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Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

jeffgeerling.com

231–240 of 452 posts

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#231
post #39
post #11

> Some people are okay with using OrcaSlicer and printing through Bambu's cloud. It's convenient if you're on the road and want to start a print on your printer at home Do such people really exist? Are there actually people who are comfortable blindly starting a robot in their home, with a part that heats to 150 C, and then hope that everything will work out and when they get home the part will be waiting for them, i…

3D printers aren't the fire hazards of yore. They're quite reliable, fused, with multiple interlocks for various conditions (mainly around heating not matching expected rate) that will kill power. The main potential problem these days (in my view) is whether a print finishes without crashing or delaminating from the print plate, which also has workarounds... but that's only potential printer damage, not a fire.

Straight propaganda. Printers have burned down apartments in the last five years.

https://www.reddit.com/r/anycubic/comments/1j4kfsr/guys_just...

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#232

I bought a Bambu Labs A1 Mini. It cost $199, on sale. I plugged it in and started printing excellent prints. Previously I bought an Ender printer for around the same amount. Never did get it to work. I'm not an engineer or a mechanic. I have other technical hobbies, astronomy for example. I tried making a telescope mirror with results similar to the Ender printer. I buy ready made telescopes, not telescope kits. I ha…

Great points. Using their printer "rooted" or with custom firmware seems like a decent compromise to me, kind of like what graphene is doing with pixels

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#233
post #183
post #30

Full disclosure: I've never owned a Bambu because I've never loved the idea of a "closed" ecosystem 3D printer, however I have used them, and am very familiar with the 3d printing space beyond Bambu. For anyone considering alternatives: You should know that almost all other 3D printers expect you to know a little more about how they actually work than Bambus. Bambus are as close as you can get to a "just works" type…

I’ve gotten some really good prints with a Qidi Q1 Pro. Have read good reviews about some of the other/newer versions by the same brand as well. They are very cheap for the features they have, and excellent quality

I have a Plus 4. It's usable but takes a lot of work to become decent, and needs a lot of maintenance.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa are pretty much plug and play these days, especially the Core One line-up. You're right that they're expensive but you get free human support 24x7, you get an open platform, lots of contributions to open source (even Bambu Studio is a fork of Prusa Slicer), and they pretty much go on forever. My Core One+ started its life as an original MK3 and went through each iteration of upgrades, and it works like new. I'm…

Is there any guidance on improving the Core One chamber? I would like to add some thermal insulation around the chamber, but I'm not sure if the firmware will properly detect unexpected thermal insulation in problematic scenario's, if it blindly assumes its a stock Core One... the more you modify a printer, the more it operates in terra incognita. Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (…

> Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (to avoid overheating chamber temp) to the point the print no longer adheres? etc.

That would depend how much "safety" is built into the control system.

The simplest solution I've seen is taping up the edges of the enclosure where you find gaps, to prevent heat escaping.

If it's only PID-ing the bed, the ambient temperature shouldn't matter. Less work to do for the bed heater. On the nozzle, it's similar. A 40 C increase in ambient temperature isn't much compared to the 150 C+ that the control system is maintaining. Since the active parts of the printer must be capable of running at the target chamber temperature, there should be no risk unless you exceed it. The question is really, is the printer designed to operate continuously with a chamber of X C?

However... the risk would be that if it's too well insulated there isn't a good way for the system to cool quickly if it needs to, or if it somehow messes with what the control system is tuned for. On the older printers you could re-calibrate the PID loops to your specific hardware and environment. The newer 32-bit firmware seems to not require user tuning at all. Similarly with full enclosures, you might worry about the power supply or other electronics which aren't meant to be run at high ambient (maybe fine though).

You could also look at a separate solution like enclosing the printer in well-insulated chamber, and aiming to keep that outer space above ambient. That would be a good option if you're expecting a big thermal gradient to your workspace, like an unheated garage in winter.

