I was seriously considering upgrading to a bambulabs printer before all this. Instead I screwed a second tool head to my Ender 5 and will be sticking with that printer for the forseeable future.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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I've never been happier about my Prusa, despite some of what I felt were their suboptimal choices in the last few years, at least they've never seemed malicious.
One step closer to DRM filament spools. Just like the overpriced ink cartridges of 2d printers. The safety and security arguments are always bullshit. This is only about control over what you can do. No other printer has ever had an issue with safety or security with vastly more open designs.
DRM filament spools has already been a thing, XYZprinting tried it but luckily it didn't catch on and they went bankrupt a few years ago.
Restrictive tech never works when you apply it from the start. You need to capture the market first before you can start to apply that. And that is the road Bamboo labs looks to be heading down. It is the classic playbook:
- have some true disruptive innovation in some product that people will actually want to use your products for ✅
- mass market your product and get loads of people singing parse about how innovate it is ✅
- slowly start to lock down your product, typically behind the guise of safety and security ✅
- start to squeeze your customers for as much money as you can with DRM or subscriptions You wont succeed if you skip straight to step 4. But Bamboo have been slowly working their way up to it. It might take a few more years but I can see them eventually wanting DRM filament.
Totally correct.
XYZprinting didn't fail because of the DRM per se. They failed because they had an expensive priter with average quality, average learning curve, average reliability, and on top of that, they had stupid, expensive DRM cartridges that would frequently tangle and that you couldn't untangle without breaking the cartridge. And they didn't even have a decent selection of filaments and colors.
They were a below average product to begin with, and being the first company to slap DRM on the filament was just the nail in the coffin.
If it had been one of the big players of the time (Ender, Prusa, ...) who slowly snuck in DRM, it would have been much more likely to succeed.
Stratasys uPrint, the filament is 10x the normal price, and you can't refill the spools. 260 USD for 42ci (I guess it's a kg) https://store.goengineer.com/products/p430xl-model-spool-uprint-se-ivory?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=cbc1c0b23&pr_rec_pid=7204500635830&pr_ref_pid=2409166831721&pr_seq=uniform
I remember people warning this would happen years ago on various online threads, and getting ridiculed for it.
Yeah, print out that fuckin' telephone because we called it. Sometimes it sucks to be right.
I'm happy I built a Voron Trident a few years ago instead of going for the Bambu Lab printer. It's more work of course, but I also know what parts are in it and how to fix it or upgrade it.
The only thing that one has to give Bambulab credit for is making 3D printing accessible to people who don't want to or don't have the skills to tinker with their printer.
Yeah it'd just be nice if they weren't trying so hard to emulate all the bad parts of paper printer companies!
Yeah, I absolutely agree!
And thats exactly why i didnt buy a bambu labs printer because i knew this woukd happen. I basically know the script line by line at this point, warned everyone and now look, spending that extra 300€ was really worth it...
Bambu slicer needed windows Silverlight or something to sign in which never worked on my old laptop. The run around is save my slice, upload through a browser and use bambu handy mobile app to start the print. If they make it more unbearable I might need to go back to LAN connection.
I have not updated my x1 firmware and never will be.
I blocked mine from the internet for good measure too.
I did this, but experienced a lot of issues connecting to it afterwards. Constant disconnects and it taking several minutes after opening Orca/Studio to find it.
Any advice, as I'd like to go back to LAN Mode?
Cheers
I currently have my P1S in LAN mode and use HomeAssistant to control it, using thr ha-bambulab integration. Does everything I need
Cheers, HA integration is on the plan for the future, I just strugle with time these days with a small kid and work.
Roll back the firmware to a version that worked. You still can do that.
I wish I could.
Need the newer FW to use the drying function of the AMS2.
I'm considering going back to LAN and just dealing with it though. I really prefer Orca over Studio
It would appear you are now trapped by Bambu into their product system.
May God ha' Mercy on your Soul.
I got my A1 mini just a month or two before this current unpleasantness, so I was taken unaware. But since I've never been interested in using much of the Bambu software ecosystem, switching to LAN mode a month ago has been no big deal for me because I was leaning that direction anyway. And my current firmware version, 1.04 works well so no need to up grade. Nor is Makers World all that important to me.
But there are so many users that just don't care and will swallow what ever dreck Bambu feeds them.