The Enshittification of 3D Printers – Are We Losing What Made Them Great?

Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨John@discuss.tchncs.de⁩ to ⁨3dprinting@lemmy.world⁩

I’ve been noticing an unsettling trend in the 3D printing world: more and more printer manufacturers are locking down their devices with proprietary firmware, cloud-based software, and other anti-consumer restrictions. Despite this, they still receive glowing reviews, even from tech-savvy communities.

Back in the day, 3D printing was all about open-source hardware, modding, and user control. Now, it feels like we’re heading towards the same path as smartphones and other consumer tech—walled gardens, forced online accounts, and limited third-party compatibility. Some companies even prevent users from using alternative slicers or modifying firmware without jumping through hoops.

My question is: Has 3D printing gone too mainstream? Are newer users simply unaware (or uninterested) in the dangers of locked-down ecosystems? Have we lost the awareness of FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) and user freedom that once defined this space?

I’d love to hear thoughts from the community. Do you think this is just a phase, or are we stuck on this trajectory? What can we do to push back against enshitification before it’s too late?

(Transparency Note: I wrote this text myself, but since English is not my first language, I used LLM to refine some formulations. The core content and ideas are entirely my own.)

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LeTak@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Many people don’t care about FOSS or don’t know the benefits, they just want a NOW working product. Many belief in the goodness that nothing bad will happen, and if something happens, they still can switch. I often have this discussion with other colleagues and friends, it’s an endless debate of price , features , comfort and support. As long as there is both on the market , why argue? People can buy what fits their needs.

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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  e , features , comfort and support. As long
  
  My opinion on bad manufacturer behavior is: if we keep buying those products(with locked down firmware, Windows-Only Proprietary Cloud filled forked Slicers etc.) more and more manufacturers may go that route.
  
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  - IceFoxX@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The problem is people’s stinginess. They want to save money and buy from China. The manufacturers help themselves to the OSS community but do not contribute anything - on the contrary, the manufacturers undercut the OSS alternatives enormously. They have no development costs or anything else to compensate. So that the OSS solutions do not finance the development for other companies and push themselves out of the market, the only option is to lock it in. It’s the people who want to get into an expensive hobby on the cheap.
    
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  - grue@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Luckily for us, the original RepRap folks were smart enough to go for copyleft rather than permissive licensing. As such, the common firmwares and slicers are both using GPLv3 code, severely limiting the companies’ ability to do that.
    
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  - otter@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s a race to the bottom line. The endless flight of the working class: funnel-fed the products of each other’s work for the price of obedience. Viva La Revolution, coming this season everywhere you stream.
    
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  - LeTak@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Maybe a little out of context but this reminds me of the Sony Helldiver 2 situation. If people get loud enough they can infect change things. No one got loud or boycotted games that had Kernel level AntiCheat , this could have been avoided. Same with Bamboo I guess, if people still buy them after the Firmware and Cloud thing , it probably will happen again.
    
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- pixeltree@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The biggest thing stopping me from doing anything is that the steps to do something are multiplicative for me rather than additive how it seems for other people. If I’m dreading fixing and tuning my printer, then I just won’t print anything. For months. Until a magic day comes when I’m able to get on with it (Yeah, I know I’m a shitty low functioning person, you don’t have to mention it). Getting a Bambu let’s me actually print stuff and helps me not get locked into paralysis about it for months. I hate it’s a closed and easily fucked over ecosystem, but it’s a choice between letting me function or not. I dunno, I’m really rambling without a point, I just thought someone might find some value in this
  
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  - LeTak@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Just different persons / mindsets. I bought a Prusa and in the first month replaced and modded everything I know of. Stabilizing it , replacing extruder gears and the nozzle , fine tuned some print settings. Why? I have fun doing so. And the time. Other people don’t, and that is completely fine.
    
