tl;dr Don’t hate on people who got tricked into buying a Bambu printer. Direct your hatred to Bambu itself.
We all know about the anti-consumer Bambu Printer changes by now. But I think it’s important to remember not to make fun of people who already bought one. In fact, most agree with you that these changes are unacceptable. So those people already got kicked in the gut.
As someone who bought from Prusa instead of Bambu, I completely understand the feeling of “Ha, I told you so!” But spreading that on every post is actually counter-productive. Remember that most people who bought a Bambu printer did so because it topped every “best 3D printers” list, had tons of sponsored content, and were affordable easy-to-use printers. Not everybody heard about the potential for such anti-consumer changes to be made. And many who did know were often misled into thinking it wouldn’t happen.
Instead of being critical of individuals, be critical of Bambu themselves. Bambu are the ones who screwed over tons of people who love this hobby. If we want to see 3D printing be an open-source style hobby, then we need to help people see the value in that. So if anything, this is the chance for you to make more people aware of good, open systems. If you make fun of people and point fingers at them, you are just making them defensive. Don’t make them direct any hatred at you that could be directed at the company itself.
Hope this isn’t too preachy. I just wanted to get this out there.
You must log in or register to comment.
Kinda hard not to when every 3d printer hobbyist I know of warned people about this. But you right.
I f-in knew it from the start. I kept telling everyone. But it’s hard to listen when every youtuber and their mom switched to bambu. I don’t like Prusa all that much either, but they are A LOT better than bambu. So I blame Bambu, but also YouTubers and influencers who started peddling them from the start. I’ll stock up on E3d v6 hotends and generic extruders while they are still available.
I don’t like Prusa all that much either, but they are A LOT better than bambu.
In what aspect? Because it’s not reliability. Or speed. Or ease of repair. Or features. Or price.
Jo’s been throwing shit at the wall as fast as he can to catch up to Bambu; and that’s good for all of us - certainly. But this isn’t a Bambu vs Prusa thing here. Prusa added the dogbone that voids your warranty if you want to flash a new bootloader to the buddyboard – did you have a problem with that? Did you cry ‘slippery slope’ back then?
What about all the other great machines out there that are quickly catching up to Bambu’s feature set? The K2 seems to be quite interesting. There’s room for everyone here.
In terms of being open source and maintaining that model. Also having some of the parts actually be 3d printed. Other than that, I don’t know, Ive never owned one, never used one. It is too expensive for me for the features it has. Also xl seems to be a unique thing. Too expensive, though.
As for flashing the Prusa, I don’t follow Prusa, so I didn’t know about that one, but voiding a warranty vs locking you out isn’t the same thing really. Though I wouldn’t consider it a good move, I understand it somewhat.
If I was buying a new printer, which I won’t, I’d go for a Sovol SV08, which is somewhat of a Voron clone.
This.
I got super unlucky here, and this news dropped literally the day after I bought an A1.I’m still going to try and force it into a usable no-internet state, but I don’t have high hopes right now.
Alternative thought - don’t worry about hating anybody or anything, just print shit and have fun. I don’t regret my A1 for one second.
Shame bambu enshittified. I was looking at bambu next as I just want a 3d printer that doesnt start putting out pure trash 2 years into its ownership for no reason.
I’m unconcerned. I knew what I was getting into with a walled garden ecosystem, and though I didn’t expect them to dive straight into the enshittification deep end, I figures they would eventually do something fairly shady. The real question is how long it will take to release the first X1C-Klipper refit.
Same here which is why I jumped on the X1C now. Companies like this always release the good shit first and each future model always lose features and usability bit by bit.
This change is annoying but not the end of the world. I don’t regret my purchase one hit because the machine is top notch compared to what I had previously.
As it turns out, there’s already a project… https://github.com/ChazLayyd/Bambu-Lab-Klipper-Conversion/blob/main/README.md
Instead of being critical of individuals, be critical of Bambu themselves.
Why not both?
The writing has been on the wall since the beginning. They had all the calling cards of enshittification. No one can pretend like they didn’t know this was coming, they just didn’t care.
Because they’re really good out of the box printers and prior to this for somebody that wanted something that “just works” it would be Prusa or Bambu I’d recommend.
