Really sad to hear this. I was very hopeful that AMS and lidar features would develop into dramatic improvements. However, not having a Bambu Labs printer myself left me unaware of some of the sketchy proprietary moves the company was making. All I know about them are promotional materials, and some reviews.
"...all print jobs were routed through their servers..."
Reviewers didn't explain this, and I had no idea.
While the company may cave to the collapse of the market for their products, that this crap even was pulled is a terrible revelation of the intentions of the company to further wall their ecosystem off from other manufacturers and potential synchronies. This is diametrically opposed to the philosophical basis of the market and new developments coming, and is particularly distressing coming from the company that had produced such advances.
Louis Rossmann has noted that tech products that access the internet are increasingly being turned into subscription based markets, rather than sales, with ToS's being revised unilaterally after sales, restricting owners' rights to their equipment. I really had high hopes for multiple printheads to eliminate, or dramatically reduce, the need for purging with the AMS system, and the appearance of lidar to herald the eventual introduction of robotic arms able to locate printheads precisely despite mechanical slop, and perhaps escape the print bed, at least for some materials.
Apparently that will not be forthcoming from Bambu Labs, because it seems like they are intent on maximizing their revenue from existing products, rather than making new technological leaps capitalizing on their prior introduction of AMS and lidar in table top machines. At least the market more broadly has fervent ferment of many brands and will not be reduced to Bambu's attempt to lock down it's products.
Thanks!
This, but another problem is when they decide to stop supporting them and taking their servers offline, now the products are no longer functional. Think of something like a 3D printer, even if it is a free service, once their service goes offline and the 3D printer stops working, you effectively lose your product.
It looks like the new Bambu Connect service has a 1 year certificate, after that it has to be renewed, if their service goes offline, or you decide to block Internet to the device, it effectively becomes a brick.
Yes. I had been strongly considering an X1 Carbon, but am happy to have been forewarned by you to be sad about their lame business practices instead.
https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/bambu's-gaslighting-masterclass-denying:6
I love that he has been covering it. Been fan of Louis. He does a lot for consumer rights.
I'm very disappointed he found it necessary to cover Bambu Labs. Their debut in my awareness was so promising, bringing new ideas to additive manufacturing. They've dispelled a great deal of goodwill that I think was poorly leveraged, but could have been far more emunerative in the industry had they advanced AMS and lidar as I think they could have. Imagine a printer with a dozen or more articulated arms, one for each material (perhaps able to be added in an aftermarket), eliminating purging, and able to attain to high precision via lidar despite the slop inherent to articulated arms. Instead of breaking the rail paradigm and pushing boundaries that need exceeding, they resorted to bambu-zling their customers. SMDH.
As someone who has followed them since the beginning, I am honestly not surprised. They build a ecosystem where they are a tyrant. There was a third party firmware released about a year ago, it came as shock to everyone as no one expected someone to do it or be able to do it. Bambu's kneejerk reaction was to shut them down, but ultimately they worked with them and facilitated an optional firmware that allows you to run custom firmware. This to me was huge, even though the firmware didn't do anything I really cared about, it was a huge foothold for innovation. It was clear though Bambu really didn't want others having any sort of power in their ecosystem.
For me, this makes me very upset. Bambu products are the best in the industry. They did a good job disrupting the entire 3D printing community and force vendors who were fine with being meh to actually start innovating again to even be considered. They did it at a price that was fair and reasonable which made it even more of a big deal.
I was looking forward to their announcement for their next flagship product and was going to buy it without much thought. Now I am not sure I'd ever buy a Bambu product, and I don't think there is another vendor that has a product that matches what I have now. It makes me sad that anything is basically a step down.
Makes me want to make my own, just to one up the lagging market.