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ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
We have become so normalized to anti consumer behavior it doesn’t even matter anymore

Like it used to be that a videogame manufacturer charged for a dlc that was already on the game disc, you had to pay to unlock data that you technically had purchased but not licensed, and people threw a fucking fit. Now it’s like “this new tech device will only work if you insert $20 bills every 30 minutes” and people are like “oh well that sucks but what are you gonna do? I need a toaster that can send me a notification when my toast is done”

Fuck the companies that do anti consumer bullshit, fuck the youtuber dummies that normalize it because they got $50 and a free shitty printer, fuck the government that has completely failed to regulate anything, and fuck the dummies who constantly enable this nonsense because they refuse to spend 10 minutes researching their purchases and instead spend the rest of their life in credit card debt because they have $1100 in monthly subscriptions to stupid bullshit that makes their stuff work for 18 months until the company goes bankrupt, their device is bricked, and they replace it with another piece of shit that has the same anticonsumer bullshit

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- lightnsfw@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It’s just like everything else with technology. As soon as the “normies” start buying into it everything goes to shit. They don’t know what to look for and just buy whatever’s easiest. Once it gets that far the manufacturers can do whatever they want
  
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  - peregrin5@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    All the Youtubers Bambu sponsors are like, “I was terrified of 3D printing. Wasn’t that something only nerds do? Then Bambu sent me a free 3D printer and several hundred dollars and I’m telling you guys, you don’t even need a brain to use it!!!”
    
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  - ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s a three way street though. Lazy consumers are to blame for enabling but bad companies are worse for having anti consumer practices to begin with. And the biggest failure of all is our government for allowing anti consumer behavior to run rampant and not allow any meaningful regulation to go through because they’re utterly corrupted and pro corporation.
    
    In the “normies” defense in a functional society I shouldn’t have to research every purchase I make to ensure it is not hostile against me. However, we live in a dystopia where it is necessary to either manufacture your own foss solution or research for the purchasable option (that is often just the least hostile but still fairly hostile)
    
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- KeenFlame@feddit.nu ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  All these companies lose. Everyone hates them. They are milking their brands of any reputation because they think the world is ending and wants all money. There are compassionate companies with humans that do not do this. They are not hated. You should choose them
  
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Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Despite this, they still receive glowing reviews, even from tech-savvy communities.

I mean, most people don’t care. How often do you see mainstream smartphone reviewers making a single mention of the insane amount of bloatware and spyware on phones, or calling out Apple for their unrepairable devices? Shit just blows over eventually and consumers accept it for what it is. 3D printers are not exempt from this mentality.

Jeff Geerling made a video today about how he bought a dishwasher that was top-rated by RTINGS with no mention of the fact that in order to actually use it, you have to connect it to the app, create an account, and connects it to them OEM’s cloud.

Several years ago I bought a DJI action cam and it was the same thing. You can’t do jack shit with it without connecting it to an app and creating an account. I watched dozens of reviews and this was never mentioned.

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- orcrist@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  When I’m shopping for cell phones and reading reviews a routinely see comments about the amount of bloatware embedded on various manufacturer’s devices. People actually do care about it, reviewers actually do write about it.
  
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  - Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Never seen it before.
    
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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I think 3D-Printers have just this DIY image for me and that’s why i thought the general 3D-Printer user is more tech-savvy and aware.
  
  If they would tell me that my ESP32 needs cloud connection to use them i would be furious to.
  
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  - Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The industry is evolving. It happens in every industry eventually. When any one OEM corners a sufficient market size (like Bambu), they start taking freedom from the user to lock them into their ecosystem. Then all the other OEMs go “well if they’re doing it I guess we can do it too”. This is what you see trickle down from Apple all the time: headphone jacks, glued together devices, soldered RAM, and most recently unhinged RAM and storage prices, etc.
    
    It didn’t seem to work for Bambu but they will back down and then try it again in another 12 months or make smaller changes. They just boiled the frog too quickly.
    
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- lapping6596@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Just wanted to mention, it was top by consumer reports. I don’t think he mentioned RTHINGs but could have missed that.
  
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  - Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Edited, thanks
    
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- jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Thats not really a good comparison. Fist thing someone does when they buy a smartphone is replace the OS. Same as laptops.
  
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  - Fondots@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    If you genuinely believe that, you are either living in some kind of serious tech nerd bubble, or you have no idea what replacing the OS means and you’re talking about doing software updates, tweaking settings, and installing apps.
    
    The vast majority of smartphone users probably don’t even realize you can replace the OS, and if they do they probably don’t see the need.
    
