last of the 3 actions occurred.
Definitely gives me second thoughts about getting one. They look like easiest way to get into 3d printing as a tool (rather than another hobby), but their recent attitude just makes me think I should suffer a bit less advanced product just to not have to deal with that shit.
There's some drama, and they did some wrong calls. But the hardware is still really fantastic (as a X1C owner). If you want to have some things printed and don't necessarily want fine tuning your printer as a hobby, I highly recommend it.
Same. I don't care about the online connectivity or whatever, I just print a few personal things every month so the convenience and reliability far outweigh any cons for me.
RE: 3D printer as a tool, I recommend Teaching Tech's video (1) as a guide to choosing the right 3D printer. His first question is "Will you use your 3D printer as a tool or a hobby?", followed by the priorities that flow from that choice, e.g. pretty looking prints, or accurate parts that fit together.
It is definitely a philosophy you have to buy into, in the same way that people accept the iPhone's walled garden. (I have several Bambu Lab printers and have been an iPhone user for 17 years)
Honestly I don't regret going with Bambu. Yes they suck in a way I get it. However the time and money I spent into my ender to keep it barely alive is all wasted compared to these machines that just run perfectly out of the package.
Sure prusa is fine too, and other brands might are getting there too. But if you want to print as a tool I would recommend to just use the tool nearly everyone is agreeing on.
I didn't regret it once, and have 3 printers at this point (2 of which free thanks to Bambu points)
Also I am still amazed that my $150 A1 mini is basically just as good as the X2D or P2S.
That comes with a big caveat. You can either choose to use the printer offline, or online, with no ability to use both. If you want the ability to monitor or pause a print when you're not home on the off chance something goes wrong, you HAVE to send every print through their cloud, there's no middle ground.
That's not Bambu being open, that's them doing the absolute minimum to allow people to say "you can use Bambu printers fully offline" in comment sections.
For most people, it is definitely a closed ecosystem, similar to the iPhone. But they do give people the escape hatch if they're willing to take ownership of the software they run. (To be fair, they only enabled this after a lot of backlash)
Willing to take ownership, and also forgo a lot of functionality that the device was billed as having when it was purchased. Defending Bambu here seems like the same mentality as supporting a manufacturer that implements a subscription model for heated seats in their cars. (Don't worry, we're an ethical manufacturer so we don't charge a premium for access to heated seats. As long as you have our app on your phone (requires location permissions) you'll be able to make use of them!)
Wait, that’s still just about their phone app. When you disable the cloud features, you lose the phone app, but otherwise the printer is fully usable. You can still connect to it through Bambu studio, you just have to roll your own networking (e.g. a VPN), right?
Yes and no, it seems. Yes in Developer Mode. With that configuration, which confusingly requires you to turn on LAN mode first, you can use your own software to control all features of the device.
In LAN mode it’s more complicated. LAN mode requires you to still use their slicer because the majority of functions beyond the extremely basic are still restricted by their authorization layer. This means using their SDK/network plugin for anything you develop, effectively coercing developers into their ecosystem for use-cases by the majority of users.
It seems pretty clear, in my opinion, that what they’re trying to communicate by using the “developer mode” language is that owning your device end-to-end is big, scary, and only for professionals. Oh, btw, developer mode leaves your device completely open and introduces various UX friction points to the experience related to constantly needing to rebind. Effectively it’s malicious compliance on their end. They’re giving the middle finger to anyone who wants to cut them out, and it’s hard to say anyone who feels that way is imagining it.
I don't have a Bambu; previously, I had Prusa printers from the MK3 generation and I struggled to get good prints (poor bed adhesion and the extruder breaking frequently, requiring very intensive repairs); since not having a working printer slows my hobbies down, I ended up with two. Both broke down and I got tired of fixing them, but when I looked at the prices of new Prusa, they were high enough to make me pause.
Instead of a Bambu, I got a Flashforge Adventurer 5M. It is incredibly cheap (cheap enough that I am more than happy to replace it after two years if it stops working), and is pretty reliable (compared to the Prusa MK3 and MK3S I had), and most of all, the self-calibration works well enough that I don't spend any time debugging prints that fail at the first layer anymore; I just re-run calibration and it's fine, and if it's not fine, I clean the plate and it works.
It also comes with a terrible slicer (dervied from Slic3r I believe) with annoying "log into the cloud every time you start the app", but I moved to OrcaSlicer. I had to give up a few nice features but it hasn't truly impacted my workflow. And it does receive firmware updates (it's connected via wifi to my home network). My hope- just a hope- is that they don't do anything truly stupid with future firmware updates or end up getting in a hissy fit with prominent youtubers.
You can put your printers in LAN Mode to not use their cloud. You just have to choose one or the other, and the software in question enabled features they didn't want unless you ran off their cloud.
To steelman their use case, Bambu has marketed themselves as the most approachable way to get into 3D printing. In addition to their low prices, that includes ease of setup, and ease of going from a model on their website to a physical object in your hand. If you're already getting the model from their website (and realistically, the overwhelming majority of 3d prints are downloaded), then having their online software ecosystem handle everything for you just reinforces that approachability.
But realistically, because if they control how you use your machine, they can start skimming profit off of those digital services every time you print something. That's only works if they have control over how you use the machine in your house.
The RFID reading of their Bambu brand filament spools sure is convenient... for now. Give it a few more years and you might not be able to print non-bambu filament. The hardware side is fully equipped for this bullshit, just takes one more braindamaged MBA to have a Great Idea
The technology isn't reliable enough (yet, possibly ever?) for this to be the case, and the moment this happens a replacement control board will be created.
Remote device control allows for running and monitoring prints from another networks with zero effort, but more importantly local device control can't be monetized. It's just about the money.
Almost every hardware manufacturer on Earth is convinced that the only way for an application to communicate with a device on my LAN is to round-trip through some centralized (always manufacturer-run) server.
The support cost of users complaining something doesn’t work because they’re on 5g while trying to control something on their WiFi is significant. Why not just make it work?
Remote device control allows for running and monitoring prints from another networks with zero effort
To reiterate the GP's question: why would I want to do that? In practice whenever I want to monitor anything from anywhere, I just VNC or RDP to my PC.
If it's just about ease-of-use, as the other replies suggest, and not actually gating the functionality of the hardware, I'm having trouble understanding the outrage. It sounds as if they are trying to be the Apple of 3D printing, while also still supporting "sideloading." If the hardware itself isn't locked down, why does anyone care what they do with their cloud service?
OTOH, if the hardware is locked down, then that's what people should be complaining about, not an optional cloud service.
Prusa supports the same thing, though they don’t force you to use it and are VERY clear it’s fully optional.
You can go to their model site (Makerworld vs Printables) and if you’re logged in your can slice and start the print right in your browser. It’s a fantastic convenience for someone printing a lot of pre-made models.
I work with the Smoothieware project. The V1 Smoothieboard was one of the first (the first I am aware of) with an ethernet connection.
It was always stated by our devs that it should never be connected to anything but a local network. Why? Because you are supposed to be there running the printer...it is a fire hazard otherwise. People do run unattended, myself included, but it should not be advised or hyped as a "good idea".
The possibility of a hack was always there too. What could a malicious actor do with access to your machine?
The advice was not only ignored...but used as an advertising point to show how innovative they are.
Amazing how fast everyone forgot the time Bambu forced a firmware update which caused a large number of printers to begin printing uncommanded which in some cases caused damage due to completed prints still sitting on the bed. [1]
V2 Smoothieware has the ability to auto update firmware via network...but it is a command that requires the user to send.
At any rate...this matters to me little anymore. My printer is a decade old and going strong still. I have no desire to "purchase" any printer. I would just build another if needed.
The biggest lie sold by the marketers is that working on your printer is "lost time". Personally...I am glad I had the 2011 RepRap struggles. I would never give up my opensource hardware for a "cheaper" machine.
[1] I searched for old webpages on this...can't seem to find them anymore using google. It was a very well known issue in the 3d printing community at the time though.
This isn't defending Bambu, and it's not an ELI5 because, whether you meant it sarcastically or not, the easy answer to your question is "you do not need to connect to a cloud service to use a 3D printer".
Bambu Labs however, has chosen to market their printers with an app that provides a "one-stop shop" for all things 3D-printer. You can browse their version of Thingiverse (or Printables or Cults 3D) and send jobs directly to your printer. You can also access your printer remotely (read outside your home network without tunnelling/port-forwarding/VPNs) to monitor prints, get notified when a print is done, get notified you've run out of filament, watch the printer work if it's equipped with a camera, etc. etc.
Bambu has been attempting to remove features that enable easy local (not-internet-connected) use cases and force everyone to use the cloud, etc. Or at least make it as painful as possible to skip the cloud.
Relevant context: X1C owner who did not update the firmware that forced bambu's "secure printing" workflow on users that previously used their local network "plugin".
I stopped using Handy, blocked the printer's access to the internet, and ultimately, did not miss a thing. The printer continued to work fine with my slicer of choice (softfever's fork of Bambu Lab studio's fork of Prusa Slicer's fork of slic3r, now known as OrcaSlicer).
Like most things these days, they make a decent printer, but are part of tech's steadfast march to control everything. The twist is that they're in a space defined very much by breaking control.
