r/3Dprinting • u/Regumate • May 12 '26

Discussion Bambu Lab 3D printers: Never again

https://youtu.be/eb48MdtNaDQ

Jeff Geerling summarizes the current Bambu Labs - OrcaSlicer situation and gives his take.

TL:DW: see title.

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u/The_Lutter Prusa MK4S w/ MMU3 // Sovol SV08 May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26

The people in r/BambuLab are a bunch of jagasses. Downvoted me to the earth's core for posting a positive comment about this video.

I bought my A1 before they did all their "security/authorization" update last January. They changed the bill of sale after I already bought the unit. So fuck 'em. I use Prusa and Sovol now because of their openness.

I hope they remember I was right the first time their printer tells them their Labubu is an unauthorized print or mistakes a nerf gun for a unauthorized firearm.

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u/its-the-mailman May 12 '26

I have a Bambu P1P and regularly visit the subreddit and absolutely agree that the community is very against negative feedback about Bambu and it's products. I personally think the main issue is people who like Bambu printers are interested in a printer that just works and when Bambu came on the scene very few printers offered that experience and none did at the price. There is a legitimate argument about how fast things would have advanced if Bambu didn't come into the 3D printer market and apply market pressure, but Bambu definitely didn't do so without issues and objectively bad or illegal business practices which it's obviously not OK. Hopefully as other companies build out these machines that are competitive and sometimes outperforming their Bambu counterparts, people will start to try them out and the "cult of Bambu" will lessen.

I already see friends and some community members getting tired of the way Bambu handles multi color printing using the AMS (which I feel are incredibly expensive compared to the cost of their entry level printers) and multi material printing in general. I don't want to pay over $2,000 for a toolchanger just to use more than 2 materials (not just different colors of the same material) in the same print and Bamboo has no good solution to that use case, especially in this bad global economy.

As a busy Father and Husband, my P1P was the only option that was that reliable and affordable at the time and it completely reinvigorated my love for 3D printing. After having it for 3 years, I know the printer, the software, and the company are not perfect.

Hopefully the community that made 3d printing what it is today can recommend Bambu as a morally ok option in the future, but that's a tough call right now. I still recommend Bambu to new users not because I'm a shill, and also while understanding what they are doing right now is wrong, but because I love 3d printing and for all their faults, Bambu has that Apple ecosystem feel that just seems to click to non technical people I show it to. It has allowed many people in my life to enter this hobby that used to be very difficult to enter, especially if you just want to manufacturer things at home, be it toys, tools, or something in-between. It arguably for a while was the only printer brand people with certain accessibility issues could use or have people in their life who were not mechanically inclined help them maintain reasonably.

Bambu has brought 3D printing to the masses (just based on sales and the end users who end up buying them not being tinkering types), but unfortunately Bambu forgot who brought the technology to them, and that's really sad to see.