Bambu Lab recently announced a firmware security update for its printers that would introduce an official “authorization control” system for critical printer operations. The update is presented as a way to mitigate the “risk of remote hacks or printer exposure issues that have happened in the past, and also lower the risk of abnormal traffic or attacks.”
The new firmware will not allow Bambu Lab printers to interface with popular 3rd party software or hardware upgrades such as Orca Slicer or BigTreeTech’s Panda Touch screen. Now, users will need to download “Bambu Connect” to act as a one-way go-between.
I don’t even own a 3D printer and I am seeing this company getting ripped a new one all over the internet. Thank you everyone who has been calling out this terrible and unethical action by Bambu.
They’re doing exactly what non-Bambu buyers have been warning about beat by beat. Nobody should be surprised or really shocked by any of this.
And yet it’s just depressing to see because despite all the red flags and foreshadowing, Bambu technically developed a next level printer and has at the very least put pressure on competitors to improve their products.
Now I wonder if we have to worry about other Manufacturers following lead about the bad things too. Because I suspect people who proudly and publicly trashed their entire printer fleet in favor of Bambu probably won’t make the switch back any time soon. If this doesn’t hit Bambu hard, it might become common practice and potentially get much worse until we got chipped filament spools for 3 to 4 times the price.
These lazy Pandas of the 3D-Printer community might proof both critics and the walled garden approach that already plagues home printing right by putting their head between their legs and let themselves get beaten up by Bambu. That’s my fear.
What’s Tue next best after Bambu. Glad I didnt pull the trigger on blacl friday now.
there isn’t a “best” really. Depends on your wants/needs.
for true Openness, I don’t think anything beats a Voron.
Prusa is great (good track record, good support, Hardware is not open anymore though, can work out of the box), but expensive.
plenty of others get you something largely decent for low prices (qidi, creality for example) but long term support seems likely to lack, and there are always reports of some issues for some and great results for others.
It is worse than that. They made it so the printer will refuse to print if it hasn’t installed a new update. They took control over the printer away from their owners and it really looks like this is meant to pave the way to anti-consumer practices such as forcing an always on-online requirement, introducing subscription fees to keep some functionalities that used to be free and/or denying the ability to use third party filaments or parts. The “it is for security” excuse is pretty much a meme at that point. It never is about security and always about screwing over the consumer for more money.
I was looking forward to buying a Bambu printer but now it is off the table for me. I’ve been burned too many times by devices that arbitrarily require to be connected to “the cloud” to function. There is absolutely no good reason why a 3D printer cannot be directly controlled via USB or local network without the need for a connection to the internet for “authentication” (imagine how much more secure that would be!). I’m glad I got to see this before I bought one. Bambu owners should be pissed right now. They just got the rug pulled from under them.
I was looking forward to buying a Bambu printer but now it is off the table for me.
I mean for me they were already off the table with their proprietary bullshit overpriced replacement parts. Yeah sure, it prints more out-of-the-box but once you’re used to a little maintenance other printers even cheap ones just are easier. Trivial maintenance and you can get 3-4 for the price of one Bambu usually, which more than offsets the speed.
What would you recommend?
I was planning on Bambu because of perfect prints without any tuning, heated bed, enclosure, and multi material.
Anything under $2k.
This is what people are doing without any post processing :
There are no noticeable layer lines. It’s almost resin quality.
that is more editing and good lighting.
there are always layer lines.Depending on you I would recommend
Voron (DIY, will take about a week to build and a week to tune),
Prusa (depends on your preference, assemble yourself or built, depending on required time a mk4s with mmu3, or the core one which will take several months to get to you, and the mmu3 later when it will become compatible)
Qidi (cheap, chinese, will likely work decent after some tuning)Sovol is another option, decent quality out of the box and their corexy units are stupid fast.
glad i sold mine after little use :)
There’s already a project to retrofit klipper hardware.
https://github.com/ChazLayyd/Bambu-Lab-Klipper-Conversion/blob/main/README.md
I saw a video where guy compared prusa and bambu. All of his Prusas were functional but slower because they are older models. From 3 Bambu printers only one printed because he can’t get replacement parts.
And this was released last year…
Even Prusa’s newest printer, the core one, is no where close to BL printers of last year in terms of performance and print quality, despite costing nearly twice as much. BL is ahead of all it’s competitors in both the hobbyist and pro-sumer market in both performance and UX, it really sucks that there isn’t something to fill that market now that they’ve pulled this crap. I’m not sure what parts he couldn’t get, but the few I know that do have BL printers, only one has had to replace a part and it was no issue getting it from BL whatsoever.
I think it is this video, yes it is about the core one. But he looks at it from the perspective of print farm where he needs to keep them printing as long as position.
I almost bought this when the Flashforge Adventurer 5X I ordered didn’t fulfill and went on backorder. I’m glad I decided to wait.
Hope you decided to buy neither of the two in the end, since Flashforge is also known for being anti-consumer and their shady business practices. Out of the two I’d actually go with Bambu Lab if I didn’t care about openness and modding, since their printers at least seem to have fairly good quality.
proprietary = trash