    For desktops and laptops, around 71% of them are running windows, somehow I doubt people are buying Linux or Mac laptops just to turn around and install windows on them. Then around 16% of them are running MacOS, and I doubt that any significant number of those are hackintoshes. A fair amount of the remaining 13% or so are probably people who have installed their own OS, but not all, some of them are using ChromeOS, I don’t hear much about people deciding to make their own Chromebook, and some people are buying an off-the-shelf Linux device.
    
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j4k3@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It is simply an entry level thing. You will find this in every market.

In a bike shop retail market I can sell you a serviceable bike for $500 that will last, or an $800 road bike you’ll actually ride. Still the majority of bikes sold come from places like Walmart where they are made of unserviceable junk and are mostly nonfunctional. These are rarely ever ridden and often thrown away. In the shop I’ll sell 20:1 on the cheapest model to the next options up the ladder.

It is strange to adapt to this kind of understanding at first, like just how skewed the real market is. I can target selling to clubs and teams but I can’t touch the the garbage bike market where most people reside.

I think we are at a point where the influx of people into 3d printing are not real Makers or have any aspirations to be.

The reality is that people are often simply stupid. They seem to think that saving a few bucks here or there is smart but are not bright enough to see that everyone doing the same thing are buying the junk product over and over. There is nothing more expensive than being a cheap miser.

Ultimately, the only person that can fix stupid is ourselves. One can only inspire others to learn but can never force them. You cannot fix stupid in others. In the USA, stupidity is political currency and we have a long tradition of poor education and standardized exploitation. It is the American dream.

I think LDO and Voron are the only super relevant open source torchbearers.

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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Is it a price thing?
  
  In my opinion Bambu Lab is a high-end consumer 3D-Printer and still modding, servicing etc. is bad. On the other side of the price-spectrum Anycubic copy-pasted all the bad stuff from Bambu.
  
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  - XTL@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s not. It’s the “premium” products that have this proprietary bs and branded parts trying to justify the inflated prices. The cheapest printers are all just generic clones with no lock in and mostly generic parts. Practically DIY kits only without the DIY unless something fails.
    
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  - j4k3@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It is more complicated than just price. It is ultimately an intuitive self awareness and scope thing. People lack depth to understand the details or ask others that do understand before they make a purchase. The majority of people are more oriented towards interpersonal interactions and experiential aspects of life in their fundamental functional thought. They struggle to see detail and nuances or question fixation and biases.
    
    We still live in the early era of human tribal primitivism when it is quite easy to exploit tribal stupidity on multiple fronts. For some it is fixation from initial exposure or emotional brand perception, others it is impulsive availability, for others they are masochistic misers. Abstractive thinking and understanding is rare in humans, and the majority do not understand it or value it in others.
    
    Walmart bikes are targeting misers first, but spontaneous availability and access, along with controlling the perception of what the low bar of the market is are major factors as well. Each of these three factors exploits a specific niche. Walmart is a rogue wholesale distributor selling directly to consumers using massive capital. They are privateers (legal pirates) in the retail market as are most big box stores. Piracy has always been a nice short term business model for gains. It just happens to be true that people of today like being raided raped and pillaged so long as it is done slowly enough without violence, the ship looks pretty and the pirates wear a suit. Even worse is when pirates become entrenched as monarchs and feudal lords. This is the next step in the evolution when piracy is normalized. Welcome to neo feudalism.
    
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- Lutra@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  well put
  
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waz@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
VORON

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- ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I build an original voron 1.0, reused the parts to build a 2.0, and built that into a 2.4 with mostly newer parts because the frame was just fucked from all that nonsense. I have a very low serial from back when they did that on the subreddit, not sure if that’s still a thing
  
  Even with the raggedy frame it was a great printer. But building it properly it’s bulletproof. Costly but if you want a forever printer that you can mod it’s the way to go imo
  
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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  My 0.2 Parts are on the way.
  
  Thought about buying the upcoming Sovol Zero but i guess its on the time to build my first Voron :)
  
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  - fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Which kit? I’m finishing up mine soon.
    
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NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Holy shit. There is so much gatekeeping here that Cerberus themselves would say “Yo dog, take it down a notch”

I think there are two big aspects to this.