You don't really, but the entire ecosystem is quite ergonomic for people who don't want to fiddle with software, connections, config, permissions, etc. and Just Print something.
Not defending Bambu. The UX is quite straightforward and easy, however.
Should we start with an explanation of why you would need to communicate with an IP network to use a 3D printer? Is it impossible to just plug in a USB connection and print?
Sure. I think I can explain the advantage of that.
With an Internet connection to their clown, a Bambu Labs printer doesn't require a person to deal with computers in the traditional sense. Like, at all.
The printer can be over there on the table, and a person can use it while sitting on their sofa with the cell phone that's in their hand. There's nothing else required for this to happen. They can browse models, customize them some, and print them all from their phone.
In this way, a person doesn't even need to know how to use a PC in order to casually print some widgets at home.
They don't need to know how networks or VPNs or open Internet-facing ports work, either. They can monitor then print job from anywhere without doing that stuff at all.
They don't need to plug a USB cable in. They don't need to know what an SD card even is.
Head outside, away from wifi? No worries: The printer still works the same whether the user's pocket supercomputer is inside, outside, at the grocery store, or anywhere else.
And for a lot of folks, that's pretty nice. My nephew, for instance, consistently prints amazingly-clean parts with his Bambu Labs machine and he puts zero effort into doing so. For him, at least, It Just Works.
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I can see why some folks in this particular audience may have some trouble appreciating the utility of this kind of apparent simplicity. After all, if there's anything that typifies someone on HN, it is that we're all avid computer users.
But we're weird in this way. Most people are not like this at all.
And to be clear: I myself have zero interest in cloud-oriented 3D printing. But I'm of the weirdest subset: I build my own 3D printers because I enjoy the process of solving the problems that are involved in doing so. If I want to control a printer from my phone from 3 states away, then I'll get that done on my own.
The convenience of wifi printing is obvious. That doesn't explain why you don't allow USB printing. I'm not suggesting that they should remove wifi printing. I'm questioning why they removed USB printing.
A person may appreciate the utility of this apparent simplicity just fine and still need a different solution for any of a variety of reasons. That doesn't make them weird.
You specifically highlight printing from a phone. Did you notice that the phone doesn't remove the ability to communicate over the cellular radio or the bluetooth radio just because a user might find the wifi radio convenient? It would be weird if it did.
For USB to a computer, specifically: Lots of folks just don't care. It's not on their radar.
Historically, lots of relatively popular printers have had pretty iffy support for that -- with a USB B port that ties directly into the 5v bus inside the printer alongside the printer's own power supply and this arrangement causing weird stuff to happen.
The Creality CR-10 is afflicted in this way, for example: It seems like a no-brainer to use a USB cable to drive it with Octoprint or Klipper using a Pi or something, or use it with a nearby PC, but things can turn stupid. There's a generalized note about this in Klipper's FAQ: https://www.klipper3d.org/FAQ.html
Now, that said: I'd rather have a USB device-mode port that works properly; barring that, it'd be better to have one that can be made to work well-enough than to have none at all. I'd also like to have serial data (both at RS-232 big-boy volts and TTL), and a real Ethernet port. I want an EPO input so a person can smash a big button when things go wrong, and an EPO output so the printer can shut stuff off on its own when it decides that things have gone wrong.
My connectivity desires don't align very well with what most people want out of their 3D-printing appliance, but they're real desires just the same...and I don't expect them to be fulfilled.
Anyway, it seems that Bambu Labs printers work fine, locally, over wifi. That's apparently a built-in function that can work with things like Orcaslicer. When it simply acts as a printer on a LAN, then I don't really need USB unless I'm just being pedantic today.
And as previously-discussed, Bambu Labs printers also have a clown-based mode that does clown-based stuff.
They don't do both modes simultaneously, but meh. So what? How many brains should one lowly 3D printer have to listen to concurrently?
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Anyway, the plugin under contention here seems to use the company's clown services to manage the printer instead of directly controlling it over the LAN.
And while I certainly cherish all efforts to enforce and enhance our ability to use the hardware we own in any way that we choose, this mentality doesn't extend to use of services that are provided by others.
So obviously it's not necessary at all, but Bambu built their entire brand on ease of use - the app allows you to pick from thousands and thousands of premade models and send them to your printer directly from the app. Judging by the Facebook Bambu groups, most people never bother with installing PC Bambu Studio. And because phones don't necessarily have the raw power to slice the model on device, it's sent to their servers for slicing to fit your printer and filament type.
So it's a nice to have thing, but it could have very easily been optional. Instead they made it so that every print, even ones sent from Bambu Studio, has to go through their servers(unless you enable Lan mode)
> Can someone explain to me like I'm 5, why you would need to communicate with a cloud service to use a 3D printer?
Using a cloud service means all your designs are submitted to Bambu and that means that they have the ability resell this intelligence information to the CCP and friendly entities, subsidizing the cost of their products and allowing Bambu to achieve unprecedented price/performance.
I’m so torn about bambulabs. Prusa needs to redesign their core one so it doesn’t use 3D printed parts (I get how that’s part of their philosophy but it’s not working anymore), $400 cheaper, and have a reliable AMS system. There’s just no other brand that can compete with Bambulab right now in terms of price vs performance.
Does anyone know if there is another printer manufacturer that has an equivalent to the Bambu A1S with it's custom AMS system. I don't think people realize how good that printer and AMS system is (the AMS system for the X1C pales in comparison), and I'd love to support another company, but haven't really seen another bed slinger with the simple center-rotating AMS style system seen on the A1S AMS. For context I run a business where I sell 3d printed parts for old film cameras - and the A1S is a workhorse.
The main thing keeping me from making the multi-material jump is the waste. I have a couple Vorons and would love to be able to print with different materials at the same time, but the waste with the current solutions is so egregious.
I don't know what the A1S is (did you mean the A1 or the P1S?) but the Snapmaker U1 is on my wishlist. More expensive than either but eliminates the AMS waste by using multiple toolheads. Open firmware, most of Bambu's convenience features.
Pawel Jarczak could consider donating the code to an anonymous random friend who happened to upload it to a chinese code forge where development could continue.
I would have said Prusa a year or two ago but they've reneged a little on their open-ness. That was probably in response to Bambu being fully closed and gaining so much market share.
The Core line of printers seems promising and a big leap towards closing the gap towards Bambu's corexy printers but haven't used one yet and I've been out of the game a little. Bambu though is probably more of a high-end appliance type than Prusas more utilitarian feel.
I splurged a while ago and got a pre-assembled Core One. It worked great right out of the box and is has been worry-free so far. So far, I've treated it very much like an appliance with no tinkering on my part yet.
The machine is still quite hackable. Prusa publishes the firmware and CAD files for their printers, although the CAD files aren't under a fully open license. The support is generally nice to people who tinker with their printers and sometimes even seems to be genuinely invested in seeing tinkering projects succeed.
I am not going to say they are perfect, but I think they have a good balance of ethics, openness, product quality, innovation, availability and price. By that I mean their are the best in none of them, but I don't think of anything better as a combination.
Prusa sat on its haunches for a decade, happy to leave progress on the table as long as their salaries got paid. Bambu actually got non-technical people into the hobby and has always had more bang per buck.
Buy a bambu; use Orcaslicer
Edit: didn't mean to say "held the industry back"; I would categorize my opinion more along the lines of "were happy to get fat on past offerings" or the like.
Prusa is generally like Apple in that regard, in that they wait for the new technology to be tried and true before committing their design(s) to it. CoreXY is the most prominent example.
Prusa was actually the "non-technical" printer company for quite a while though. They would sell to schools and libraries, and still do, and offer(ed) assembled kits.
I don't own a Prusa, I've assembled Vorons and have a highly-modified Ender 3 S1, but if I was in the market to get a user-friendly printer, or recommend one, I'd get a Prusa.
My thing with bambu was always that they polished whatever the industry (and hobbyists) had invented and closed it all off, then also innovating on top of that but never giving back unless they _had_ to. Polish and mechanical design are great but corexy kinematics, input-shaping are imo what made the X1 stand out as the fast+good-qual printer when it launched. A lot of what they added on top was then to build a moat.
This may be a controversial take, but imo it would be Bambu to set the industry back by a decade if they "win" and lock up the market. That's clearly their strategy afaict.
Does anyone remember Bambu patenting existing open inventions as their own? I can't seem to find good links anymore (?!) but there's some details here https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5134/8/6/141
Prusa is also pursuing patents (they say it's because of Bambu but lol), and they are not releasing their firmware sources for recent printers.
Bambu did not close the tech they used to make their printers. Others (including Prusa) are making CoreXY and they 100% also benefit from the RnD that Bambu did (either hardware, or the slicer (without which Orca would not exist in its current form)).
Bambu just made better products for cheaper and Josef got mad. But I'm certain that Prusa could compete had they focused on making price-competitive polished printers, and not focus on $5k monster printers for enterprise.
If no one else is willing to give a polished experience, they have no one to blame but themselves. My father doesn't want to be a 3d printer expert or filament researcher; he wants to print things in 3d as a hobby. Looking back at the reprap, ultimaker, and prusa — the big boys of the maker-oriented printers that i remember — none of them made any progress on making the hobby more accessible to someone like my dad. Bambu deserves some recognition for that.
