I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but software freedom conservancy is doing a fundraiser to bring bambulab to court, any donation from now till half july will be part of the fundraiser: https://sfconservancy.org/donate/
Not paywalled link
MVP doing god’s work!
GOAT
For trolling please use reddit.
I’m surprised this isn’t a bigger part of the story.
Bambu’s authentication is just the client saying “I am Bambu Studio”. The server completely trusts that with no additional authentication.
It’s like setting up a website with a user login, and if someone puts in “admin” in the username field without a password, the system says “sounds good” and lets you in. And then the website owners getting mad that someone hacked their system.
Blatant incompetence. I can’t believe they’re using their stupidity as an argument.
Important to note that the license they release their software under explicitly allows users to do exactly that
i have a bambu ps1, bought last December, I’ve only used it in LAN with orcaslicer, should i get rid of her? I’ve never used bambu app
With the new A1 catching fire issue it’s not unreasonable to consider their engineering flawed and dangerous. Reason enough…
What a shit “but both sides” article.
“Bambu said they didn’t do something wrong so we must take that into consideration”.
It’s one of the most transparent and plump “I want to hold my users hostage” in a long time.
And many people warned exactly this would happen. Bambu introduced a closed system into an open source hobby and the parallels to home ink printers were pointed out immediately by the community. Bambu essentially announced this would happen. I‘ve been saying this for years.
Bambu was the one company I oped to be wrong about when first seeing them. But their communication smelled “we are your future” from the beginning. :(
Not exactly. You can use any filament (analogous to the ink) and they have said they won’t limit that. They have rfid tags in the filament but the printers without AMS don’t even have the ability to read it.
Until they go back on that I don’t really mind them. I don’t want to use other slicers etc. I didn’t buy this printer as a tinkering project but to print stuff and at that it really is very good.
I mean I really wish they were more open but I didn’t buy this printer because I thought it was open. I bought it knowing it was not. I’ve had many printers over the years and I’ve always hated having to mod them to make them usable. I just want it to work out of the box and Bambu is the first one I’ve had that really delivered on that.
I’m not a fan and I’ll move to other brands when I can (my latest printer is a snapmaker) but I think they do still offer good value for money.
I didn’t buy this printer as a tinkering project but to print stuff and at that it really is very good.
There are plenty of other printers that do this. Prusa, Creality, Flashforge, Anycubic. Plenty of slicers available. I don’t know why you’re pretending Bambu is necessary, or like it’s the only option.
Any time I find print files online that are in .bgcode format, I’m like “seriously…”.
I usually slice projects myself anyway because I don’t use PLA, but it’s just kinda lame to post a project online using the only closed source format that only works with one kind of printer.
Plus, there’s the whole spontaneous combustion issue…
I’m not saying it’s the only option but it’s a good option for the price if you just care about printing stuff.
And the options you mention aren’t real alternatives. For €180 my A1 mini is really great value, and so was my P1S. I haven’t seen anything that comes close to the print quality and printer design for a similar price. An ender would be of similar price but it looks like a science project and it’s not nearly as capable without a lot of manual tuning and upgrades.
Prusa is way too expensive for me. Anycubic and Creality are cheap Prusa knockoffs that need a lot of tuning to perform well. We have a lot of CR-10s and Enders in the makerspace but they’re always out of order for maintenance or some upgrade.
And regarding the slicer I really don’t care which slicer I use. It just has to do its job.
If you “just care about printing stuff” then why would you go with the walled garden that relies on userlocks, proprietary formats, and forced network connectivity to function? Not to mention the fire risk and rug pulling…
Anycubic and Creality are cheap Prusa knockoffs that need a lot of tuning to perform well.
My kobra prints fine. .16mm layer height by default (in OrcaSlicer), but it can go down to .08mm just with the default .4mm nozzle. I haven’t experimented with anything smaller, but so far I’ve had no issues. The precision and speed is remarkable, and I can calibrate, print, and do everything I need to do entirely offline.
There was no manual tuning or upgrades required, it showed up, assembled easily, and has been plug-and-play since. Yes, there’s an option to upgrade because of it’s modular design but that by no means means that it’s required. I can retrofit it to print with 16 different filaments, but I’m fine with the default of 4.
And regarding the slicer I really don’t care which slicer I use. It just has to do its job.
If you don’t care which slicer you use, then why would you go with the only one with a proprietary format that locks you into a walled garden? That’s some really weird logic…
If you “just care about printing stuff” then why would you go with the walled garden that relies on userlocks, proprietary formats, and forced network connectivity to function? Not to mention the fire risk and rug pulling…
Because I don’t care about the walled garden. The only thing I would mind is locking down filament but they don’t do that. So these things aren’t a negative to me. Not a positive either, just a neutral.
That Kobra looks nice, all the Anycubics I’ve seen in our makerspace are all the old ones that are basically Prusa Mk3 knockoffs. And it’s affordable, it looks basically like an A1 but with 4 colour printing without the ams. Nice! I’d consider that for my next printer.
I have basically no complaints about the Kobra. The printer itself at least (the website is way too dynamic and can be a bother when placing an order).
Although it is my first printer, so I don’t have much of a baseline to compare it to. I’m pretty impressed with it though.
The only issues I’ve had can be fixed by slicing differently (adding brim, supports, etc.) or washing the print plate when it starts to get dirty. Just failed adhesions mostly. I might try using adhesive for some trickier prints. It does overhangs really well though.
And what a community to do it to. The FUNCTIONAL diy techie 2a hippe crowd that strives for freedom.
Like in what universe would somebody with a brain think “ah yes, let me try to pull a fast one on this group, nothing can go wrong”
I don’t have a printer, but I’m well acquainted with the people who do have printers, and from all walks of life. That is not a “take it and roll over” crowd.