I love tinkering and tweaking and I’m building a Voron but it’s not hard to understand how overwhelming choices can be and it’s understandable that people would choose to lock into an ecosystem specifically because it lets them just print.
I would never buy a Bambu and wouldn’t recommend it for anybody building a company with essential components having them in the pipeline but then again most people aren’t that aware and their research, understandably, led them to buying one.
I agree with OP, this is an opportunity to be empathic and to help them. And they’re learning the hard way a lesson they’ll take forward. I’d prefer that lesson to be “more careful” and not “these people are snobs”
I’d prefer that lesson to be “more careful” and not “these people are snobs”
This sums it up perfectly! Don’t make consumer-friendly synonymous with “snobs.”
Great way of putting it!
I’m super for making hobbies accessible, and let’s be real, I’d be willing to assume most of us have probably been burned by something like this in the past. Probably not a bad idea to have some sort of community resource for information, guides etc, might help some people in the future avoid it if it’s something they care about.
Also going to be realistic, I absolutely care and advocate for open products that you fully control, but I know that it just doesn’t matter to everyone.
I bought my 3D printer like 6 months ago, and I didnt end up going with a Bambu printer. But I can assure you I had no fucking clue Bambu was bad, or ready to implement anti-consumer features. My choice was based on reviews, and websites exactly as this is saying that told me which printers were the best resin printers to buy.
Then you weren’t paying attention.
Reviews never report on anti-consumer features. When was the last time you watched a phone review that said anything about the massive amount of bloatware on modern Android phones? Or Apple’s locked app ecosystem? Or the fact that their devices are completely unrepairable? Because no one cares.
Then you weren’t paying attention
You really aren’t getting the point at all. Good for you feeling all superior to other people tho. I’m sure it’s good for your self-esteem at least.
It’s not about my self-esteem, it’s about watching people fall for the same trap over and over again, and seeing industries that all start out as open-source everything and consumer-friendly be trodden on by corpos who want to take away everyone’s options and lock you into an ecosystem in order to drive up pricing and eliminate competition.
deleted by creator
Freaking paying attention? My dude, blame Bambu and don’t go victim blaming.
I do blame Bambu. But they couldn’t do what they were doing if their “victims” weren’t buying them in droves and recommending them to everyone while ignoring all of the very obvious calling cards of enshittification.
It’s not like there aren’t a dozen excellent alternatives.
It’s an absurd concept that there’s only ever 1 party that can be at fault for anything.
I’ll say one last time, victim blaming is not cool at all. It tells more about your character than others.
Repeating yourself adds nothing to this conversation.
Exactly my thoughts with your rephrasing.
I don’t think the printer got any worse …
I’ve put it in LAN mode, blocked it’s internet access in my router and I don’t plan to ever update the firmware. Also using orca slicer instead of bambu studio.
Prints perfectly fine. Worth every penny from my point of view.
( I agree though, that their move is extremely shitty and I won’t be recommending it to others because of that )
Bit you know what you are doing, and based on the terms of service, which says they can require updates for use, could be in violation.
I agree, everyone should do this, but everyone won’t know how.
Glad to hear you’re able to keep using it! No reason to get rid of good hardware. I hope other people do the same.
Well I almost bought one. I had to buy a cheaper one bacause of, you know, no money, but I was really sad that I wasn’t able to get the best one. Now I’m a bit happy that I didn’t
Yes, but…
I do agree partially with your statement. But (as always) it’s a little more complicated.
BambooLab was known for their walled garden approach and that they have apple as their idol. So in that sense, people buying it, did so oftentimes willingly and therefore enabled the company to pull these stunts. I’m not blaming the people for going with the most comfortable solution, but that’s usually what you get
That’s a very fair point. I also think the massive amount of outrage shows that many people didn’t know the full extent of what they were signing up for. So I think is varies from person to person.
I won’t buy my wife a Cricut for the same reason, it is a closed system that the company can decide to nickel and dime at will.
Surprised that they switched to Evil mode so soon, now everyone talks about this, and just a few days ago nobody cared and those who did were the loonies talking crazy.
Presumably now that the security keys are known, it is possible to jailbreak your printer and never deal with Bambu ever again.