The first is that, yes, we are seeing a big push toward locked down ecosystems. Bambu is a great example of this and people are still falling all over each other to talk about how amazing their products are. And, as someone who has been pointing out that AMSes don’t actually do what people think they do for years now, it has been frustrating to watch them take over the cultural zeitgeist even before the current bullshit.

Which leads into the second aspect. FDM printing is very much a “prosumer” hobby. It is about taking industrial/corporate processes and marketing them to hobbyists. Some of that is awesome because it provides a platform to rapidly prototype and iterate on new tech (which benefits the companies more than the users but…) and some of that is miserable because it means we have astroturfing campaigns out there to explain to people why they NEED 24 AMSes chained together for their single printer… because that model works a lot better for print farms.

And, as an aside before I get to the “real” point: We see the same with home cooking. There was a MASSIVE push that everyone should sous vide everything for a couple years. And… that was mostly because we had restaurant chefs talking to The Masses without a Food Network/PBS producer telling them to shut up. So OBVIOUSLY the best steak you will ever eat is the one that spent 11 hours in a hot water bath and was quickly seared to be plated in under 5 minutes. Rather than the understanding that this is a crutch used because a line cook can’t spend 10 minutes butter basting their steak.

And most of that still is incredibly obnoxious and outright wasteful. But it also led to people like J Kenji Lopez-Alt who used that to popularize “reverse sear” cooking.

So, now to the real point. People are gate keeping mother fuckers. They are angry that they had to read twelve different articles to figure out what “the paper trick” was rather than having a printer having an automatic tool that kind of gets you… probably closer than you would have gotten anyway. And countless other pain points that were resolved because… they were pain points.

And people decide THEY are heroes and legends rather than realizing that people like Naomi Wu et al came before them and got it to the point where it was learnable for the hobbyist sickos.

Which… not to shit on the OP TOO much (I would not be surprised if this came out of the LLM pass) but it is why I more than side eye anything that has “Make them great (again)”. Because, invariably, it is a case of people yearning for a time that never actually existed where they are on top and everyone bows before them.

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- Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I just want a printer that doesn’t require you to upload your gcode to their cloud server before getting permission from them to print.
  
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  - TheRealKuni@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    I just want a printer that doesn’t require you to upload your gcode to their cloud server before getting permission from them to print.
    
    Even on Bambu’s locked-down firmware you can just toss the gcode on the SD card and print that way if you don’t want to deal with their cloud service. Or throw it on a flash drive and plug into the USB port.
    
    My previous printer could ONLY function via SD card, so I’m kinda used to that anyway.
    
    Don’t get me wrong, I think Bambu locking down their firmware and forcing everyone through their cloud service is shitty. But you can print without it still.
    
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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I just want to make clear, im not against printers which are accessible, i think i myself am not long enough in the Hobby to call myself an expert of any kind.
  
  I would just wish that it would be news worthy if you need to use a specific slicer to make full use of your printer or some clarification that all your prints will be send to the cloud before they reach your printer.
  
  Im much less a 3D-Printing-Purist then a privacy advocate. I wish that this type of behavior by manufacturers will be outcalled - nevermind if it is a 3D-Printer, your Dishwasher or any other “Smart Device”.
  
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  - NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It is “news worthy” in that basically every outlet doing printer reveiws/content will mention it. Even fricking Norm on Tested pointed out the problems with bambu and the issues if you want to use the laser cutter on anything other than Windows.
    
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BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Free systems were expensive, hard to use, and had worse finish

Bambu came, made a better proprietary product

People obviously bought it

Then other manufacturers saw that they could sell proprietary products just as well and jumped into the bandwagon

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- EmilieEvans@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I love DIY.
  
  At home, I run and build DIY printers but you can’t deploy them in a business/production. Why? As soon as there is a printer that isn’t it just works with easy (and documented) maintance procedures the business needs to hire not only a worker but a worker who knows 3D printers. That’s bad.
  
  Printers like the Sovol SV08 and Biqu AMS (still not launched) aren’t just there yet.
  
  Combined with the BambuLab pricing on the A1 mini and P1S it is pretty difficult to buy FOSS.
  
  Prusa is close with the Core 1 but they don’t have an good AMS package for their printers (their MMU lacks a enclosure/easy to deploy setup). They propably know it but don’t have the answer avaible.
  
