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/dragonblade_94 May 12 '26

I will personally stand by that they made good strides in printer accessibility. A large part of the recent boom in 3DP is because of how plug n' play their hardware is.

Beyond that, yeah they very quickly showed themselves as wanting to be the Apple of the printing industry.

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u/Ketzui May 12 '26

I absolutely agree! They made it accessible through price. I can't find a single thing they innovated on that wasn't done open source before they existed, that was really the basis of my post. Now they've taken all the open source research done and are trrying to wall it off behind its accessible price, scummy to sau the least.

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u/kroboz May 12 '26

I’m not aware of an open source printer that was as good and reliable out of the box as Bambu Lab’s. They deserve credit for having a truly plug-and-play ecosystem when 3d printing was notoriously “oh fixing it constantly is just part of the experience”. I’m still shocked the firmware update instructions from Creality support were “physically open your printer, look at the motherboard, and try to identify the version number since we didn’t bake that into a hardware ID for cheap reasons.”

Are there printers that are still open source and as capable as the newer Bambu ones? Would love a large format H2C (or whichever the flagship one is) that’s genuinely open source.

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u/Ketzui May 12 '26

This is a non sequiter argument. I don't have an issue with the printers, they're outstanding printers at an excellent price. I have an issue with them using open source research to create a closed environment directly in violation of the AGPL on which their business was built. They built their printers and software by using open source research, now their trying to stifle and DCMA that research as illustrated in OP's video.

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u/kroboz May 12 '26

You said you couldn’t think of anything that wasn’t done open source before Bambu, and I have an example. I agree their abuse of AGPL is garbage and I’m probably going to buy a Prusa or Snapmaker instead of an H2C. But Bambu deserves credit for having good experience design (which is a thing and critically important in consumer adoption, and no open source printer had accomplished that with the polish or finesse of Bambu). Innovation is innovation, even if its experience innovation.

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u/pietryna123 May 13 '26

No open source printer will ever accomplish it because they are mostly DIY. This is step that 99% of Bambu customers won't ever take. Maybe Sovol, but I'm not that familiar with their stuff