I did quick search and bambu p2s seems to be 30% faster than prusa mk4s and few hundred cheaper.
Prusa is more accurate, more open and has better spare parts supply.
Bambu doesn't have wifi connection unless I use their cloud?
I’ve always got more consistent and accurate prints out of my x1c versus the prusa mk3 i tolerated. Even just the enclosure makes the bambu experience more much more consistent in my experience
The enclosure is the real added value, hardware-wise; and the H2D has even better environmental control (active heating and cooling of chamber).
While the open-source part of me loves the more open nature of Prusa, the commercial-minded part loves the immediate convenience of the Bambu. But the environmental control is something which Prusa doesn't really do well yet. Heated chamber, as well as filament humidity control is something Bambu has done which Prusa has not, and when it comes to printing with "engineering" filaments like PA6CF, PA6GF and other higher-end lubricating plastics for bearings etc, along with support filaments like PVA which are incredibly hygroscopic, the Bambu is the only contender if you want high-quality prints that don't warp.
IMO this is where Prusa gave up the race and need to catch up. Give me equivalent or better environmental control, and I'll be happy to consider it.
The accessibility to non-experts, and the fact that it just works out of the box without fiddling around optimising settings, is why I have a Bambu family at work and zero Prusas.
I didn’t say Prusa held the industry back; I said they sat on their haunches. Even the basic differences in stepper motors between what bambu chose and what prusa or ultimaker chose demonstrates my point.
Edit: whoops! guess i did say they held the industry back... my bad /facepalm.
I just bought a qidi printer. It arrives in a few days, so I can’t speak to the machine’s quality beyond saying it’s reviewed pretty well - but the software is all open source klipper with no locks preventing you from modifying it. The hardware itself is closed source, but if you want an open hardware machine in 2026 you need to build your own voron.
I have a Prusa MK3S and it has been very very reliable. There's also a ton of mods you can download and print, which modify or extend the printer for specific use cases. They are a bit more expensive then their Chinese counterparts, but in my opinion, it's definitely worth the extra cost for the peace of mind.
Obviously it depends on what you’re doing and what is importante to you. It’s hard to beat Bambi Labs H2D or X2D for versatility, practicality, and price. Engineering filaments are getting a lot cheaper as the market expands so it helps to have a printer than can handle those. Given Bambi Labs is so cheap compared to the alternatives customers would probably be better off putting aside the savings to buy a second printer from a different supplier when one starts to catch up.
As I mentioned in a sibling comment, I bought a qidi q2 because i am gambling that they have caught up in terms of quality. The price is comparable to the bambu p1s, while the specs are closer to the x1c. Reviews seem to put it roughly on par with the p2s, which costs 30% more.
It’s clear nobody’s caught up in terms of ux / user friendliness - but as an experienced printer i don’t need my hand held quite as much - and the openness is worth a lot to me. Being able to define custom klipper macros alone makes it worth it to me to stay away from bambu
Prusa. And my Raise3D E2 has been solid for ~5 years. I can't directly compare it to Bambu, but it was a massive step up from the Creality Ender it replaced. It's a "Just works" machine.
Prusa is the most open of the printer manufacturers. They did have to backtrack a bit because Bambu copied their slicer to use for themselves and undercut them, but they're still as open as you can get in a capitalist economy.
A slicer is software that takes a 3d model file and "slices" it for 3d printing. It outputs a series of instructions for a 3d printer to build up a physical object, layer by layer (slice by slice). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slicer_(3D_printing)
We see again and again how companies, even those affiliated with open source, want to milk the ecosystem dry. In this case Bambu Lab does so via the golden cloud. This is not ethical to try to sabotage the ecosystem, so Bambu Lab indeed needs to go bleep itself here.
I have to say the Bambu A1 Mini has been a game changer for me. I wouldn't own a 3D printer otherwise. While it doesn't really "just work" as the hype would have it (I believe this is impossible with current tech), it comes pretty damn close. Probably the printer that does it best.
I didn't want another hobby, fiddling with settings and materials, and generally going down the 3D printing rabbit hole. I just wanted to print stuff for my actual hobbies. And the A1 does this, with little fuss, for which I am forever grateful.
I have the A1 Mini as well. Mostly having sat unused since I bought it a few years back, I'm now wondering if the thing will function normally again. Any advice on basic "cold boot" maintenance? It's been a year since I last turned it on.
Shouldn't require much. Very light oil (ideally the oil that came with it) on the rails, wash the removable build plate with basic soap and water (may be dusty from sitting), and then run a test benchy to clear out any filament in the hotend.
So much of this opinion sounds like a Bambu ad read from YouTube, as if they're the only ones making printers that just work now, like a Prusa can't crank out perfect first layers without breaking a sweat.
The A1 Mini was my first printer, which is of course biases my opinion of other printers.
I've bought many, many other printers since then, and every time I've gotten something other than a Bambu Lab printer I've been disappointed, and ended up returning them or selling them.
Creality's K1 Plus was great, but regularly needed the extruder disassembled to get broken filament out.
Anycubic Kobra 3 Max regularly failed to keep prints on the bed. I bought 2 Elegoo Centauri Carbons. The first has been out of commission since the extruder went haywire, and I couldn't get replacement parts without going through some random support chat app, and the 2nd one's build plate delaminated the first weekend I had the printer.
The Snapmaker U1 I'm pretty happy with, but when I first got it, I learned you have to be very gentle with how you put the spools on, as it can pop an internal plastic panel off with interferes with the Y-axis.
Prusas are good, but price and availability are issues (I bought all the above new at my local Microcenter). I do have an older Prusa MK3 that I bought for an pellet extruder conversion, but for a printer with no online capabilities and a need to manually level it via paper, it cost more used than a new Bambu Lab P1S. I'm okay with putting your money where your ideology is, but imagine if the only alternative to an iPhone's walled garden was a $2000 Android.
As I said in my comment, the Bambu is the printer that made me try. Every other video or review I've seen, from multiple enthusiasts who use other brands, makes it clear any other printer (at least ~2 years ago when I bought it) was "a hobby into itself", most definitely what I did NOT want.
I do not want a hobby, I already have way too many. I wanted something plug and play, zero fuss, and the A1 Mini delivers.
If that reads like an ad to you, I don't know what to say.
This is part of the reason their attempts frustrate me so much. I love my A1 Mini but I do not want to support this kind of behavior so I will probably go to another company if I ever upgrade.
I like Rossman and usually agree with him, but imo hes a very bad speaker. I cant watch his videos. His problem is that, instead of getting to the point, he spends an inordinate amount of time pre-defending against bad faith arguments he assumes he will receive in response to his point. Thats just pointless imo, he should just make his point and if idiots dont get it then who cares, I dont think theres anything we can do for them anyway.
I trust BambuLabs about as much as I trust the Chinese Communist Party. That's to say, that they are obviously a cat's paw of the CCP, and bring the reactionary, authoritarian attitude with them, whilst using every underhanded, sneaky trick in the book to put Western manufacturers out of business, and ultimately compromise the West's ability to defend itself.
As a Westerner, I value my freedom, so I will happy pay way over the [Chinese-imposed] odds to build a 3D printer of my own than suck on the teat of the CCP and buy a subsidised 3D printer that attacks our freedoms.
I would encourage other right-thinking people who value freedom, democracy and rule-of-law to do the same: build your own or -- at the very least -- support Western 3D printer vendors like Prusa who share our values and contribute back to the community.
I mean considering how absolutely fucked the 2d printing space has been (HP) It's not surprising that 3d printing will involve identical shenanigans once it becomes even slightly mainstream. And that's what Bambu does, make 3d printing accessible.
Bambu Labs is completely ignoring their legal duties under the AGPL code they used while trying to make others comply to their licensing terms through abuse of the legal system.
Nobody forced them to use said code, they chose to when it was in their best interest and now they renege on the part in the license (the only thing that gives them a right to use and build on said code) when they deem it not in their interest any longer and think they're big enough to squash individuals protesting.
If you are referring to his video from May 2023, "Why I deleted GrapheneOS", it is about the team lead, Daniel Micay, not about GrapheneOS itself. He, in fact, praises GrapheneOS to no end in the very same video.
If you with "he" mean Daniel Micay, I unfortunately agree, based on observations from previously having idled in the GOS Discord for a couple of years. Plenty of downright mean and unforgiving behavior, not seldom due to him misinterpreting others' statements and questions.
The few I’ve seen were obviously staged but it did appear real in that he was hit with a high voltage. Looking it up suggests that he has been injured a number of times due to miscalculations.
As a matter of fact he has mentioned that one of the Jacob's Ladder videos was the only time he messed up and came close to actually electrocuting himself (by reflexively trying to grab the leads as they fell off a table). Otherwise all of the shocks are "calculated" to be nonharmful.
In the late 90s internet there was a blogger that built cool stuff with electricity, really seemed to know what he was doing, one day he blogged about how he was going to use a bunch of microwave transformers for an upcoming project. No updates since then, I presumed he died by accident.
When was the last time Rossmann had anything nice to say? He seems utterly miserable. I don’t doubt this is an important issue, but when he inserts himself into a dispute, it only gets more overblown and vitriolic on all sides.