  Equally on the econmics side it is difficult: The BambuLab P1S killed the (FOSS) market.
  
  If I compare a 1150€ BambuLab X1C against the 1350€ Prusa Core One I would likley prefer the Prusa product/ecosystem. With the P1S it suddently is a 700€ compared to 1350€ for a machine that will produce the exact same parts with a near identical cycletime, uptime and opperating/maintance cost. The decission in favor of BambuLab is easy.
  
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  - Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    This. The proprietary 3d printers arent the “enshitification” of 3d printers, they’re what’s finally going to make them go “mainstream”.
    
    Tech people need to remember how deep into these hobbies we really are, especially compared to “normies”.
    
    Its like with computers, people go “oh well you can get a better bang for your buck on your memory by not going with apple!”. Which sounds great and everything until you remember that people don’t know what memory is or what it does, let alone how to buy new memory, or how to disassemble a computer, or where the memory goes, or even why more memory can be good for you.
    
    I compare it to fabric crafts because I don’t know shit about them. I know (well, think) fabric is sold in bolts and that’s about it. Hell I don’t even know how much a bolt is, and we haven’t even gotten to the different types of fabrics or ways to utilize them.
    
    The vast majority of people don’t want a 3d printer hobby, they just want to 3d print stuff. And the Bambu printers are as close to that as I’ve seen so far.
    
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  - Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    False dichotomy. There are plenty of printers that are pro-sumer and also have great documentation and are easy to use and maintain.
    
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  - SoulWager@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Open source is a major boon for process automation in a print farm. I also wouldn’t trust ANY cloud platform with anything remotely sensitive, like product development prototypes.
    
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racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Just wondering, is this “trend” you’re talking about just the Bambulab situation, or are other manufacturers doing the same? I’m not super up to date on 3d printing news, so not sure if i missed more such changes.

If it’s the bambulab situation, it’s not entirely unexpected. When they started people were already worried about exactly this seeing how closed their ecosystem is. Then again, they did make a printer that just works better than the competition, and that’s in the end what attracts users.

Personally i have diy 3d printers that i built myself, really happy with them, but for people who just want to print things, many other filament printers are just too annoying to work with. Not everyone is into diy, and many people just want to make cool stuff and not care about the printer, and bambulab really made the next step towards achieving that.

So if the open source community wants to compete with that, they must make printers that are as user friendly. My diy 3d printers are like running linux. Really great and customizable if you like to work on 3d printers, and really reliable now i as an expert built & tuned them. But most people just want to buy a machine that works, and that’s not these open source printers. And as long as we just focus on making 3d printers for expert diy’ers, we’ll end up in the same place as linux is for OS’es: used by experts and for specific advanced usecases, but beyond reach for the common user that’s then stuck on systems like apple/windows that are more locked down, but actually just work without having to understand how the entire thing works.

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- Ajen@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Besides the others that were mentioned, Prusa is moving away from open source.
  
  hackaday.com/…/with-core-one-prusas-open-source-h…
  
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  - Lutra@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I think there’s some semantic confusion with that article. That’s not what I see. There are literally kits for sale on the Prusa Site to convert your old prusa into a new Core. imho, What the ‘RepRap Open Source folks’ mean is literally every part is sourced from already available parts or can be printed. And I think this is where the article is going. The other Open Source -is Open Ecosystem. Where there may be proprietary pieces (the steel cage), but nothing about it is purposefully closed. Prusa published the full electronic and hardware schematics before the machine was shipping. prusa3d.com/…/open-source-at-prusa-research_23681… This is also ‘Open’. Both are good. Both have valid rationale. But neither is anything like closed source, closed box, only we can touch it companies models.
    
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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Anycubic for example does similar things. The Kobra 3 & Kobra S1 support Network printing only through there “Anycubic Slicer Next”(via Cloud) which is a Orca Slicer Fork only available for MacOS and Windows(Windows seems to be the only up-to-date Version, Mac is broken as far as i know).
  
  Firmware is, as far as i know the so called KobraOS, a Klipper-go fork without a Webfrontend or any way to connect to it through Orca, Cura, Prusa or else.
  
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  - racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Haven’t heard much about that yet, indeed also sounds bad. But it’s anycubic so who cares :p.
    
