- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Unpopular opinion but. A company doesn’t owe you open access to their tech or software.
Bambu spends an enormous amount of money on r&d.
They have incredibly high quality printers that are intuitive and easy to use.
They collect data to improve their machines.
You can opt out of that collection.
The replacement parts are cheap. Comparable to other brands.
And you can buy non Bambu parts. That fit. But why when official high quality parts are available for same price.
I don’t know why everyone is so mad that Bambu won’t let them tinker with the software. Or “jail break it”.
Why would you want to on a Bambu. ? It already works optimally.
if you want a tinker printer than get one that’s open.
Most people don’t need that. They just want to print things.
I get that people think “it’s my device and I should be able to jail break it if I want”. Ok
Then buy a device that lets you.
It would be different if Bambu printers were crap and needed tinkering but wouldn’t allow it. Or they lied about being open. But that’s not the situation.
Bambu has been up front since the begining that their printers would not be open.
They never mislead about that.
Why are you mad about something they made clear from the begining ?
And yes I know they used open source data to base a lot of their tech on. (Yeah and Linux is used a lot for proprietary stuff too. It is what it is). But they have proprietary software and hardware now that was a result of their own investments into research and development.
You can’t hold it against a company for not giving away advancements they made to their competitors.
With so much unethical and anti-privacy , companies blocking right to repair. And all the shitty tech companies out there, it’s hard for me to take the complaints against Bambu as anything other than grifting and online created drama.
Their products were always closed. They never said they would be open.
Use a different brand if that’s a problem for you.
Didnt they sign a contract to make it open the moment they used open source Code as their base?
I don’t think so. Open source stuff doesn’t usually require that for using it as a base.
Android OS is based on open source.
Did Microsoft or whoever owns it, sign a contract saying they promise to keep it open since it’s based on linux ?
I don’t think it works like that.
Open source base just means you can’t charge money for it.
Please look up ooensource because it is a lot more nuanced than that and there are a lot of different approaches and even definitions of open source.
Okay but we are talking about Bambu using a specific open source code for creating their software and firmware.
Have they violated the use of that specific open source code in some way ?
Their software is free to use.
Creality firmware is based on open source but they make it hard to jail break their printers too.
Why aren’t you going on tirade about creality?
Afaik the firmware is self developed and closed source, so not free. as in freedom of code and free as in beer.
The software slicer is based on prusa slicer which is based on slic3r which uses the agplv3 which dictates that all works derived from the original code needs to be published as code under the same license. They do that. But the trick is that they add closed source modules that are essential for the whole system to work and therefore control their devices and ecosystem via restrictive licenses or plain unavailability of sources.
Regarding creality : the last time I used a creality printer it used marlin as firmware and it was trivial to compile and flash and modify.
But in general you don’t need to make your product easy to jailbreak under most ooensource licenses, you need to publish the code. Those are two different things.
I just got this Info from a Youtube channel yesterday, so take it with a grain of salt, but they said that the license indeed includes that clause.
Seems like the owner would be suing them if that was the case.
Honestly it all sounds like manufactured drama to me.
If you don’t like Bambu product limits. Just use a different brand. There are many other companies. No one is forcing people to use bambu products.
It would be like me complaining a company doesn’t sell the shoes I want. And then trying to sue them because of that and start drama in shoe comunities. Saying they are in the wrong for not running their company and offering services or products I want.
Not using it is a way of distancing yourself. I agree. But the bigger issue to me Is that they are making money from the work of others without giving back. It’s an ethical question for me and I want to change that behaviour not just in regards to me as a customer but as a whole for the industry to foster the advancement of the technology itself.
Suing is expensive, but it’s all speculation from my side, so I don’t want to lean heavily into the argument.
I agree that it got some vibes to it that wants me to agree with you.
Did they recently implement a “feature” that doesnt allow the printing of guns or something?
I’ve had an X1C for a few years now. My router blocks my printer from communicating outside of my home network and my firewall blocks the slicer. I haven’t had any problems. It sucks that the company is being shitty but they really do make exceptionally good printers. I’m glad Prusa is at least sort-of keeping up with them. I had a Prusa Mk3S for several years before I got my Bambu, they’re extremely reliable.
As a fairly recent current A1 Mini user (too late to return), ouch. Guess I’ll have to get used to it until I can afford a different brand when I upgrade lol
Can I get a tl;dr for someone who isn’t into 3d printing (yet)? I like to know about companies to avoid and why, but it’ll still be a while before I get into 3d printing.
