Looks like Bambu is getting more enshittified. I am so glad I didn’t let my recent frustration at my clumsiness with my Prusa steer me into Bambu-land.
They’re trying hard to couch this as a security thing but I remain unconvinced that the “threats” they’re positing actually exist. Do you even leave your printer connected to the outside internet anyway? I sure as shit don’t.
The only person they’re locking out of your printer with this is you. This is to keep you walled within their own bullshit software ecosystem as much as possible, and the only possible benefit of that is so they can inflict further restrictions later, probably in the hopes of making the software side of their crap a subscription model so they can extort you for that sweet recurring revenue.
Their bambu filament has an RFID tag in it, presumably so you don’t have to tell the printer what kind of filament is loaded. I would bet big $$ that is going to be used to lock out third party filament at some point. Calling it here and now.
The RFID is only used by the AMS. As long as they support direct filament insertion without an AMS, and they have to if they want to support TPU and other exotics, then they can’t lock out 3rd party filament.
I do hope this backfires on them considerably.
Eh. I’m sure they’ll continue to pay enough influencers to gush about their products all the time to keep sales running strong well into the foreseeable future.
Remember that a significant population of people deliberately buy Apple products, among other firmly closed, enshittified, and user-hostile products/systems. The majority of consumers are sadly not educated enough to care and their money is still indeed green.
If you choose to upgrade to the firmware version with Authorization Features, you must download and install Bambu Connect (a printer control software) from the official website. After installation, you can export sliced .3mf files from OrcaSlicer and open them with Bambu Connect. This software allows you to send the files to your printer and monitor print progress.
It feels like an effort to start locking out third party tools (like any slicer other than Bambu Studio), but I’m sure it’s not going to stop there. For now, they’re making you slice it, export the 3mf project, import that to Bambu studio, then send it to the printer, which is likely to piss off a lot of people.
So I’m just not going to update mg firmware then? I’m already using lan only mkde, and if I have to start using an SD card I guess I can do that.
My A1 mini is 3 weeks old and I love it but this sucks… It always starts with “security” and i can totally see them going subscription model and locking you into their ecosystem. I guess that’s why it was so cheap and on sale haha. Sucks to see such an amazing product and success to go downhill so quickly…
It’s already happened with the Anycubic Kobra 2 Max - no way to connect directly, everything must go through their cloud to print, via their slicer only.
Good to know, that’s another one that won’t ever make the recommendation list then
I tell a lie. You can print from USB sticks, but not from a computer via USB.
Nothing swapping the main board out won’t fix
I didn’t know that was a thing…
Seen some threads on reddit of people swapping out for skr boards, found a git repo doing that for an adapter kit but does look to have things documented.
End of the day, it’s just some steppers, sensors and heaters, klipper supports a bunch of different printer types (bed slinger, core xy, core xz, cartesian, polar, like seriously a lot). Hard part on some of these would more likely be connect components to the board, need to know voltages and pinout for example, but if you can figure that out you’re good. Klipper is amazing and you can replicate a lot of custom stuff in macros.
Yeah, but you could also kit build a similarly capable printer if you’re willing to go that far, and at that rate you may as well give Anycubic the finger in the process and not provide them with any of your money…
Oh for sure, I’m firmly on the side of building a kit or sourcing your own for something like a voron v0.2 for people unfamiliar/uncertain; not a huge investment, will learn a lot assembling it and you’ll have an abs capable machine that’s yours at the end of the day. I do still absolutely recommend prusa kits too or second hand older ones, super easy to modify and there’s and absolute wealth of information (and mods) for them.
Board swaps and conversion kits more for people who already have something and would rather modify it than buying a whole new machine, less waste than tossing the whole printer and getting a new one. Could use as a platform for something like a switchwire, there’s an Ender 3 conversion out there for example, and looks like there’s an anycubic Viper one too and another
Louis Rossman just dropped a rant about this: https://youtu.be/aIyaDD8onIE
7.4 “Your Bambu Lab product will automatically search for and download new update packages to provide you with timely update services… Due to the importance of these updates, your product may block new print job (sic) before the updates is installed”
wow.
Glad I didn’t pull the trigger on one of these. I have no idea what I would possibly need security for my printer from, this is there for them, not the user.
This is exactly why I pre-ordered the Prusa Core ONE when it was announced for twice the price of anything Bambu has on hand and told both recent curious friends getting into printing to look elsewhere. Bambu was ALWAYS gonna go down this path, it was only a matter of time.
Damn where all the Bambu fan boys at now?
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