    But yeah, it’s indeed not the best trend. But it also up to open source to actually compete with this, and not just chase shiny features, but also usability…
    
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- Bronzie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I think you make some good points.
  
  We have a old, self built Creality at work that is modded extensively and I love printing with it, but at home it just wont fly. The missus wants to turn the machine on, send over the G-code and pick up nice things later. There is no point trying to convince her to spend hours and hours learning input shaping, filament drying temperatures or the upsides/downsides of dual gear extruders.
  
  People are pissed at Bambu, and rightfully so, but for home users where the crowd needing pleasing is not super tech-savvy, Bambu is just a great alternative.
  
  I think we need to stop looking at it as Bambu fucking up 3D printing. They are massively increasing the reach of FDM for people who just want stuff to work without putting in the hours, while the rest of us can keep using whatever we want, be it OSS or not.
  Hopefully with the increase in users, the selection of filaments and third party upgrades will increase too.
  
  They are the only reason I was ever allowed to have a 3D printer in the house, which has already opened her up to letting me get a RatRig in the future. You know, because two printers are obviously twice as fast as one (!)
  
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FourWaveforms@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Next time I need a new 3D printer I’m either buying a Prusa or building from a kit. Bambu has nothing I can’t get somewhere else, and I’ll pay extra to have a printer that doesn’t come pre-infected with corporate malware.

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Frostbeard@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Some people want to 3d print for a hobby, while some want 3d printers as a hobby. You are the second type, while out of the box printers are for the first type.

Personally what kept me away from 3d printing my own terrain for miniature wargames is that I don’t have time for another hobby. I just can’t be bothered with endless fiddling with settings, temperatures, speed, and all that. Buy I understand your feelings

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- DerArzt@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m also a builder for tabletop, and if you’re still interested in 3d printing some what take a look at tesin printers. They have different trade-offs than FDM (filament) printers, but mine has been very reliable without any tinkering. It’s really nice for printing stl’s from online (I don’t model anything myself).
  
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craig9@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have a Bambu A1, and yes it really is a great printer. The firmware BS is crossing a line though, and that company will not get another dollar from me though. My next printer will be a Prusa or a Voron.

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fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Voron. Make a Voron.

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- JackFrostNCola@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  “Not sure which 3D printer to buy? Get a Voron you Moron!”
  
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hubobes@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I own a BambuLab A1M as I want a printer that just works. And while yes it is all proprietary they do sell replacement parts for most parts.

While I will not forgive them for their latest moves I am quite happy, I turn it on, load an stl into BambuStudio and let it run without any issues at all.

My next printer will however probably be a prusa as they are Europeans and I love that they keep everything up to the user so far. But I can not deal with anything that is more DIY than a Prusa, it is a tool for my hobby…not the hobby itself.

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LeTak@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
They try to keep it as simple as possible so that really everyone can start printing if they like to. For our luck, we got companies like Prusa and Creality that still allow modifications and have a big community.

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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I would name Sovol as a good and cheap producer. The plain Klipper(or on older Devices Marlin)-Firmware is really nice :) Isnt the Creality-K* Lineup also locked down?
  
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  - cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The K1 has root access and you can use whatever slicer you want. They are probably not the best machines if you want to install plain clipper though.
    
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  - SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not at all. In fact Creality seems quite open for a Chinese company. There’s literally an option on the touch screen menu to enable root access. That gives you full SSH access to everything on the board, no hacks or jailbreaks needed.
    
    The firmware is Klipper based, mostly open but there’s a few binary bits. There are some open source firmware forks but the one thing they haven’t got running yet is the bed pressure sensor so you need to add a separate sensor for leveling and z axis zeroing.
    
    However the stock firmware works great and with some open source scripts you can add whatever you want to it like fluidd/mainsail.
    
    My k1 Max has lived its entire life on a private network segment, only internet access it gets is NTP to set the clock. It’s perfectly fine. I have never registered with Creality cloud nor has the machine tried to force me too. I use orca slicer and feed it the g code and it works great.
    
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  - nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Not really. They were going that way but backpedaled after having it made clear that they’re never going to be BambuLab. I have a K1C. It gives root with an on-screen disclaimer. The only real challenge is that it overwrites everything when updating. It’s Linux though, so, if I spend the time, once I setup my home server, I should be able to automate reloading the config.
    
