Seems like Bambu Lab has a new trick for reducing waste. Rather than a toolchanger like the Prusa XL or the Snapmaker, they’re swapping just the nozzle. As far as I can tell from the video, the printer still has a second nozzle which won’t swap in and out, meaning a print can be run with 7 nozzles (six from the Vortek system, plus the second nozzle in the toolhead). So if you’re using 7 or fewer filaments, no pooping is necessary.
The cool bit here is that they’re using wireless chips in the nozzles to communicate the thermistor data to the printer, so no pin-based connections are needed.
Pretty cool solution, I think. I assume you’d still need a prime tower, but that’s a small amount of waste if they’re eliminating poop from purging the nozzles.
I’m curious to see how they’ll handle calibration, surely the nozzles aren’t all going to be perfectly aligned all the time.
Snapmaker beat them to it with a much simpler design and it does not have the mechanical connector issue they’re trying to insinuate they have simply because the toolheads are always connected.
Also Bambu has completely lost all trust from everyone by blatantly taking the steps to make it possible for them to force anti-consumer features on their printers down the road through mandatory updates which the printer will refuse to work without. Even if this turns out to be the best system ever, I don’t want anything to do with a printer that must always be online to work and that can one day be suddenly enshittified with something like mandatory subscription fees or filament DRM bullshit.
I definitely wouldn’t say they’ve lost all trust in everyone. Bambu has brought all kinds of innovation to the space as well as spearheaded the whole making it an appliance that just works which brought 3d printing more mainstream than ever. We have a lot to thank Bambu engineers for I’d say.
Nonetheless they deserve to be constantly ridiculed for their closed ecosystem contrary to reprap ethos
A level headed take on Bambu identifying positives and negatives? I must be reading the wrong community.
A1 mini was my first printer and it just worked. It made my foray into 3d printing smooth and enjoyable. I keep it offline now and I’ve registered complaints with Bambu about them walling off their garden. I will unlikely be buying another Bambu machine, but I like the one I’ve got.
Yep, for me my first printer was a Prusa MK3S+. At the time it was definitely the sort of experience you just described, and I jumped on the Prusa Enclosure upgrade to enable ABS. But there were some maintenance frustrations nevertheless that prompted me to get a backup printer.
I went with an Ender 3 V2, and my god that gave me the whole “literally doesn’t work out of the box, buy this mandatory set of aftermarket upgrades and enjoy your continuous maintenance trap” experience.
Never again. I sold that and grabbed an X1C which became my main printer with the Prusa as the backup.
I totally appreciate the value of open source; Linux built my career and I’ve lived and breathed it and the OSS community for the better part of two decades. I also totally appreciate and respect folks who take joy in tinkering with and maintaining their hardware. I’m just not that guy anymore and I’ve transitioned into the “wanting things to just work” phase for most things.
To me, if we can have both closed source options and open source options competing and each surviving — to me similar to say MacOS and Linux — then everyone can benefit; there’s a solution for everyone.
Yep. Bambu has done a lot for the perception of 3D printing in the main stream. They offer good hardware with ease of use that didn’t exist until they appeared. And at a decent price for casual hobbyists/users whether the pure haters like it or not.
***Full disclosure: I own a Mini with AMS Lite and a Prusa Mk3s. My take on Bambu is, “Good hardware with not always very good software and sketchy business practices.” YMMV
They haven’t lost faith. The X1C was the first printer I could recommend to a normal person. And they love it could they have used some printer before no they involved to much tinkering.
No they haven’t. They’ve lost trust from a lot of the hobbyist community, sure, but they’ve tapped a whole new market. And at the risk of having to hand in my hobbyist badge, the slippery slope argument that closed firmware means they’ll someday require DRM for filament is nonsensical. They know what happens to companies who pull that. And they don’t need it anyway. Plenty of people will exclusively buy their filament anyway since it’s the same company that made their printer. From a business perspective they stand to lose far more than they gain locking down filaments.
Don’t get me wrong, the firmware situation is infuriating. And for those who prefer the 3D printer side of the hobby over the 3D printing side, it’s a non-starter. But the field has expanded and most users aren’t power users now.
I would have to disagree, it’s about the possibility to run my printer using whichever slicer I want - and I prefer orcaslicer to the bambulab offering. Having to jump through hoops and reduced functionality since the firmware update was the reason I took the printers offline and never upgraded. Works faster through LAN as well…
You just touched on why the OC is wrong. You can use it via LAN only, and there’s no way they can disable that. You can also downgrade the firmware. While some of their actions have been concerning, and people should keep their eye on future developments, there’s no need for alarmism.