But lots of questions really. Do you want to run at a high chamber temp? Are you running in a cold environment and having problems? Trying to save power? These are different scenarios.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prusa are pretty much plug and play these days, especially the Core One line-up. You're right that they're expensive but you get free human support 24x7, you get an open platform, lots of contributions to open source (even Bambu Studio is a fork of Prusa Slicer), and they pretty much go on forever. My Core One+ started its life as an original MK3 and went through each iteration of upgrades, and it works like new. I'm…

Is there any guidance on improving the Core One chamber? I would like to add some thermal insulation around the chamber, but I'm not sure if the firmware will properly detect unexpected thermal insulation in problematic scenario's, if it blindly assumes its a stock Core One... the more you modify a printer, the more it operates in terra incognita. Could too much thermal insulation cause the bed temperature to lower (…

I put a blanket on in the winter. In the summer it's not really necessary, the chamber can hit 70c which triggers a cool-down.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#236
post #68
post #30

Full disclosure: I've never owned a Bambu because I've never loved the idea of a "closed" ecosystem 3D printer, however I have used them, and am very familiar with the 3d printing space beyond Bambu. For anyone considering alternatives: You should know that almost all other 3D printers expect you to know a little more about how they actually work than Bambus. Bambus are as close as you can get to a "just works" type…

I have an Elegoo Centauri Carbon which is cheaper than Bambu Lab's and it has been plug and play so far. I have no experience with 3D Printing and I've been printing on it without any problems so far.

I got the V2 and same - no fuss, especially if I stick to Elegoo filament. Multicolour worked out of the box, to the point where it's difficult to think it was a Big Thing until recently.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#237

"It pretended to be the official client" is not a security argument if the mechanism was client-supplied metadata. That’s not impersonation. That’s Bambu discovering that user agents are not authentication.

And they report service disruptions as a result of this - so perhaps they are are also learning what gateways are.

Blaming the CLIENT for this is absolutely crazy.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#238

I'm an open-source advocate (some would say zealot?) but I ended up buying a Bambu P1S a few months back because my research indicated that there were ways use it normally without creating a Bambu account, or using their slicer, or having to send all of your prints through their servers. I don't have my notes in front of me, but I managed to do all of that with hardly any trouble at all. IIRC, you only had to change…

> IIRC, you only had to change one setting on the printer itself, and optionally block the printer from Internet access via the firewall to prevent automatic firmware updates and telemetry Why do you have to do that on a product you own that is running in your home?

Because you should never fully trust any IoT product that you don't truly have control over. There's nothing stopping a faulty or malicious update from being pushed out, or their update servers being compromised (see notepad++ recently). So why increase your risk, if you don't truly need it online?

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#239

This sentence in Bambu Lab's blog post is wild: > We have documented incidents of service outages caused precisely by spikes in unauthorized traffic - overwhelming the servers, causing service disruptions affecting everyone. The cost was instability felt by all users. So it's a problem that their printers are popular, and they can't be bothered to scale their infra, so let's gate everything based on USER AGENT STRING…

Do the well-behaving clients really need to use those servers? Could you have done something to avoid this bottleneck for all users?

Yeah, this is a farce.

Re: Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract

#240

I bought a Bambu Labs A1 Mini. It cost $199, on sale. I plugged it in and started printing excellent prints. Previously I bought an Ender printer for around the same amount. Never did get it to work. I'm not an engineer or a mechanic. I have other technical hobbies, astronomy for example. I tried making a telescope mirror with results similar to the Ender printer. I buy ready made telescopes, not telescope kits. I ha…

Great points. Using their printer "rooted" or with custom firmware seems like a decent compromise to me, kind of like what graphene is doing with pixels

If I had an actual need that wasn't being met, I might buy one of their printers just to root and run with custom firmware. I might just do it for the fun of it. Even with tariffs their printers are only running around $220 at Best Buy.

However, even that sounds suspiciously like a project in and of itself. I haven't had time to design and print anything in the last month. So I expect I'll keep rolling along like I am. Things could always change, though.

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