(The ridiculous NYC to Austin thing is pretty representative. Complained incessantly about loony liberal New York, moved to Austin, now he complains about Texas. Sorry! Turns out there is no utopia for pathological contrarians.)
Yeah he's often not in a good mood, but at least he points out these things, and I understand it can get you worked up if you're investigating these things and come to these concerning discoveries. I'm happy someone is doing that work, even if it's not fun. And he seemed to have taken up that job, and I think he's doing it well, albeit he is sometimes a bit intense, but I would forgive him that.
He's just like Steve nowadays - he built his entire brand on being angry, so he has to be angry or his core audience will leave. And if that's what you like then fine, but for me it's just not interesting anymore.
It's the sad thing about field experts who become YouTubers: to keep up the viewership, they undergo self-Flanderization.
I was sad to watch Sabine Hossenfelder devolve from a level-headed critic of how research is done, into a loony crank who selects the contrarian angle on every issue. I'm sure the YouTube analytics inform her which topics perform better.
His rants were more palpable when he blasted the design of PCB visible on screen, or vendor that didn't want to sell replacement parts, when viewer could see the damage at the same time. Now he is just another guy with mic. And while he fights for good cause I find his videos at least 5 times too long considering the actual content.
...or, or(!) maybe things really do suck right now? I don't think this is a controversial view. There's reasons to be upset and demand change regarding intellectual property legislation and computing and related technology's hardware.
Of course, but they get to choose what their channel is about, and we as viewers choose if we're intersted in it. Louis specifically used to put up videos of really interesting repairs of apple products and he just doesn't do that anymore. I'm not saying he should change or that he chose a wrong path - I'm just saying I'm not interested in his channel anymore, just like I stopped watching Gamers Nexus once Steve decided that his entire personality is just going to be ranting for 60+ minutes every video. Some people love that, I don't. That doesn't mean his complaints don't have merit or are not worth doing - just that consuming content(and it's very much content) takes time, which we all have in limited supply and I'd rather watch someone being happy with something rather than being angry at everything. If I feel like being angry I just open the news.
That upset me, but now I'm pissed. Now I don't even care about their stupid printers. Now I'd like to waste Bambu Lab's time and cause problems for them.
And also, while this X1C should be going strong for years, my eyes are on Prusa should I want another printer any time soon for any reason. Less polished or not, they seem like they're still better for consumers even though they are apparently less open than they used to be. But I'm of course interested in hearing what people recommend, too. (I got an X1C because I knew it would be simple, but I don't particularly mind getting my hands dirty or anything. I did build an Ender 3 kit before that.)
Mutli-color though is where Bambu has a good leg up.
(Diluted) Vision Miner Nano Polymer Adhesive and a good bed leveling probe has done a lot to make my printer set and forget, no matter which print sheets I use.
The 4 and Core One families never had to do it.
Edit: and yes, it did suck
https://github.com/MakerBogans/docs/wiki/Printer-goop
I'm excited for INDX but going to wait a year or so.
https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/knowledge-sharing/enable-develo...
It's a shame they're going in such an anti-consumer direction, both with their gaslighting customer support and the lawfare against Orca.
However - yes, they did have me perform multiple disassembly/re-connect steps and document, and then of course every question/answer was at least a 24-hr turnaround (some delays were because I keep my printer at my office and chose to work from home a few times), eventually they sent me an entire new Vortek rack - which, once installed worked perfectly.
I was not looking forward to packing the entire thing up and shipping it back.
hmmm - they never asked for the old one back... (hmmm, harvest the servo motor? drag-chains and rods for other projects? Mount it on the wall and use it to store extra induction nozzles? Ideas?)
But it left a really bad taste in my mouth about the company.
Consumers are used to stuff like Amazon customer service. I wasn’t expecting to waste all that time to exchange 1kg of filament. I thought they’d send it out no hassle and take back the defective filament to research it themselves.
So now when I recommend Bambu, I say the printers are great but their customer service is horrible. So be very careful.
I assume you have an ams 2 pro?
And it won’t pull filament when randomly ?
Her also same issue and she’s having to fight them.
Shit is wild.
I feel rather guilty I had an initially good experience with my p2s, but they’ve managed to mess up the firmware or something ….
Now I don’t think I would recommend it to anyone anymore.
I was lucky and they didn’t have any in stock when I wanted to buy…
Now I’m nervous about buying one from anyone.
Bambu has spent a ton of dough on paid advertising via YouTube shills (it is absolutely rampant in that scene - I like the channel Maker's Muse as a notable exception, who also has some funny videos up where he reads emails from various vendors trying to bribe or intimidate him in various ways), and many in the HN crows were happy to parrot their talking points to justify their purchases. A winning marketing strategy.
To this day you end up encountering a lot of people who are under the impression Bambu printers somehow made 3D printing accessible or are the only ticket to a problem-free experience. And you know, the product might do that, the problem is the message that they're the only game in town, which has never been true and which they largely achieved on the back of work already done by others for them in software, designs and ecosystem development.
To contrast this: You often hear this about Apple, that they didn't necessarily invent the stuff, but they did the last-mile integration really well. It's incomparable. Apple did far more work on their products than Bambu ever did.
You can use their slicer (which works well!). If you don’t want to, you can use one that sends through their Bambu Connect software, which Orca Slicer doesn’t want to support for…reasons. Or you can use it in LAN mode. Or you can just transfer the gcode via an SD card or flash drive like ye olde days.
Despite the tone of the other reply to your question, they are absolutely the easiest printers to work with. I don’t love their new multicolor solution for how slow it is compared to other options, but that would be the only real fault with their newest line.
Extremely basic features (like serial printing) are considered “nice to have”. Some tickets have remained open for over 6 years now and ignored by prusa:
- https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy/issues/189 (still open after 6+ years)
- https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware-Buddy/issues/283 (took 3.5 years to acknowledge and fix)
Thus, because of this basically promise by Prusa, the pace with which new features become available is much slower.
Prusa is for people who really want their 3D printers supported for a very long time.
It has been absolutely great and low-effort. I haven't needed it yet, but their printers seem to be focused on easy maintenance by their owners.
I bought a bambu precisely because I don't want to mod the thing with a gazillion custom upgrades like I needed to do with my previous printers to make them work reliably. I just want to press print and... print. Bambu totally delivers there. They really commoditised 3D printing and brought the price down. And if you do want to go off the beaten track they have options.
My hobby is not 3D printer tinkering. It's printing stuff to use. This is clearly what bambu market towards and they do the job really well. I know many people in the makerspace community that spend weeks tuning their perfect Klipper setup. Cool but I prefer spending those weeks perfecting my designs instead. It's hard to overstate the difference they made in out of the box capability especially for the price. And their spare parts are decently priced too.
Now if they start locking down the consumables like other evil companies like 3D Systems and Da Vinci XYZ did then yes. Then they deserve all the blame they can get.
The orcaslicer thing I don't know what to think about yet (I have to read up on it) but the discussion here was more about the local mode.
Ps Bambu isn't the only brand I have. But I do like what they've done. It was exactly what I needed.
Ironically I started using orcaslicer recently. It seems cool. But I really just want a working printer. Probably getting a bambu in spite of the angry noises online.
Where is this coming from? You absolutely need to know the ins and outs of a 3D printer. Nozzles wear out, build plates wear out, components need to be regularly cleaned properly and lubricated, you have to keep filaments dry, certain filaments can only be used with certain components, you constantly tweak slicer and temperature settings, ... The list goes on.
3D printers, including Bambu Lab printers, are definitely not easy to use nor are they reliable. They're maintenance heavy. Sometimes you have to do a print multiple times because it'll fail for a myriad of reasons. Maybe you oriented it wrong, maybe your slicer settings are off, maybe it didn't have proper supports, maybe the filament is messed up, ...
I've been doing 3D printing for 15 years so I've been through all the heavy maintenance printers. But most of that knowledge I don't need anymore. First layers are always perfect as long as the bed is properly grease free. The only knowledge I still really need is the design for 3D printing, like overhang orientations, seams etc.
Having the printer give you reminders to do something doesn't mean that maintenance is minimal.
In my experience, having owned 2-other printers prior to an X1C - there is absolutely NO comparison - EVERYTHING was community, Reddit, forum or random YouTube guidance from non-manufacturers.
I do think though, that a little learning and understanding of your tools is such a useful thing practically and creatively speaking, but also ultimately time saving.
Slow, as they say, is fast.
Good design is only very partially objective, it's often an acquired taste. I, for example, find Bambu printers with their "glossy Apple-inspired look" incredibly ugly, and strongly prefer the look of Prusa printers.
Prusa's MK3S delivered consistently good, zero fuss, straight out of the box prints with auto bed leveling for $999 before Bambu labs even existed at all.
Bambu brought Core XY & multi-filament to the "mainstream" (for however mainstream 3D printing is at all), absolutely, but if you just wanted a 3D printer that consistently worked for an affordable price? Prusa beat them to that by years. They just didn't advertise the shit out of it on YouTube like Bambu did.
Prusa unfortunately then kinda just... relaxed? Not sure what happened, but MK3 -> MK4 was pretty meh, the XL was delayed, the Core One a good response but still lacking on the multi-material front, etc...