I’m still stuck with an old firmware. And if I want lan mode with the new firmware I would have to use another app and lose the printing status and direct controls in orca slicer. So if they add fixes and improvements (new build plates, new filaments) I’m still stuck on an old version. That’s not alarmism, that’s a fact.
I’m not sure about new build plates, but new filaments can absolutely be added within a slicer, including the BL slicer.
I’d also be really interested to see if a project like the X1 custom firmware is extended to more devices.
Not sure that project seems dead. I would like if they did an H2D version though.
Yes I’m sure they can. I’m talking more about the selection of the loaded material on the printer itself. Bambulab updated the list through firmware updates and so the slicer already loads the correct profile. It would be of course possible to load any material and set the correct profile in the slicer - but again it’s jumping through hoops.
Isn’t that literally something BambuLab improved upon over every other printer though?
Edit: Also, you totally can on a firmware that works LAN-only before the changes, it’s like the last version before them, at least for the A1-series.
I bought tpu for ams. I cannot use it with the ams unless I upgrade the firmware because the stock one doesn’t let me use tpu with ams.
Build plates are just sheet steel with a coating. And Bambu filament is just Sunlu with an RFID tag that isn’t worth the extra cost.
Extra cost? Where are you getting filament? In my country it is very competitively priced at least the refill filament. Even Amazon is maybe a buck cheaper.
I’m not hung up on any one brand. I’ve been doing this long enough to know I can make any cheap filament print well. I watch for sales and I can easily save $5 or more per kilo without needing to buy 10 or more kilos at time. I have 4 kilos of AnyCubic filament I just payed $10 per kilo for. So, yes Bambu filament costs a lot more for no better quality.
Unlike many here, I’m super big on inventory management. Storing large amounts of materials that I have no real immediate use for costs money. Money I can use elsewhere to better effect. Right now, discounting the spools hanging for my Bambu Mini and Prusa Mk3s, I have 6 kilos of new unopened and a few partials that are getting used up.
Yes and no. It‘s about being able to select Special Materials from the Printer After loading to be Synced with the slicer. Happened when they extended the materials range.
2 mouse clicks and I can tell the slicer what filament and color is where on my AMS lite. If you are running a print farm and swapping filaments constantly, that’s maybe one thing. But I have 2 printers, only one of which is a Bambu. And the one spool of Bambu filament I bought demonstrated very clearly to me that the RFID tag is not worth any money to me.
Good for you! Everyone is different. It’s nice to be able to sync the filament I set when loading it to the AMS. That isn’t possible with the updated firmware if I use anything other than Bambu Studio. That’s why I haven’t updated and thus have missed out for instance on the TPU for AMS as my current firmware refuses to let me print TPU from the AMS period.
I don’t think one can reasonably defend a company taking away options from users that have already bought the product. What bothers me is the reason they used was demonstrated to be complete BS.
I have to agree. I’m not happy about anything getting locked down, but what they’ve done for the industry in just a few years is absolutely insane.
I was (and still am) quite glad to dump my old bed slinger that I’d spent the previous three years tinkering with and upgrading because despite all the time and effort spent on it, it was still slow and unreliable. With my X1C, I literally don’t even bother checking my prints until it’s time to unload because after 14 months of almost daily use, I can count the number of failed prints on one hand and it prints so well (plus AMS) that I’ve been able to sell prints and recoup everything I paid for the thing.
Even if the company goes to shit in 5-10 years it doesnt matter because they’ve raised the bar quite drastically and everyone else is taking inspiration from it. I can buy a new printer in 2035 from whatever company is consumer friendly at that point, but for now I’m enjoying the hell out of this thing. Parts are cheap, filament is cheap (and not restricted), prints are quality and quick, and it’s always ready to go.
I’ve had all of that from day one with a MK3S+. It just works. I don’t even think about it. Plus your using a slicer that is derived from what I paid for while your money does nothing for me. Adrian Bowyer and RepRap built everything. It would have started in the 1990s if proprietary shit companies like stratasys did not exist. Nothing good comes from selling your right to autonomy and citizenship by inference. The world is falling apart right now because of this exact issue of a lack of big picture ethics. Every decision has consequences. You are either part of the problem or part of the solution. I’m a real liberal. You have a right to be wrong, but I’m still going to call stupid stupid.
I still have my Mk3s too. But, there was a a harder learning curve to getting a quality print from that Mk3s than there is to the Mini/AMS combo I have next to it. And casuals want that ease of use. Just unbox, plug it in hang a spool of Bambu branded filament with RFID then slice and print.
Like it or not, few people want to spent time running calibration models and temp towers. Raging against the sea is a losing battle.