Bambu lab a while ago came out with printers and an ecosystem that was very easy to use compared to other printers for the price. However, there were a few red flags like proprietary parts, software which required the cloud, and DRM chips in filament. Bambu lab promised they weren’t gonna exploit any of that and that they will keep their printers and ecosystem open and all the red flags were just used to aid in user experience like automatic print settings for DRM chipped filament, easy to swap parts, and cloud monitoring and notifications. Despite the promise, they’re still a corporation and thus went against their word and closed off 3rd party slicers and firmwares so you must use their cloud and their software.
You do not own the printers, Bambu does. So now you cannot install third party firmware on your Bambu 3d printer or use a different slicer. Everything you do on your Bambu printer goes through their cloud unless you take countermeasures and use old versions of software and firmware before the lockdown happened and you completely block internet access to the printers.
People saw these big red flags early on and called them out on it saying they’re gonna lock down their ecosystem later on but people kept buying into Bambulab since they were so easy to use and got amazing prints out of them.
Tl;Dr, Bambulab released printers and software that were so easy to use for the price but came with many red flags. Bambulab ended up closing down their entire ecosystem so they have full control of the printers and you are at their mercy if you wanna keep using it.
They never promised to keep anything open. It never was open.
I’d wholly disagree with the assessment that the software requires cloud use or even their slicer. There’s still the perfectly viable LAN mode or loading it via SD card. Neither of which ever touch their cloud
You also forgot that their slicer was based on AGPL licensed Prusa Slicer and at first they tried to avoid releasing their source. In general a lot of their work was based on open source hardware and software and they closed it down.
is he often buying 3d printers?
I suspect how many printers he buys matters a lot less than the reach he has with his youtube channel for bambu’s financial reports.
The thing is that they’ve dropped the ball. There are quite a few companies putting out printers that are objectively as convenient as a Bambu, for a third of the price, and others, like prusa and Snapmaker that have upstaged them with tool changers, which are way better than MMU machines, with negligible material waste, and orders of magnitude faster for multicolor. The maker scene is also alive and well- Vorons, VZbots, etc. allow you to make impressive machines, if you have some skills.
Oh yeah? Well I’m never buying one in the first place because these problems were obvious.
I never let mine on the internet and use lan only using Orca slicer too so I don’t have to worry about Bambu Studio pushing an update to it which probably wouldn’t be an issue cause it was always garbage at connecting via lan anyway.
I never bought a Bambu in the first place because all of this was foreseeable. Bambu costumers simply didn‘t care at the time.
That’s their market my brother bought 3 of them because he wanted to start a 3d printing business (with no additional planning so it did not last). Now I have one and my dad has one. I haven’t actually set mine up because I have my old Creator X clone dialed in and don’t really need anything more. Those two would probably never have gotten started if not for how easy the Bambus are. It took me a month to get decent results off my first printer and they were up and running in a few hours tops.
Those two would probably never have gotten started if not for how easy the Bambus are. It took me a month to get decent results off my first printer and they were up and running in a few hours tops.
I’ve got to admit, I’ve never understood that sort of issue. I’ve owned two 3D printers, a Monoprice MP Select Mini (bought back when it was the only ‘cheap’ printer in existence… holy shit, probably almost a decade ago) and a Creality Ender 3 V3 SE (because it was the best ‘cheap’ printer as of a couple years ago), and both of them gave me decent prints pretty much out of the box. After bed leveling, obviously, but without any other weird hardware adjustment or excessive experimentation with slicer settings.
I feel like the vaunted ‘superior ease of use’ of the Bambu stuff is overblown, but IDK, maybe I’ve just been lucky.
My first printer was an FLSUN delta printer, can’t remember for sure, but I think it was a Q5? This was before Bambu had hit the scene really. That thing was an absolute cake-walk to setup.
You had the bottom frame with the build plate already attached, 3 legs with motors and belts already attached, top section that holds extruder and basically all electronics, and the hot end/effector assembly already assembled and 6 poles for arms. One bold in each end of the legs and the frame is done, one bolt at each end of the 6 poles to connect the effector to the carriages and the motion system is done, and then 2 JST/Molex like connectors and it’s done.
Slapped the SD card in, did the auto bed level, and was printing without issues in well under an hour, and it was the first time I’d been in the same room as a 3d printer.
Not to mention that when things eventually broke (usually due to my own mistakes), I could buy “off-the-shelf” parts to fix it, I didn’t have to reach out to FLSUN. Bambu being the “apple of 3d printing” has always been a red-flag to me, and honestly I feel like they really pushed this idea that other 3d printers are very difficult to get working when it just wasn’t true (by the time they hit the market).