And the open source community is open source precisely to drive the state of the art further.
Having respect for other makers doesn't necessarily mean agreeing on everything.
I'm just giving the other side of the story. If you wish to choose another brand you're free to do so of course. Not all my printers are bambu, in fact my latest one isn't either.
Can you agree on not stealing? That's the equivalent of what BL is doing.
What you are complaining about is access to their proprietary, and optional cloud control functionality. I'd like for access to be open there too, but them trying to gate what apps can access to that isnt "stealing" from the open source community.
So - of course, I swore I would not buy another Bambu. But, when looking at the various pricing and other aspects of competitors - about a month ago I did end-up buying an H2C with double-AMS and an HT - mainly to reduce filament waste, have a larger build volume, be able to use multi-materials for support "quickly" and have active chamber heating for more "engineering" type filaments. Don't believe the hype about the chamber filter though - I have found with ABS, you still need external exhaust or air filtering as even though the chamber "closes" and recycles via the filter, you still have the "poop chute" venting fumes...
... and of course... even if I wanted to switch to LAN-mode, unfortunately OrcaSlicer does not yet support the H2C... perhaps it never will unfortunately...
And if you really want “open”, there’s isn’t much better than a Voron in that aspect.
Now I am rebuilding my old Ender 3 with Openbuilds parts into a CoreXY setup, all metal hotend, sturdier metal frame, and the newer RAMPS board with a raspberry pi and klipper setup. Don't know enough about the multi tool related things, but maybe I am gonna focus on that afterwards.
I am having tons of fun while doing so, it has been quite a while since I rebuilt my Anet A8 into an AM8 with a custom Marlin firmware back then.
Have Prusa finally fixed their engineering? Prusa basically sitting inert on the engineering front is what allowed Bambu to leapfrog them.
Bambu made real engineering improvements: linear slides, servomotor for feed, accelerometer tuning, etc. Has Prusa finally decided to compete again? A lot of us are willing to give a company more money for being open source, but the basic product can't be too significantly inferior.
It looks like there is at least one linear slide on the Prusa Core One+ so that's a start...
This was the time when Prusa produced the MK3... printers. The MK4S was already a huge step forward: in my opinion - privacy topics aside - already better than Bambu's offerings for some applications (even though these applications were possibly not the ones that the masses care(d) about).
The Core One+ and the Core One L that were released after that are really good printers. Also the Prusa XL is a great printer for what it has been designed for if you give it some maintenance love (note however that the Prusa XL was from a time when less people wanted to print filaments that strongly profit from a heated chamber, so the Prusa XL was - in opposite to the Core One and Core One L - not designed with a focus on this).
I don’t think they earned it.
I suspect there is a huge number of people out there who bought them who don’t even know what else exists. They saw a YouTuber advertise one on a video making something and decided to buy that.
I’m not saying no one should give out free printers. But Bambu is carpet bombing YouTube, and they require the videos be turned into Bambu ads to do it. Having to show it multiple times, talk about its great features multiple times, etc. i’ve never seen the script but I’ve seen enough videos have conspicuously similar elements promoting the printer to know it must a condition.
The videos I’ve seen where people get a free XL mention that fact, maybe one other, but that’s about it. It’s not hammered on like Bambu seems to want.
I was recommending Prusa to everyone who inquired about 3D printers for many years before Bambu launched, so I’m not unfamiliar with the market.
Trying to criticize Bambu for sending a lot of printers to YouTubers is ironic when Prusa has always done the same thing.
1) The people around me who bought a Bambu P1S or P2S weren't swayed by marketing. Some of them even owned Prusa machines. They bought those Bambu printers because they had products they needed printed, and the Bambu got it done while the Prusa failed prints and made them dork around with things.
2) The A1 minis are cheap and look good to consumers; they also work remarkably reliably. Prusa doesn't have anything even remotely in the same class. That is squarely the fault of Prusa.
3) A lot of people who don't know any better can go to Best Buy and buy a Bambu in stock, off the shelf, with a return policy. Again, the fault lies squarely with Prusa.
4) The Bambu printers had fundamentally better components like linear slides and servo motors, for example. Again, fault to Prusa.
Prusa got caught with their pants down and refused to adjust for far too long. Bambu did genuine engineering while Prusa rested on its laurels.
3) is marketing and access to capital that Prusa don't have. 4) Prusa is of similar quality in my experience, or both machines have their problems for different reasons. I would need to run a scientific experiment.
There is no argument in which Bambu succeed solely on technical merit alone. Bambu can outspend Prusa due to access to venture capital funding and state support. That is a structural advantage that cannot be easily overcome.
This move does not surprise me at all, and I'm genuinely happy that Louis is willing to shell out money to help those that can't defend themselves.
I'm happy that Bambu finally made Prusa care, but I will not cheer them even if they consistently innovate. It's just sad.
Three years later, they have unreliable printers that are difficult to maintain.
I have a five year old Prusa, still working very nicely, and it's still a tool and not itself a hobby.
Bambu are appliances. They can work great out of the box, but appliances do not have upgrade paths. You do not upgrade a microwave, you throw it out and get a new one. Or maybe it's more like a fridge, you can limitedly repair some bits, but you cannot wholesale upgrade from V1 to V2.
Anyways bought the core one a few months ago, on kit, and did the whole assembly. The assembly was fun, and the resulting printer has been great. The print fails I had were all easily understandable, entirely due to adhesion issues to a dirty print plate.
I also ordered the indx and am looking forward to capabilities that are not possible with the AMS system. I'm more of an artist though, so I'm looking for interesting and cool ways to make things, not just 3D printing figurines or sculptures etc.
I see it as buying printers design for industrial usage versus printers for hobby. Prusa is selling me a tool that just works every time.
I'm really getting too old dealing with morons who didn't learn anything after the same patterns repeating for decades now.
I support him even though people can pick him apart.
[1] https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
Lois Rossmann has always been ranting in his video, but originally he did so while repairing Macbooks. I actually learned a few tricks watching his videos. Now, he is just sitting down talking, adding drama and outrage to news stories relevant to what he advocates for.
I mean, we need people like him, like we need people like Richard Stallman, but I personally prefer more nuanced approaches.
It's legitimate annoyance and anger at the state of affairs and calling it "drama" implies that it's performative and/or unwarranted.
I’ve never seen this Louis guy but those sure sound like the words of a drama and outrage enthusiast.
This story is at the heart of everything that's wrong with consumer rights these days - digital locks, coercive upgrades, removing features after the sale, AGPL violations, and legal bullying of independent developers, enthusiasts, and hackers.
The original title was needlessly inflammatory, Louis put up $10,000 to cover this person's legal fees should they fight Bambu's bullshit threats. It's in all of our interests to fight this, as consumers and as members of HACKER news.
They didn't need to. Describing it as "just" drama means that you find the subject matter performative and unwarranted, that's what makes something "just drama".
> I hope I never produce the words "return to mindless consuming" just because someone dared to criticize my idol
I invoked "mindless consumption" because of how ridiculously dismissive they were acting towards the discussion about consumer rights, i.e. mindful consumption.
Criticize him all you want, but don't get upset when someone calls you out for criticizing a baseless straw man.
And for not needing to say it: actually yes it is needed. Nobody said consumer rights are performative, it was said that Rossmann is performative and trying to generate drama and clicks. Even if not true, it's a valid opinion that doesn't make anyone a mindless consumer, quite the opposite. But regardless, those are not the same things, unless you see Rossmann (and possibly yourself) as the gatekeeper of this issue.
The argument is that a mindful consumer would see that Louis Rossman is, in his way, arguing for consumer rights.
I don't think that counts as ad hominem.
> it’s not drama because it’s not interpersonal gossip, it’s right to repair activism.
He has definitely engaged in dramas that have nothing to do with right to repair activism, including weighing in on dramas between other tech YouTubers.
He hit a niche with right to repair and has produced a lot of content about it, but he has also ranted about a lot of completely unrelated topics. Does nobody remember his old videos rambling about women and gender topics, for example? This is going way back, so possibly before many new converts were introduced to his channel.
His channel has definitely not only been right to repair.
No one remembers these because they don't exist.
He gets a bunch of things wrong since it's mostly reactionary content but he is willing to correct himself when he gets things wrong.
He does a lot to prevent companies from screwing over customers and that in of itself is good enough that in willing to overlook his flaws
Not Just Bikes makes reddit posts for redditors in YouTube form, basically. Louis actually supports people and projects. There's no 'schtick', consumer repair is core to his business and his channel.
I don’t understand why an article from Tom’s Hardware about an opinion of Louis Rossman who tells a 3D printer maker to go fuck themselves is currently the most upvoted article on HN.
I can hardly believe headlines like these are met with anything but cheers. It’s literally the hacker spirit in the classical sense: a big company is trying to legally threaten a project offline, and people like Louis are helping prevent that.
You could at least throw in a “it’s cool that he’s pledging money” before insulting his channel. And if his channel wasn’t as political as it is, it’s doubtful he could rally the kind of support we’re seeing here.
My point is that I have an issue with his tone and rhetoric, not with the thing he’s advocating.
