3DPrinting

thank you for making me aware of this, and thank fuck for louis rossman. no idea how we deserve that guy. as a new BL printer owner, I just opened a complaint on their websites support portal, as advised by this reddit post

Leopards ate your face. May open source thrive

They're run by a bunch of former DJI execs, the spy drone company.

Prusa for the win yet again. I recently upgraded to MK4, and the thing just keeps. On. Going. Great customer support. They work with 3rd party suppiers instead of against them. Worth every cent.

Saw this from the moment they did the rfid nonsense, doubled down on my beliefs when they started burning cash on advertising like crazy. Tons of youtubers and such shill this shit

They had a series b round in 2023 of an undisclosed amount with several chinese vc companies and they’ve had investments in 2021 and 2022 as well. I don’t know how chinese vc works but I assume it’s similar to american vc where there is a strong demand from the backer(s) to monetize in this fashion

Why do you think reddit went to shit? Series b in 2014. Those people drop serious cash. Reddits seed round in 2005 at y combinator was for 100k. That’s serious money to you and me, but to vc people that’s not worth getting out of bed. Reddits 2014 series b was fifty million. They suddenly had a gigantic influx of cash to grow infrastructure and compete with the big dogs like meta and twitter. They were fairly successful with this. They then raised 1.2 billion over 4 rounds from 2017-2021. That’s why they had a relatively quick turn to shit; that money was to try to make the site bland and profitable in preparation for ipo. It worked out because the stock made investors a ton of cash at the expense of making the site dogshit

Bambu will have a similar trajectory. Investors will give them an amount of money that is frankly obscene, they will use that money to develop (and probably to party, ridiculous salaries and/or fluff jobs, and have really fancy offices), then they will actively make the product worse. 5 years from now they will have used that money to entrench themselves in the market space. Don’t be surprised if the average person thinks “bambu” when they think “3d printer” because they pissed away 10s of millions on advertising. But their printers will have more consumer hostile bullshit (finally fully locking out 3rd part filament instead of just requiring you to do a pain in the ass respooling seems inevitable) like this and it would not be surprising to see the build quality suffer too.

For everyone in the EU who bought their product within the last two years directly from Bambu Land or from a German reseller:

Stay calm. There is a very highly probability that German customer protection laws will cover your asses - Bambu Lab EU is based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and German customer protection laws goes beyond EU rules and applies to you.

I am currently working with three other enthusiasts, one being a lawyer -working in a different field, though- to clarify our options and will also talk to a customer protection agency.

Short explanation:

• German customer protection laws enable the customer of any online shop to "check" the sold product for 14d in a way they would check the product at a real world shop. The feature set and sales claims provided at this time do provide the base for finalization of the sale.

• The seller (!= Manufacturer!) has to provide a warranty for two years - for 6 months the burden of prove that the fault was not present at the delivery falls towards the seller, for the remaining time to the buyer. As BL does communicate the chanhe openly this is not an issue.

• BL furthermore claims that some uses fall outside the "intended use". This is completely irrelevant - that is only relevant if they claim that they cannot provide warranty due to use outside the intended use. They still cannot reduce the feature set.

• Which holds more merit is the claim of BL that they are reducing a side feature/unintended feature. This explanation has, in the past, been used a few times in court successfully,but lately it has not been accepted anymore - even App connections for cars have been deemed a "base feature" that might play a significant role in choosing a car. It especially has not merit in cases when this defence is used to force a user to give up their (sensitive) data.

• BL also has a five year update policy in their TOS (which is mostly invalid otherwise,though) - and blocking users from updating if they don't want to loose features and give up data is also very likely a breach of contract.

• There are also GDPR and market law implications that need to be considered.

What does that all mean? What can happen in the end?

It is highly unlikely that this proceedings can change the course of BL - these companies don't give a fuck. But it might force them to basically reverse the sale (you would need to pay them for the actual use, though - but that is miniscule). Of course BL can also close their office in the EU and try to only sell from outside the EU - but that will put a very large crosshair on their back in terms of customs and taxes.

I keep you updated.

Update 21/01/25 Spoke with a customer protection associations lawyer for a short time, the longer answer will follow later. Few key facts:

• The fact that you once could use external tools and control while using cloud connection as well and soon cannot do this anymore is a relevant feature change, that it might affect the base of the sale. Developer mode is not a full replacement for that.

• There are some other issues with Bambu Lab policies, especially their return policies, that will be looked into as they directly contradict German law.

In another thread on this enshittification, someone pointed out a similiar enclosed CoreXY brand, Qidi, that just runs FOSS Klipper. Looked very comparable, with the upcoming generation looking to have an AMS-like multifilament feeder.

Seems like most of the models include a chamber heater for better prints, especially on ABS which I'd given up on without a heater. Comes with brass nozzle for regular filaments, and a steel nozzle for CF filaments. This has replaced the Bambu on my wishlist.

https://qidi3d.com/products/qidi-x-max-3

Owner testimonial: https://a.lemmy.world/lemmy.world/comment/14514530

There's an open source firmware for the X1

https://github.com/X1Plus/X1Plus

I'm very glad I didn't buy one of their printers. The RFID tag thing was enough to keep me from buying anything from them. This is even worse.

Do they really think they are that mainstream now that they can pull the "fuck you" switch? You're still almost exclusively patronized by the people that can actually read and think, bambu. Your customer will decidedly act against your broken business now. Enjoy.

This is Reddit, but if you want to hear from the asshole making decisions and see their username. https://www.reddit.com/r/BambuLab/comments/zmz8vv/i_am_dr_ye_tao_ceo_of_bambu_lab_ask_me_anything/

I'm still on an ender 3

I'm infuriated by this change, but I'm also frustrated because they really are very good printers. There's a reason so many people bought them and they became so popular, they are very very good.

But this change is utter bullshit, I won't be upgrading my firmware any time soon.

I wonder how easy would it be to swap the controller for something more open like the BTT boards? That way you'd get the nice design and an open platform. I'm not sure how much of their wiring could be repurposed for this though.

If they ever advertised a use case for it, then took that use case away, they can be sued. My most recent memory if the class action against Sony when they dropped Linux support on the PS3.

Lol knew it was only a matter of time before bambu did something stupid. Always had a funny feeling about them in the back of my head, like too good to be true.

Y'all, I fell for it.

I bought a Bambu X1C and fully regret it. Just sent them a return request and called their product Defective by design in my RMA. I don't expect them to acknowledge it but I figured I would send them a hefty fu first. I'm spending the rest of my afternoon downgrading firmware on this thing until I can install X1plus on it. Where am I buying my next 3D printer? Prusa? Do they have a bigger one that can print ppa-cf?

• "They played us like a damn fiddle!" Kazuhira Miller

This may sound like a dumb idea. But cant we just fork there firmware and flash our own? It runs klipper under the hood which means its a gpl license?

--edit there is X1plus firmware which is opensourced

I just got their new 3d printer and was having a great time with it... Won't be updating firmware or buying anymore products with them until they fix this

If you were buying Bambu you already didn't care about this

I was about to pick up an a1 mini. Are there alternatives for beginners in that price range?

I was considering a Bambu till this...what are good alternatives. Within $3k

Well this is... disappointing. I picked up an A1 at the end of last year because it "just works", and I was tired of fighting my Ender 3 instead of actually printing with it. I'm extraordinarily happy with the quality of the printer itself, but I'll be refraining from updating the firmware I guess, as I don't allow it to use cloud services, and it lives on my LAN as the only means of management.