Others are prepared to invest a lot of money with the knowledge that they are promoting open source. So since companies like Bambu only use open source for their closed source without the cost and without giving back to the open source community, the buyers of closed source actively harm the opensource community. As example Bambu is part of the reason why prusa, for example, is partially moving away from open source. So yes the bambu owners deserve it and I am happy.
For those out of the Loop, what happened?
DRM They limit who can talk what to their printers.
Most noticeably you can only send and start prints (g-code) with their own program over the network. Either bambu studio or a “cloud” gateway from BambuLab. It is no longer possible to do this from within Prusa- or OrcaSlicer.
my take:
-
~~ for the X1C they allow to install X1Plus firmware. The community asked for it. BambuLab allowed it back then and still does.~~ At the moment rooting an X1C isn’t possible. Either it is a broken promise (“We will give customers the choice to install third party firmware and root system at their own risk.”)or just a temporary issue.
-
BambuLab sad that this will come. Only now that they have done it, most people are starting to notice.
So it sounds like you’ll still be able to put gcode on the SD card and start it from there, no?
Certainly. But that’s not what the vast majority of users want to do though.
I’d argue the same goes for using Orca Slicer. So a vast majority of people will still be able to continue using the Bambu Labs printers exactly how they have been, that’s great.
I hope I’m wrong but it looks like they disabled the ability to do opt into the program.
I cannot join my X1C to the program currently. It just errors out or leaves me in a CloudFlare “are you human” loop.
To be fair, that’s most likely a CloudFlair problem and not a malicious action from Bambu. CloudFlair is a curse on the internet and websites that use it should be shunned and ridiculed.
This was happening a lot yesterday but I eventually got through to opt my machine in.
Interesting.
Awesome. Thanks.
-
They are good printers. It is just a crappy company showing their true colors… Which is sad for the consumers. Consumers are just the victims here. I never bought or owned a Bambu though. I always went with Prusa and now moving to Voron.
I bought one recently enough I don’t even have it yet. Hope it’s on old firmware when it arrives 🤞
Good luck. Hope you return it if not, and tell them why.
I’m more likely to just use it offline only via SD card. It’s my first printer and I don’t think I have it in me to tinker with them like I’ve seen is often required on some others
I would return a product in any case if I found out it’s a bait and switch scheme.
Since your printer will be drawn from “old stock” on the shelf, it’s more than likely it will have the old firmware included. Now, the new slicer versions may not function with it anymore-- and that may include Orca. But that remains to be seen.
looks like the firmware is only X series for now anyway, and i’ve purchased a P series
Bambu has stated the same is coming for us with P and A series machines also as they roll out the new protocols.
it’s true, but it means my printer definitely 100% won’t ship with this new firmware
At some point as the old stock inventory is sold out, the new inventory WILL ship with the new firmware. I’m willing to bet, new machines are being built with the new firmware as we speak. I have no idea how soon those hit the pipeline. Might be a few weeks, might take a couple months, might be today.
Printer arrived and isn’t on the latest firmware. I’ll update it to whatever the current version is, it doesn’t have the bad update on my model yet ofc. Prints really nicely though 🤠
got an email last night that they’ll be shipping mine 22nd so i think i’m ok. especially if the new P firmware isn’t out yet. i’ll update you here once i get it though 😅
edit: yoooo got my shipping info
Yes.
You shit on the individual asshole executives. Not the people who got screwed. Not the company, which has no agency and can do nothing. The individual executives, including the board of directors.
Luigi has taught us well.
it topped every “best 3D printers” list, had tons of sponsored content, and were affordable easy-to-use printers. Not everybody heard about the potential for such anti-consumer changes to be made.
There are a few lessons here folks… We all have to get better at consuming that’s something that we can actually control at least with respect to discretionary markets.
Deny these parasites the profit and engagement as much as possible.
Doing some research comparing prusa’s github and bambu’s I realized the firmware was closed sourced and that completely disqualified it from consideration. Also, not being to update without connecting to their servers is a no no. I believe everybody should closely research what they’re getting next time they make a purchase. Sorry for all of those who bought Bambus.
I got gifted one, so I didn’t choose it. It’s a great printer, but it sucks that Bambu Lab is pulling that shit.