He appeals to a certain audience that likes rage over proper discourse. I am fairly certain the HN etiquette prefers proper discourse over rage.
This is often a hand wavy excuse by people who simply don’t agree with a cause and/or think it’s not important, but won’t admit it. If you don’t think what he is advocating for is important just say so. If you do, support him. You can’t possibly believe he’s so out of line that it’s worth prioritizing that opinion over the cause itself.
It’s just that his style is really appalling to me. Am I not allowed to criticize his style while at the same time supporting his stance?
I think it’s unfair to then imply I must not be admitting that I’m against his cause and using it as an excuse, because nothing I have said indicated this.
Sure, I’ll pledge $10K to the developer who already declared that he’s not interested in fighting a legal battle for this project. That’s easy.
The bounties are real and awarded [1].
[1] https://bounties.fulu.org/bounties?status=closed
Also that site is a disaster of a UI. It reloads on every single character entry while you’re trying to type in the search term.
Also please don’t fake-quote other people with things they didn’t say:
> > Sure I'll post a snarky comment without getting familiar with the subject whatsoever.
It’s even worse when you haven’t become familiar enough with the subject to share a worthwhile link.
I much prefer channels that don’t use this way of gaining views, but they, because of that, don’t gain nearly as many views.
I have no skin in this game, but it’s pretty clear what the majority of viewers want.
Don't worry, we'll drag your lazy ass long while we clean up problems that you don't care to help fix.
Does he? Intentional misrepresentation is one thing and inadvertent inaccuracies quite another.
I don't think an opinion becomes more based in reality by sticking the words "As a matter of fact" in front of them.
What you described is an observational bias. His job is to bring this kind of anti-consumer shit to light. Hence, the drama.
If not, why should he stop?
Although I have to say, I think Louis was making better videos when he was in New York. I understand the financial situation where New York really abuses people, but I am just looking at the videos. I can't say whether that decision was what changed, but I noticed that the content changed a lot once he relocated outside of New York.
However had, I disagree with the "drama" comment. I would call it more that the movement became more important, which is fine, in my opinion. Right to repair isn't that different from many other movements where we people try to get more rights back again. See the right to videotape public officials in performing their public jobs and so on. It is all connected.
When there is drama as far as I can tell he always had pretty solid reasons to be dramatic. It isn't drama when you have real reasons. Drama implies making shit up. Point to the shit he made up. Go ahead. Be specific.
Your accusation there makes it sound like he makes up some minor personal issues and blows them up as rage bait. As if the lock in and enshittification he advocates against are just his personal opinion. They are not. The vast majority (last time I checked >80%) of the public shares the opinion that you should own the equipment you buy and that it should be repairable.
If you happen to be a person that tries to establish neo-feudalism at the cost of everybody else, a public figure successfully making that an issue, might be problematic for your goals, sure. But then your goals may just be beneath contempt anyways and you should working on becoming a productive member of society instead.
If you think it is a shtick because you haven't really looked into it that much and you have a contrarian reflex, maybe try to bring the receipts next time. You know, like:" Louis Rossmann is a drama queen because remember when he said X about Y? Remember when he said Y about Z? It turned out to be Q and Louis had to know it was Q" etc.
Rossmann turned his YouTube fame into political advocacy for a popular topic, that he politically represents. Don't like that topic? Don't watch his content. People change and so does the focus of their life.
I run an university electronics workshop and the issues he mentioned are the issues I have to deal with every week, be it some shitty vendor lock-in on some gear or equipment where just the part that dies first is proprietary and service-hostile.
I have never had a problem with the software, the outrage is totally manufactured to have something to complain about. Louis was fun to listen to for a while, but his schtick is so tired now.
I don’t recognize the name and for some reason the article never gives a single sentence of context just expecting you to know the same way things expect you to know who Trump or Taylor Swift is.
I even watch a few 3D printer and maker YTers, but I guess not him.
He has (or had, not sure) an electronics repair shop where he showed laptop and phone repairs on his channel. Recently he is one of the people who push right to repair regulations and consumer rights. Which is probably why he is interested in this case.
Saying anything less than glowingly positive about Rossmann is dangerous due to his fan base, but I think this mentality of pre-forgiving his misinformation is not healthy.
Being passionate and putting on a vulnerable schtick shouldn’t excuse someone from misleading their large audience.
Rossman is a drama YouTuber, like many others. This is an entire YouTube genre. Most of them have the same schtick where they appear to be the most passionate, vulnerable, on-your-side narrator of a story. His schtick is common in the drama YouTuber genre.
You shouldn’t develop such a parasocial relationship with a person that you reflexively defend every topic they engage in. Discuss the topics each on their own factual merits and be prepared to look for second sources. Don’t align yourself with someone because they are passionate and appear “vulnerable”. At the end of the day, you need to remember that putting on this display is how he makes his money. It’s a show.
I dont see how he is “like many others”. A lot of YouTubers cover controversy for controversy sake, or just as material for another sponsored video. He does not do sponsored content, and usually seems to push for something concrete around consumer rights. So I think the comparison to other drama Youtubers is unfair.
In my view, the drama is more a way to draw attention to his activism. He does tend to put his money and time where his mouth is.
But perhaps my view is biased, since I only see the videos the YouTube algorithm suggests to me, and those may be the ones that are more focused on consumer rights than drama. Still, that has consistently been my impression.
Even amongst YouTubers, you can favor facts over emotions (without discarding emotion!) and be a more effective advocate who arms others with both motivation and useful, effective knowledge.[1]
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
Technology Connections is an educational channel that occasionally offers political commentary. Telling his audience to vote is a call to action, but not the same as organizing. Rossmann is an organizer who engages with policymakers. To treat them as being on the same level is to misunderstand what they are each doing.
Aside: What does "facts over emotion" mean? Aren't facts and emotions orthogonal?
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Main_Page
EDIT: I’m not going to sit through another angry Louis Rossmann video, but from what I can see someone tried to make a branch of OrcaSlicer that interacted directly with Bambu’s private cloud APIs to impersonate Bambu Studio. I don’t agree with the legal threats but this case is about connecting to their non-public cloud APIs, not connecting to the printer directly.
It remains astonishing to me that this is controversial. Not everyone has the knowhow to block internet access to their printer, so having a toggle in firmware is terrific. I've verified after turning it on that it never phones home. Couldn't be happier.
Unless you're running qubes or some other virtualization setup their network plugin punctures whatever airgap you put around the printer and also gives them access to your system as well.
I see in my dns logs lots of repeated blocked requests to a Bambu labs domain whenever I have orcaslicer open. I assume it’s so many because it’s getting blocked and retrying.
I just print over lan though. Not using the Bambu servers (or the fork mentioned in OP) It works flawlessly.
Try https://youtu.be/0tdZ5Z7nRDY?si=vjnJ90p6ba_Xik9B for a less emotive take on this specific case, and the closely related matter of Bambu's attempt to circumvent some of AGPL's protections.
No, it doesn't. It used to, but then Bambu Labs "for security reasons" (as always) removed access to their "network plugin".
There is a lot of confusion around this, so: you lose access to bambu cloud, so quick upload, remote printing, remote monitoring of prints, synchronization of filament data, and lots of other useful features.
You get a half-baked "throw it over the wall" way of sending files to your printer using a standalone Bambu executable (largely neglected). Note that this does not provide a way to synchronize the filament list to your slicer before slicing, which is useful and important.
You also get a "developer/LAN mode", which is an either/or proposition. If you turn it on, you lose cloud features. No more remote monitoring of your prints using your phone.
I find it very annoying that Bambu managed to implant this shallow take of "you can use LAN mode so things are fine" in people's minds.
Is it perfect or the ideal solution? Not quite, but it does let me have a fully local bambu printer with any theoretical calling home blocked at a network level.
Getting cloud mode means using Bambu Studio. Getting Bambu Studio means one more notch in slowly getting locked into the walled Bambu garden.
The local only mode is very good, it's not first class but for people who care its functional as all hell
The other thing he released is a klipper firmware for the AMS, BambuLab of course are not happy.
I’m completely against bullying and attempts to lock out open source software from using 3d printers directly; if they locked out OrcaSlicer from direct control I’d have a big problem with that.
But trying to interact directly with Bambu’s private infrastructure/APis seems reasonable for Bambu to block. I think a cease and desist might backfire on Bambu but i don’t think it’s unreadable. (Didn’t watch the video. Just getting context from parent comment. )
Even if they have taken away other routes that used to exist so that this is the only way?
I've also been very happy with my A1 (bought ~18 months go), and have since bought a U1 (which has networking problems of its own, but is otherwise a great upgrade) alongside it. Unless Bambu changes its tack significantly I'll not be buying another of their machines or more of their materials¹.
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[1] well, maybe the light grey PLA as I've not yet found anything similar enough easily available in the UK, and it is perfect for prints that I want to look neutral or for some scifi ships & similar…
I’ve only been in the system for a year so I don’t know about the history beyond that. Based on some downvotes + your comment I will look into it further.
I'll chip in to this developer's legal defense fund because I want to be able to do whatever I want with my printer, and "I can't do what I want with my printer" is a bigger problem for me right now than "the developer made a TCP connection on my behalf to a server he didn't own".
