this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025

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[BambuLab Blog] - Firmware Update Introducing New Authorization Control System (blog.bambulab.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

60 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As evil as I think Bambu is, that would be suicide.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Stupider things have been done by other stupid corporations.

I wouldn’t be surprised by Bambu if they aren’t planning it already.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Then why implement over the top security and encryption in said RFID tags if it's only for AMS compatibility? The fact they went to so much trouble is writing on the wall that some time in the future they want to try and implement a printer cartridge-esque walled garden where only approved filaments can be used.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Just for the record I looked at how they encrypt and sign the data and it's nothing I would call over the top or particularly troublesome.
Signing data that's used to configure a piece of hardware isn't unreasonable in my book.

It would certainly be better to have a mechanism for custom tags, and better yet the ability for you to trust a filament producers key, but the mechanism they've used for the signing really doesn't say anything to me of note.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Meh, I don't think they're quite foolish enough to go full Juicero, but I won't be updating my firmware.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ngl I'm just never going to update my firmware, unless they force push it without my input. My x1c works fine there's nothing I can see them adding that I need anymore.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

The problem is that their newly sold machines will come with this bullshit preinstalled, so eventually I'm sure your setup will stop being a supported configuration and you'll have to rely entirely on third party tools to feed your printer if you don't already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I love my A1 mini, but if I ever move on to a bigger machine this will make me think twice about sticking with BambuLab.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Luckily they have a procedure for enabling third party firmware, and the third party firmware (X1Plus) doesn't have to include this crap.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

They have it for now. I expect that procedure will be removed within 5 years.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I do hope this backfires on them considerably.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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...

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Good to know, that's another one that won't ever make the recommendation list then

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I tell a lie. You can print from USB sticks, but not from a computer via USB.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Nothing swapping the main board out won't fix

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I didn't know that was a thing...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

That made it so much easier when I eventually will upgrade my printer... should have gone with Prusa in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Louis Rossman just dropped a rant about this: https://youtu.be/aIyaDD8onIE

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Open source or no sauce from me to this company.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I knew I should have bought the Qidi X-Smart3 instead of the A1 Mini.......

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Damn where all the Bambu fan boys at now?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Ugh, ive been eyeing them for a first printer but the back-asswards network stuff kept me away (seriously? No ethernet for a large stationary device?). Are there any printers like Bambu (ie, plug and Play) that arent internet-of-shit cloud-only abandonware?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Prusa!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If only their prices matched the quality and performance of their products. They are overpriced for the performance and quality you get in today's market. The edge they once had on competitors has been completely lost.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If you only consider the print performance, sure. But the point here is that you pay a hidden fee when going with more locked down solutions, and you should factor that into your assessment of the price as well. You might still end up with the same conclusion, but for me, avoiding enshitification traps is worth a lot more than a penny.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (10 children)

Ooh, that XL is certainly interesting. The main thing i want to design/print would be custom tool trays, so fairly shallow objects but wider and longer than the average 3d printers ive seen will handle. Things roughly laptop sized i can easily slide into my backpack

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Love my Prusa XL. Bought the single head and have been having fun with it. Bought a second head for my Christmas present and have been playing with two color prints.

Printed some colorful lizards for my mom.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

While I fully support that comment, their cloud printing thing also is annoying - I'd rather they spend effort on proper lan printing.

On my mini I'm still using octoprint (even though I've added a network card), on my mk4s I'm using the local connection for uploading - but I got the GPIO board, so once I have time that should enable me to get better monitoring working again. But it all still feels kludgy - something like enabling octoprint control via network instead of USB for the mk4 would be way nicer.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Qidi.

I've owned two and they've been very nearly completely turn-key (the OG X-Plus) and absolutely completely turn-key (my current X-Max 3). Their bigger machines are fully enclosed and have active chamber heaters to manage pain in the ass materials like ABS and ASA, and even polycarbonate.

They have their "own" slicer but it's just a mildly breathed upon fork of Prusaslicer with built in presents and which has all the plugins for remotely administering their machines already included. You can use stock Prusaslicer, Cura, or Orca with them if you prefer. The boards just run Klipper. You have terminal access, and you can hack the machine however you want if that's your jam.

Their upcoming gen 4 machines promise compatibility with an AMS-like "Qidi box" filament exchanger system, although the details of that remain unspecified at the moment. If you want multimaterial now they have a true dual extruder model also.

As of yet, there's no lockdown, no cloud bullshit (to be fair they do now have some kind of cloud bullshit platform available, but it's entirely optional and I've never touched it or even bothered to look at it), nothing proprietary, and so far there have been no rug-pulls on any of the above.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

A friend of mine was gifted an X-Smart 3, cool little machine. I've been tutoring himb on printing, then the other day he texted me, distraught, that the machine had broken down, displaying a Klipper serial error; told him not to worry, we'd fix it... He didn't really believe me, but once there I just ssh'd into it from his computer (thank God Windows has PowerShell nowadays), found out that his printer.cfg had been zeroed! I extracted a copy from an update file, used scp to transfer it, et voilà, back in business.

Now, it's disappointing that this happened at all, but the openness of the device allowed for a quick repair that wouldn't have been possible otherwise.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My Ender 3 V3 SE is happily printing ABS currently with not much of a chamber, more two lack tables with some printed parts and some half finished walls. Yet to print ASA but I'm confident my jank is upto it.

Admittedly the AMS made me interested, I'll have to look over Qidi's range.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

When I got my current printer I considered a Mini… thankfully it was too bulky to replace the MonoPrice Select Mini, and I ended up replacing that and the Ender 3 with a Sovol SV07 Plus. Looks like it was a lucky choice!

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