My Ender 3 required a little bit of assembly (attaching the Z-axis frame and the control panel, along with associated wires), but my Monoprice one came completely assembled. It was literally just plug it in, check the bed for level (which wasn’t automatic, but also required little to no adjustment out of the box), feed in some filament, and then print the lucky cat gcode that came on the SD card.
Admittedly I started pretty early on with the commercially available ones and I’m sure things have improved since then but that was my experience. I was fighting it for weeks screwing with leveling and temps, I completely burned through one set of leveling screws and had to replace them before I gave up and took the extruder apart and constructed a jig to make sure the nozzles were even. After that I started getting better results. By comparison my brother was given the exact same model by a coworker of his and he gave up on it because he’s just doesn’t think about technical things the same way I do. When he got the bambu though he was able to just go with it because he didn’t have to really troubleshoot anything.
I sold my x1c at a loss and got a core one when they announced Indx. It is less polished and I need to tinker. But it is ooensource all the way through and that is worth it. To me.
I’m never watching this video again! I already didn’t watch it, and I’ll do it again!
(please someone correct me if I’m wrong on this)
Doesn’t boycotting Bambu ignore that they are one of the biggest names in 3D printing with a product that is cheaper and better than their main competitor (Prusa). Frankly, I don’t think anyone is going to spend 2x the amount for literally a worse product (Bambu P2S @ $550 vs Prusa Core One @ $999)
I get all the arguments about the repairability and longevity of Prusa printers, but when someone is saving for months to buy a luxury item I simply cannot see them making all those sacrifices
I get your point, but when a part broke on my Prusa, I jury rigged it, downloaded and printed a replacement part and swapped out the broken part for the (improved) new one. With many other brands it would have been an expensive purchase and I would have had to wait for parts to arrive.
Turns out, the 3D printing world is thankfully NOT a duopoly. You have Qidi (their Q2 is very competitive from what I have heard), Sovol (makes a lot of good budget printers), Elegoo (lots of people love the Centauri Carbon), and even Voron machines if you’re into those! And a majority of the competitors make good machines that can be on par, and often times cheaper, than Bambu’s machines.
Additionally, Prusa not only is better for longevity, but you will also get far better customer support (Bambu’s support isn’t great)
Bambu is no longer to be trusted as they have been hostile to the open-source community, have blocked third-party software that used to work and hardware that people have bought, and no, putting it under a hidden developer mode doesn’t fix the issue. There are additional restrictions like not being able to access your printer remotely without something like Tailscale!
And given that they already have RFID tags on their filaments, I believe it’s a matter of time before they become the HP of 3D printers and block third-party filaments from being used
I’m looking to upgrade my ancient Ender-5 Plus and have been eyeballing Anycubic for the excellent pricing on multicolor printers.
You seem pretty knowledgeable, any recommendations or things to stay away from?
I can recommend the Elegoo Centauri Carbon, a CoreXY and enclosed 3D printer that is raved on by reviews. If you will only print PLA, PETG, and maybe some ABS with a bit of tinkering with settings, it’s a nice option. It won’t be as good for engineering-type filaments, and it doesn’t have a multi-material unit (yet, but don’t buy things based on promises!)
The Qidi Q2 is an upgraded version of the Q1 Pro, the latter having been noted as an exceptional value. The Q2 is relatively new and doesn’t have too many reviews, but from the specs, it is a big jump from the Q1 Pro (it has a heated chamber, for example). The Q2 is also compatible with their “Qidi Box” multi-material unit, which could be something you are looking for given that you want multi-colour prints!
And of course, if you want the most reliable machine with the best customer service, you have Prusa’s Core One. It’s expensive, but you’re supporting a company that emphasises upgradeability and manufactures their hardware in Europe. It won’t be the best value though purely based on feature set, but if you like what Prusa stands for, that could be of value to you!
TY I’m going to look into those. I appreciate the detailed response, hopefully someone releases a CFW for all the bambu users out there.
The RFID thing i feel like could be rectified pretty easily by just cloning the tag (hopefully), if nintendo couldn’t combat that for amiibos, i doubt bambu will be able to.
The RFID thing i feel like could be rectified pretty easily by just cloning the tag (hopefully)
I don’t want to give Bambu any ideas, but I think they could modify their plastic to require special settings (maybe it requires a lower temperature to print or something, needs a certain extrusion speed, etc.) and ensure that the print settings are automatically set depending on the RFID tag (this already exists, but they could easily disable the ability to manually change some of the print settings given they now have a monopoly on the slicer software), so putting the same RFID tag on another spool would cause the print to look bad. Of course, I believe this is unlikely, but it is still a possibility. At the very least, it will be annoying to rip out a tag from a Bambu spool, making third-party spools undesirable for users.
TY I’m going to look into those.
No problem!