I don't accept any "it's fine because you can hack around it". If it needs me to choose between their phone app working or privacy, it's not fucking open enough.
With that said, I don’t think it’s reasonable to describe setting up Tailscale as similar to “Linux server that runs 24/7 with OpenVPN and iptables”. Sure, you could go that route, but a Tailscale setup is extremely simple and lightweight. A raspberry pi is plenty if there isn’t already a system running 24/7. I personally have this set up on my router.
I point this out while still sharing the general sentiment of negativity towards Bambu here.
I find it difficult to imagine equating a raspberry pi in a closet with “running a server”. Is it technically a server? Sure. But it’s not as if we’re talking about running a power hungry rack.
Bottom line is: there are very cheap and simple/easy options for maintaining a private connection to your home stuff.
> and figure out all the networking bits that will get it to talk to the printer
With something like Tailscale this is already figured out. My mostly non technical brother does this without issues.
This is entirely separate from whether or not you should need to do so for Bambu printers, which again I agree the answer is ideally “no”.
https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5134/8/6/141
The motive appears to be to get tax credits as opposed to becoming a full-on patent troll, though with how quickly China is speedrunning their version of capitalism I would not be surprised if it turns into patent trolling.
Their behaviour overall is really giving me mixed feelings, because the Bambu A1 I have is an absolutely amazing machine for the price, and I've been casually in this since the Printrbot days.
If you invent something and publish it (including by offering it to the public in product) your work constitutes prior art and is an absolute bar against the subsequent (valid) patenting of the invention by a third party. F2F vs F2I has no impact on this.
What F2F means if that if two people working in secret create the same invention and show up at the patent office at the same time-- the first one to file gets it. The earlier F2I scheme instead had a contest where the party that is the most ambitious in fabricating lab notebooks to backdate their invention gets the patent.
Because of a poor choice in naming many people wrongfully assume F2F means you can go pick up other people's inventions out of the public sphere and claim them as your own because you filed first.
The misunderstanding is exacerbated because fraudulently patenting other people's inventions is commonplace-- as there is no consequence for doing so except losing the patent after getting defeated on review/litigation-- but the practice isn't meaningfully influenced by F2F vs F2I.
The implementation of F2I is then the issue. It should be the first to fulfill all of the following requirements:
(1) physically show at least 2 patent clerks the invention,
(2) that the invention works & operates as outlined, with the clerks being the ones to operate the machine, and
(3) a detailed step-by-step guide to the clerk about how the machine works
The date that the patent is awarded should be the date where the last of the 3 actions occurred.
1: https://youtu.be/JCHUOQ7yby0
Sure prusa is fine too, and other brands might are getting there too. But if you want to print as a tool I would recommend to just use the tool nearly everyone is agreeing on.
I didn't regret it once, and have 3 printers at this point (2 of which free thanks to Bambu points)
Also I am still amazed that my $150 A1 mini is basically just as good as the X2D or P2S.
That's not Bambu being open, that's them doing the absolute minimum to allow people to say "you can use Bambu printers fully offline" in comment sections.
https://testflight.apple.com/join/VXBxZYNr
https://bambuddy.cool/
In LAN mode it’s more complicated. LAN mode requires you to still use their slicer because the majority of functions beyond the extremely basic are still restricted by their authorization layer. This means using their SDK/network plugin for anything you develop, effectively coercing developers into their ecosystem for use-cases by the majority of users.
It seems pretty clear, in my opinion, that what they’re trying to communicate by using the “developer mode” language is that owning your device end-to-end is big, scary, and only for professionals. Oh, btw, developer mode leaves your device completely open and introduces various UX friction points to the experience related to constantly needing to rebind. Effectively it’s malicious compliance on their end. They’re giving the middle finger to anyone who wants to cut them out, and it’s hard to say anyone who feels that way is imagining it.
If so then you could access it over a reverse proxy like Tailscale.
Its trivially easy to set one up these days.
Instead of a Bambu, I got a Flashforge Adventurer 5M. It is incredibly cheap (cheap enough that I am more than happy to replace it after two years if it stops working), and is pretty reliable (compared to the Prusa MK3 and MK3S I had), and most of all, the self-calibration works well enough that I don't spend any time debugging prints that fail at the first layer anymore; I just re-run calibration and it's fine, and if it's not fine, I clean the plate and it works.
It also comes with a terrible slicer (dervied from Slic3r I believe) with annoying "log into the cloud every time you start the app", but I moved to OrcaSlicer. I had to give up a few nice features but it hasn't truly impacted my workflow. And it does receive firmware updates (it's connected via wifi to my home network). My hope- just a hope- is that they don't do anything truly stupid with future firmware updates or end up getting in a hissy fit with prominent youtubers.
But realistically, because if they control how you use your machine, they can start skimming profit off of those digital services every time you print something. That's only works if they have control over how you use the machine in your house.
To outward appearances, they seem to be trying to recreate the printer ink/razor blade business model on 3d printers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor-and-blades_model#Printer...
To reiterate the GP's question: why would I want to do that? In practice whenever I want to monitor anything from anywhere, I just VNC or RDP to my PC.
If it's just about ease-of-use, as the other replies suggest, and not actually gating the functionality of the hardware, I'm having trouble understanding the outrage. It sounds as if they are trying to be the Apple of 3D printing, while also still supporting "sideloading." If the hardware itself isn't locked down, why does anyone care what they do with their cloud service?
OTOH, if the hardware is locked down, then that's what people should be complaining about, not an optional cloud service.
Prusa supports the same thing, though they don’t force you to use it and are VERY clear it’s fully optional.
You can go to their model site (Makerworld vs Printables) and if you’re logged in your can slice and start the print right in your browser. It’s a fantastic convenience for someone printing a lot of pre-made models.
It was always stated by our devs that it should never be connected to anything but a local network. Why? Because you are supposed to be there running the printer...it is a fire hazard otherwise. People do run unattended, myself included, but it should not be advised or hyped as a "good idea".
The possibility of a hack was always there too. What could a malicious actor do with access to your machine?
The advice was not only ignored...but used as an advertising point to show how innovative they are.
Amazing how fast everyone forgot the time Bambu forced a firmware update which caused a large number of printers to begin printing uncommanded which in some cases caused damage due to completed prints still sitting on the bed. [1]
V2 Smoothieware has the ability to auto update firmware via network...but it is a command that requires the user to send.
At any rate...this matters to me little anymore. My printer is a decade old and going strong still. I have no desire to "purchase" any printer. I would just build another if needed.
The biggest lie sold by the marketers is that working on your printer is "lost time". Personally...I am glad I had the 2011 RepRap struggles. I would never give up my opensource hardware for a "cheaper" machine.
[1] I searched for old webpages on this...can't seem to find them anymore using google. It was a very well known issue in the 3d printing community at the time though.
Bambu Labs however, has chosen to market their printers with an app that provides a "one-stop shop" for all things 3D-printer. You can browse their version of Thingiverse (or Printables or Cults 3D) and send jobs directly to your printer. You can also access your printer remotely (read outside your home network without tunnelling/port-forwarding/VPNs) to monitor prints, get notified when a print is done, get notified you've run out of filament, watch the printer work if it's equipped with a camera, etc. etc.
Bambu has been attempting to remove features that enable easy local (not-internet-connected) use cases and force everyone to use the cloud, etc. Or at least make it as painful as possible to skip the cloud.
Relevant context: X1C owner who did not update the firmware that forced bambu's "secure printing" workflow on users that previously used their local network "plugin".
I stopped using Handy, blocked the printer's access to the internet, and ultimately, did not miss a thing. The printer continued to work fine with my slicer of choice (softfever's fork of Bambu Lab studio's fork of Prusa Slicer's fork of slic3r, now known as OrcaSlicer).
Like most things these days, they make a decent printer, but are part of tech's steadfast march to control everything. The twist is that they're in a space defined very much by breaking control.
Not defending Bambu. The UX is quite straightforward and easy, however.
With an Internet connection to their clown, a Bambu Labs printer doesn't require a person to deal with computers in the traditional sense. Like, at all.
The printer can be over there on the table, and a person can use it while sitting on their sofa with the cell phone that's in their hand. There's nothing else required for this to happen. They can browse models, customize them some, and print them all from their phone.
In this way, a person doesn't even need to know how to use a PC in order to casually print some widgets at home.
They don't need to know how networks or VPNs or open Internet-facing ports work, either. They can monitor then print job from anywhere without doing that stuff at all.
They don't need to plug a USB cable in. They don't need to know what an SD card even is.
Head outside, away from wifi? No worries: The printer still works the same whether the user's pocket supercomputer is inside, outside, at the grocery store, or anywhere else.
And for a lot of folks, that's pretty nice. My nephew, for instance, consistently prints amazingly-clean parts with his Bambu Labs machine and he puts zero effort into doing so. For him, at least, It Just Works.
---
I can see why some folks in this particular audience may have some trouble appreciating the utility of this kind of apparent simplicity. After all, if there's anything that typifies someone on HN, it is that we're all avid computer users.
But we're weird in this way. Most people are not like this at all.
And to be clear: I myself have zero interest in cloud-oriented 3D printing. But I'm of the weirdest subset: I build my own 3D printers because I enjoy the process of solving the problems that are involved in doing so. If I want to control a printer from my phone from 3 states away, then I'll get that done on my own.