You might as well try to sell Vietnamese children full priced nikes.
It doesn’t even cross their minds. I’m about to leave my current job together with two other seniors because our boss decided we’d turn everything into subscription products. Most of it are forks of open source software running on very basic hardware and we were doing fine with selling working solutions and support. Now every piece of hardware will be subscription based. The customers will own nothing and end up paying triple.
Our boss is baffled that we don’t want to do this.
nEuTrAl JoUrNaLiSm
Man I was looking at one of the Bambus to supplement my old Monoprice Maker Select. I was hoping to something with less fuss.
People saying good things about the snapmaker u1. Also have a friend with the centauri carbon and it seems to do well. Don’t know about the multi filament setup though, he bought it before the release.
Flashforge AD5X
bought it recently, really happy with it, works completely offline without the official apps. I never once connected it to their services
Has Bambu labs considered printing and then eating a bag of dicks?
And fuck you theverge.com for your paywall. archive
Are we against journalism now too?
There are better ways to do what you are implying. The entire FOSS movement is an example of this.
Free doesn’t mean free beer.
I would say that the FOSS movement is proof that some form of payment may be required, otherwise most projects are at the mercy of subsidies from corporations.
But Jellyfin!
Jellyfin is sponsored.
Imagine wanting remuneration for time and labour.
I accidentally bypassed the paywall by clicking one of the links to a different article (the “Go fuck yourself, Bambu” link to GN) and then clicking the back button. When I landed back on the Verge article, the “subscribe to the verge to continue reading” message was gone and I had the full article text.
Only worked once tho, I just tried to do it again and I still get the “subscribe” message now.
Early on this seemed a pretty simple case of corporate misbehavior, but as with most issues that blow up on social media as cartoonishly simple battles between Good and Evil, additional details reduce that comfortable clarity. Since the service Bambu Studio connects to isn’t required to run the software, their claim that keeping the service proprietary doesn’t violate the AGPL might be valid after all. This would justify their objection to Jarczak publishing a fork that connects to the service without authorization.
I doubt that this will change the main discussion tho. No amount of information matters when people only glance at an issue long enough to swipe left or right and keep doomscrollin’.
The fact that they have a history and are now more committed than ever to locking down hardware that they don’t own is ridiculous. Fuck bambu.
Archived link: https://archive.is/p6ufq
Archive.is is sketchy
I did not know…what’s sketchy about it?
“Oh look at these wonderful Chinese 3D printers, they’re legitimately ahead of the Western competition and so much cheaper.”
They DDOS the competition, steal intellectual property, violate software licenses, and catch fire.
“Oh look at these wonderful Chinese electric cars, they’re legitimately ahead of the Western competition and so much cheaper.”
I’ll gladly take a Chinese car over an American one.
There are plenty of other Chinese/asian printer companies that dont do what Bambu does.
Im not as familiar with vehicles but im currently overseas in a country that has tons of chinese EVs and they dont really seem to be blowing up left and right.
I’ll trust them when no one alive remembers when they were a single-party state.
Well that’s just blatant sinophobia.
As much as saying “Hey probably stop genociding Palestinians” is antisemitic.
“I don’t trust a single one of them or their children or their children’s children. Not racist though.”
So you don’t trust Taiwanese, Japanese, German, or Korean products either?
Honestly? No. Nintendo is entirely too litigant, VW cheated on their emissions, and Samsung appliances are utterly shit.
In what way are Chinese car companies handicapping American automakers?
I’d also like to know but I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried.
Oh give them a minute.
I was looking at a mini a1 recently. What’s an alternative?
Prusa MINI
Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2
Anycubic Kobra S1
Qidi Tech Q2
Creality has gone IPO and AI, aka down the same path as Bambu. Maybe an old reliable used ender 3, but I wouldn’t but anything new from them.
Speaking of, plenty of old reliable mk3s out there.
Yep grab a mk3s from FB marketplace for like $200 and print like mad.
Very happy with my Anycubic Kobra S10 + ACE. I chose it because I knew I could use open source software if needed and even the stock software works purely over LAN when needed.
I’m always a supporter of qidi, though for my next rig I’m going to go full diy.
I’ve been looking at getting a Sovol, specifically the SV06 Plus ACE.
I wonder what others think about them compared to some of the other options mentioned.
So I have a Bambu printer but I don’t use it all that much. What is going on can someone give me a summary?
Bambu has been adding controls to their printers to force commands from your slicer to go through their servers before being sent to your printer. This had caused some stuff to stop working, like 3rd party AMS systems.
One guy forked (copied it and made his own changes to) their code and removed the restriction. Bambu didn’t like that and threatened him to take it down, while accusing him of falsely impersonating them to make API calls to their servers.
The dude is like “I didn’t impersonate shit, I just forked your code.” Bambu’s code is just a fork of other open source software, all under an open source license. So they have no authority to tell someone not to fork their code, since it’s all open source licensed.
So a lot of people have banded together to push back against Bambu and are ready to take them to court if necessary. They see this as a step by Bambu to try to make their printers more restricted (only use their addons, their filament, go through their cloud, etc).
Classic enshitification arc. They were a fast growing startup that engineered really good printers and software. People, especially newbies flocked to them because their software was easy to use and their initial print quality was very good without any tweaking or tuning.
But they were backed by private equity, and had to start showing higher and higher returns, they started locking in users with their proprietary cloud services.
They’ve been locking users in more and more recently, and just a few weeks ago, threatened a user with legal action for posting AGPL code up on their own repo. The code enabled users to use their Bambu printers without needing to sign into Bambu’s cloud.
Now there is a big community backlash and Bambu is having to do PR damage control.
There’s talk of cloud services and apps and shit…
I only have an Ender3. Do most printers not just use a microSD card, too?
