Bambu Lab makes the best 3D printers you can buy for home and commercial use. I own a Bambu X1C w/ AMS myself and love the printer. As a Chinese company, with the founders coming from DJI, I have always been concerned of the company.
Bambu Lab is considered the Apple of 3D printing, despite only being around for a few years. Not only do they claim this spot for revolutionizing the 3D printing industry, they also get it for their walled garden ecosystem. The way you can interact with the printer is largely gated by Bambu Lab software. While there has been a successful fork of their software, that may end soon.
In a recent blog post, Bambu Lab announced a new authorization control system that will gate keep many hardware and software solutions from being able to interact directly with the printer. While they claim this is for security, the real reason is likely much more commercial in nature.
If you update to this firmware, you will lose access to some third party hardware add-ons and software. Most notably, the hugely successful fork of Bambu Slicer, Orca Slicer will be severely limited. SoftFever, the developer of Orca Slicer has asked for an authorization key and was denied.
Bambu Lab has said this functionality will only be limited if you update to the latest firmware and if you don't want to, you don't have to. Then they claim in another post they reserve the right to disable your ability to send jobs to your printer if you don't upgrade to this firmware, effectively bricking the device you paid for.
Which is it? Likely the second option.
The system is already heavily proprietary, and the multi material system uses RFID to detect Bambu filaments so you can change spools without having to do anything. It isn't far fetched to see this same system being used to limit users from being able to use third party filaments sort of how HP limits third party ink cartridges. In fact, there are already signs that Bambu Lab has started a subscription service for their upcoming print farm solution.
At this point, I am deeply concerned about the future of Bambu Lab products, and no longer trust the company. I will continue to use my printer, which I love, but will likely avoid Bambu Lab products in the future unless something happens to drastically change my impression of the company. There have been lots of signs this will be their future over the years, but I wanted to not believe it and them embracing the X1 Plus third party firmware was a very promising sign.
I have always hated how all print jobs were routed through their servers and various other limitations imposed by their proprietary systems. The speed and print quality has always been the main reason I use and love my printer. I honestly hope other companies catch up and start giving them real competition like they did to the established players in the industry just a few years ago.
The 3D printing community is one of the most open and experimental group of users you will find. None of us want to have our hands tied behind our backs with products we purchased with our own money.
At this point, I think Bambu Lab will cave, there is just so much bad press going around about it that it would be suicide to continue this path, but I have lost all faith and trust in the company. I am not sure that will change even if they reverse their decision.
What makes this entire situation worse is their efforts to their attempts to silence and ban users who discuss it in their discord and on Reddit.
What makes this whole situation even more laughable, is how quickly their new "security improvements" were broken. The very same day, before a lot of YouTubers could even get videos out on the situation, the private key was leaked.
The only option to protect your investment and ensure you get the features you paid for when you bought the printer is creating rules in your firewall to disable all Internet traffic to and from the printer.