A person may appreciate the utility of this apparent simplicity just fine and still need a different solution for any of a variety of reasons. That doesn't make them weird.
You specifically highlight printing from a phone. Did you notice that the phone doesn't remove the ability to communicate over the cellular radio or the bluetooth radio just because a user might find the wifi radio convenient? It would be weird if it did.
Historically, lots of relatively popular printers have had pretty iffy support for that -- with a USB B port that ties directly into the 5v bus inside the printer alongside the printer's own power supply and this arrangement causing weird stuff to happen.
The Creality CR-10 is afflicted in this way, for example: It seems like a no-brainer to use a USB cable to drive it with Octoprint or Klipper using a Pi or something, or use it with a nearby PC, but things can turn stupid. There's a generalized note about this in Klipper's FAQ: https://www.klipper3d.org/FAQ.html
Now, that said: I'd rather have a USB device-mode port that works properly; barring that, it'd be better to have one that can be made to work well-enough than to have none at all. I'd also like to have serial data (both at RS-232 big-boy volts and TTL), and a real Ethernet port. I want an EPO input so a person can smash a big button when things go wrong, and an EPO output so the printer can shut stuff off on its own when it decides that things have gone wrong.
My connectivity desires don't align very well with what most people want out of their 3D-printing appliance, but they're real desires just the same...and I don't expect them to be fulfilled.
Anyway, it seems that Bambu Labs printers work fine, locally, over wifi. That's apparently a built-in function that can work with things like Orcaslicer. When it simply acts as a printer on a LAN, then I don't really need USB unless I'm just being pedantic today.
And as previously-discussed, Bambu Labs printers also have a clown-based mode that does clown-based stuff.
They don't do both modes simultaneously, but meh. So what? How many brains should one lowly 3D printer have to listen to concurrently?
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Anyway, the plugin under contention here seems to use the company's clown services to manage the printer instead of directly controlling it over the LAN.
And while I certainly cherish all efforts to enforce and enhance our ability to use the hardware we own in any way that we choose, this mentality doesn't extend to use of services that are provided by others.
So it's a nice to have thing, but it could have very easily been optional. Instead they made it so that every print, even ones sent from Bambu Studio, has to go through their servers(unless you enable Lan mode)
Using a cloud service means all your designs are submitted to Bambu and that means that they have the ability resell this intelligence information to the CCP and friendly entities, subsidizing the cost of their products and allowing Bambu to achieve unprecedented price/performance.
I’m not sure why 3D printed parts matter. Thats not why Bambu is cheaper.
The visual design you can argue. Despite being on the Prusa side I do like the more consumer-y visual aesthetic of Bambu machines better.
So make it possible to connect directly to printer over LAN? Prusa supports that, you can use the printer without ever connecting it to internet.
https://www.prusa3d.com/product/indx-conversion-kit-8-toolhe...
The main thing keeping me from making the multi-material jump is the waste. I have a couple Vorons and would love to be able to print with different materials at the same time, but the waste with the current solutions is so egregious.
In addition to standard multi-color needs!
Mind you, LAN mode didn't exist, we had to use SFT to send files to the printer locally.
I build a DIY LDO Voron Trident and it is slice and print.
Louis Rossmann isn't polite, but he cuts though the corporate speak.
The Core line of printers seems promising and a big leap towards closing the gap towards Bambu's corexy printers but haven't used one yet and I've been out of the game a little. Bambu though is probably more of a high-end appliance type than Prusas more utilitarian feel.
The machine is still quite hackable. Prusa publishes the firmware and CAD files for their printers, although the CAD files aren't under a fully open license. The support is generally nice to people who tinker with their printers and sometimes even seems to be genuinely invested in seeing tinkering projects succeed.
I am not going to say they are perfect, but I think they have a good balance of ethics, openness, product quality, innovation, availability and price. By that I mean their are the best in none of them, but I don't think of anything better as a combination.
Buy a bambu; use Orcaslicer
Edit: didn't mean to say "held the industry back"; I would categorize my opinion more along the lines of "were happy to get fat on past offerings" or the like.
Prusa was actually the "non-technical" printer company for quite a while though. They would sell to schools and libraries, and still do, and offer(ed) assembled kits.
I don't own a Prusa, I've assembled Vorons and have a highly-modified Ender 3 S1, but if I was in the market to get a user-friendly printer, or recommend one, I'd get a Prusa.
This may be a controversial take, but imo it would be Bambu to set the industry back by a decade if they "win" and lock up the market. That's clearly their strategy afaict.
Does anyone remember Bambu patenting existing open inventions as their own? I can't seem to find good links anymore (?!) but there's some details here https://www.mdpi.com/2411-5134/8/6/141
Bambu did not close the tech they used to make their printers. Others (including Prusa) are making CoreXY and they 100% also benefit from the RnD that Bambu did (either hardware, or the slicer (without which Orca would not exist in its current form)).
Bambu just made better products for cheaper and Josef got mad. But I'm certain that Prusa could compete had they focused on making price-competitive polished printers, and not focus on $5k monster printers for enterprise.
I'm gonna keep using mk4s.
While the open-source part of me loves the more open nature of Prusa, the commercial-minded part loves the immediate convenience of the Bambu. But the environmental control is something which Prusa doesn't really do well yet. Heated chamber, as well as filament humidity control is something Bambu has done which Prusa has not, and when it comes to printing with "engineering" filaments like PA6CF, PA6GF and other higher-end lubricating plastics for bearings etc, along with support filaments like PVA which are incredibly hygroscopic, the Bambu is the only contender if you want high-quality prints that don't warp.
IMO this is where Prusa gave up the race and need to catch up. Give me equivalent or better environmental control, and I'll be happy to consider it.
The accessibility to non-experts, and the fact that it just works out of the box without fiddling around optimising settings, is why I have a Bambu family at work and zero Prusas.
"Not innovating myself" isn't the same as "holding other's innovations back".
Edit: whoops! guess i did say they held the industry back... my bad /facepalm.
It’s clear nobody’s caught up in terms of ux / user friendliness - but as an experienced printer i don’t need my hand held quite as much - and the openness is worth a lot to me. Being able to define custom klipper macros alone makes it worth it to me to stay away from bambu
They're completely open (both software and hardware) and you can mod and do whatever the hell you want with them.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tQIdxbWhHSM
Particularly relevant for this discussion is this part of that page, showing the lineage of the various software involved. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slicer_(3D_printing)#List_of_s...
I didn't want another hobby, fiddling with settings and materials, and generally going down the 3D printing rabbit hole. I just wanted to print stuff for my actual hobbies. And the A1 does this, with little fuss, for which I am forever grateful.
So much of this opinion sounds like a Bambu ad read from YouTube, as if they're the only ones making printers that just work now, like a Prusa can't crank out perfect first layers without breaking a sweat.
I've bought many, many other printers since then, and every time I've gotten something other than a Bambu Lab printer I've been disappointed, and ended up returning them or selling them.
Creality's K1 Plus was great, but regularly needed the extruder disassembled to get broken filament out.
Anycubic Kobra 3 Max regularly failed to keep prints on the bed. I bought 2 Elegoo Centauri Carbons. The first has been out of commission since the extruder went haywire, and I couldn't get replacement parts without going through some random support chat app, and the 2nd one's build plate delaminated the first weekend I had the printer.
The Snapmaker U1 I'm pretty happy with, but when I first got it, I learned you have to be very gentle with how you put the spools on, as it can pop an internal plastic panel off with interferes with the Y-axis.
Prusas are good, but price and availability are issues (I bought all the above new at my local Microcenter). I do have an older Prusa MK3 that I bought for an pellet extruder conversion, but for a printer with no online capabilities and a need to manually level it via paper, it cost more used than a new Bambu Lab P1S. I'm okay with putting your money where your ideology is, but imagine if the only alternative to an iPhone's walled garden was a $2000 Android.
I do not want a hobby, I already have way too many. I wanted something plug and play, zero fuss, and the A1 Mini delivers.
If that reads like an ad to you, I don't know what to say.
As a Westerner, I value my freedom, so I will happy pay way over the [Chinese-imposed] odds to build a 3D printer of my own than suck on the teat of the CCP and buy a subsidised 3D printer that attacks our freedoms.
I would encourage other right-thinking people who value freedom, democracy and rule-of-law to do the same: build your own or -- at the very least -- support Western 3D printer vendors like Prusa who share our values and contribute back to the community.
This is HN. This isn't YouTube. Rossman is beneath this place.
Nobody forced them to use said code, they chose to when it was in their best interest and now they renege on the part in the license (the only thing that gives them a right to use and build on said code) when they deem it not in their interest any longer and think they're big enough to squash individuals protesting.
Nothing wrong there, right, chairman?
(The ridiculous NYC to Austin thing is pretty representative. Complained incessantly about loony liberal New York, moved to Austin, now he complains about Texas. Sorry! Turns out there is no utopia for pathological contrarians.)
I was sad to watch Sabine Hossenfelder devolve from a level-headed critic of how research is done, into a loony crank who selects the contrarian angle on every issue. I'm sure the YouTube analytics inform her which topics perform better.