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- Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Making them shitty, proprietary, and anti-consumer does not make them easier to use.
  
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  - Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’ve been 3d printing for more then a decade and the Bambu printer has been by far the easiest printer I have ever used. It is the one I wel hand to my neice and nephew since it just works more often then not.
    
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Lutra@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
this is what going mainstream looks like. Greedy people see profit and they get in.

greedy people are often sneaky, and they work to take all the can from open and close it in : Apple, Later Redhat

there are tons of Open Open printers out there

Open has a problem - it’s hard to maintain ignorance and get the benefit. It requires work - you can’t just easily trade dollars for someone else’s labor. You have to learn and put things together to really enjoy.

What can you do?

This is hard, almost impossible: Don’t do business with people you suspect or know are cruddy. Even if they say they have what you want.

Learn how to build the printer you want. Hire a good person to learn and do it for you.

Buy a printer from a company that pledges to do right. Even if it costs more.
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ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Btw most would rather read your own writing rather an ai. When my students edit with ai it’s typically pretty obvious and I think it wastes everyone’s time. Also, foreign students frequently write much better than the native English ones at my school, idk why. I bet your writing is better than you think :)

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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I know, i just had issues to put all my thoughts together in a way that it is still readable/understandable so i gave the AI a try. In the end, it didn’t really change that much but gave it some structure and nicer wording.
  
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  - Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    So whatever is most comfortable for you :)
    
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RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If you want to, you can still have a completely open-source printer. You can even build one yourself with some expertise needed. I guess the enshitification is part of the wider audience those manufacturers seek. It wouldn’t be necessary, but it seems this is the way they go.

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Paradox@lemdro.id ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s giving me serious pause when looking at things like the new Bambu printer

I really like my x1c, but I haven’t upgraded it’s firmware yet, and probably never will, because the local features are just too good. I know I can replace a lot of the bambu cloud features with octoanywhere, but I shouldn’t have to

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bassow@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I don’t understand why this is such a big deal. There is no huge open source scene for regular printers. Because it’s a tool, not a hobby. People want a print on paper and move on, not a new hobby. This gatekeeping gotta go: It’s holding 3D printing back. Bambu did for 3D printing what Apple did for mobile phones: They made 3D printing clean, simple and easy. If you want to fiddle around with custom firmware and usability hacks and cobbled together components, power to you. I’ll be over here, actually printing things.

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- 4am@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Can’t wait for the thing I bought and own to suddenly cost $5 a month
  
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- Paradox@lemdro.id ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Fwiw the open source scene literally got started because of a printer
  
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- John@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  For me learning about a product and how it work is empowerment. Having the right to repair and a easily serviceable device is empowerment.
  
  Closing down the software until you don’t even know what the device is doing is gatekeeping.
  
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  - Auli@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Cool and there are things you can do that with even 3d printers have fun tearing it apart and flashing firmware and dialing it in just right all the power to you. Others just want to print.
    
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- jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Lol wut. What’s thingiverse?
  
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Zypp@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I suspect an important angle, at least for Bambu Lab, is AI. That’s why they are selling printers with expensive Lidar units at a competitive price (the X1C). The Lidar data adds a key part to AI training sets: print outcome. They could use this to train more AI models to improve their own products. I believe this is why they are first pushing the firmware update to X1C models.

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czer0_@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I dumped my P1S + 2xAMS for these exact reasons. Printer worked great and got me back into printing after a long break. I was really not impressed with the recent hard slide into walled garden.

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DarkMetatron@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have a Bambu P1S with an AMS after years of using a Ender 3 that was modified to high heavens both on hardware and on firmware level. It is a perfectly fine product and the AMS makes filament changes so much easier, it is a convenience that I personally love. My P1S is running in LAN mode and it works perfectly fine in combination with OrcaSlicer on my Linux machine. No data is send to the Bambu Cloud, everything is local.

Would I like the possibility to have a custom firmware on it? Sure, I always like options. But to be honest: My P1S runs better, smother, faster then my Ender 3 with his many mods and custom firmware ever did.

Is Bambu on my list of manufacturers for another printer purchase? Yes, but near the end after their anti consumer behavior lately.

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