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.
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.
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.
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.
They never promised to keep anything open. It never was open.