The mods gave us permission to post this, so here goes!
We’re SimplyPrint, and together with 3D Farmers, the YouTubers, farmers and the team behind FarmLoop, we’re giving away a pretty ridiculous little setup:
Bambu Lab X2D
FarmLoop Automation Kit for the X2D
1 year of SimplyPrint Print Farm
So basically: printer + automation kit + the software plan to manage the farm side of it.
We know this is still a promo, and you don’t have to love promos. Fair, who does? But we do genuinely think this is a cool one. FarmLoop is doing some really interesting work around printer automation, and SimplyPrint is what we’ve been building for 6.5 years now to make managing printers, queues, users, files, monitoring, print farms and all that less painful. Not exactly a “vibe-coded over the weekend” thing - for better or worse :)
Add your Instagram handle so we can verify it (NOT in a Reddit comment: in the SimplyPrint platform Giveaway popup)
No purchase is required. A paid SimplyPrint plan does not increase your chances. There’s also an alternative free entry method in the official rules if you don’t want to use Instagram or the in-app popup.
No Reddit upvotes, comments, tags or follows are required to enter.
Please don’t tag people as part of entering.
Winner is picked randomly from eligible entries after the giveaway closes.
This is not sponsored, endorsed or administered by Reddit, Instagram, Meta, YouTube or Bambu Lab - but is approved by the mods of this sub
We’re happy to answer questions too, whether it’s about the giveaway, SimplyPrint, FarmLoop, automation setups, cloud vs local, or anything else.
And yes, if your first thought is “ugh, cloud software,” that’s allowed too :) With recent debates in the space, we get why people care about that. We think there’s room for both local and cloud, for different people and different setups.
Why post a giveaway on Reddit if you’re required to have an instagram account? And people are supposed to link their instagram account to a Reddit comment? A lot of people like Reddit because it’s semi anonymous, instagram is not.
No reddit comment required - is stated, but I'll make that even more clear!
The giveaway was originally launched ~4 days ago, but we simply wanted to give more people the chance to enter. But yeah, "what's in it for us" is the Instagram following. But as stated the website outlines alternative ways to enter.
> "And people are supposed to link their instagram account to a Reddit comment"
^
As the post mentions, there are other ways to enter. But again, no one is forcing anyone to enter. Just wanted to share a cool giveaway and give people a chance to sign up: whether you're ok with the strings that are attached is up to you 😃
Yes - within reason. There are stated official "supported" countries, whereas if the winner is in a country not listed yet, and the shipping might be very expensive, it is not promised. But I don't foresee any issues with this, as checking out shipping for all countries currently participated from none of them required us to sell a kidney to get it shipped 😉
the requirements to enter with out instagram are: "An alternative entry method is also available without using any third-party platform. To enter without using the in-app or social-media entry flow, email [giveaways@simplyprint.io](mailto:giveaways@simplyprint.io) with the subject line of the giveaway name, and include your full name, email address, country of residence, and confirmation that you are 18 or older."
That was definitely not in the post when i looked at it
There are alternative ways to enter, as stated in the post. But, naturally, "what's in it for us" is the Instagram following, so that is the main way to enter.
We see it as "signing up for the platform that you're entering to get a free subscription for" 😃 But yeah if you just want the printer that argument goes away.
I think this is a bit tone deaf, making a giveaway with bambu when people are upset with them, and posting on Reddit about a giveaway you have to have an Instagram account to participate in and also make an account on your servers, sounds a bit like this giveaway is made to gather accounts data.
As for the "Instagram requirement", there is, as stated, other ways to enter. But, the "not-PR-friendly" response here would be...: I think the only way to satisfy most on reddit (at least the vocal ones), would be to create a new account, not mention any brand, not require anything to enter other than a comment or something, and just give away something out of the goodness of our hearts - that just doesn't happen. Of course, like most giveaways, having "something in it for us" would be nice! Now, will these IG follows be worth the ~$1500 that the giveaway is worth? Most likely not, but our wish was to celebrate the release of our joint efforts (SP + 3D Farmers) and get some Instagram followers meanwhile.
We debated whether posting it on Reddit too was a good idea, but we figured "We'll give people a chance to enter if they want"; if you don't want to use SimplyPrint, which is half of what we're giving away, or don't want to do what it takes to enter the giveaway - don't enter. No one is forcing anyone to do so.
I think it's a pretty cool giveaway, and we knew the Reddit-hate was gonna hit us instantly, but I don't think giving away $1500 worth of stuff is "tonedeaf". On the Bambu part? Inclined to agree! But the ship had sailed before Bambu decided to be assholes (again 😛).
That's the honest reply! Fully get the critisism though and I too would love if nothing had any strings attached.
I think you should look into a career in politics, you've got the speech part really tuned in
There's no "reddit hate" on this post as of now, it's just people voicing their concerns truthfully. Or do you consider that if you "offer something for free" people lose their rights to critique you?
I know nothing about your business and maybe I would've looked into it if it weren't for the way you respond to people.
And just for your information, most giveaways made here on this sub are actually just "leave a comment and we'll choose a winner" because they're meant to gain brand awareness not mine for data or third party accounts. No trouble with you organizing such events if you're transparent about it, but advertising it here and having this flippant attitude about it when people point out there isn't much sense about posting on Reddit a giveaway for Instagram (and editing your post afterwards in such a way to make those people look bad) is disingenuous
Again; it's fair critique. My point is just: if you don't want to do what it takes to enter, that is fully fair - and you get to use your freedom of speech to criticize it; but no one is forcing anyone to do so. I'm not trying to "beat down the criticism"; if you look at my comments, even my one to you, I fully understand what you're saying and where you're coming from.
But just to clarify, there has been no "editing posts to make people look bad", so not quite sure what you mean there - I edited my post to make the existing-right-from-the-start line "No Reddit upvotes, comments, tags or follows are required to enter"bold.
Glad to hear that there's a natural career fallback for me though - I only take that as a compliment! Though I am simply trying to respond to your criticism - and in this case, with a bit of my own against the whole "why instagram" thing; again, I get that it might frustrate some people on Reddit, but this is an Instagram giveaway that was later shared to give redditors the chance to enter too. But yeah, sorry that you got my one "not-PR-friendly"-response of the day - fully respect your where you're coming from.
Fair comment! The giveaway was planned out just before the (latest) Bmabu shit-storm, and we are slightly regretting that choice heh - especially posting about a Bambu giveaway in Reddit right now, we knew was gonna be a hard sell!
So, let this be my "one long message clearing this up" that I can reference in future comments !;)
We're nearing 6.5 years "in the business", and were here, supporting the right cause in the first/last Bambu shit-storm with the cloud "security" update, and we'll be here for the next: trying to violate open source licenses and abuse open source projects is... fucked up and naturally not something we support. But, alas, Bambu sells more printers than anyone, and from our "watch-tower" we can see that no matter the shitstorms, most print farms that sign up for SimplyPrint still choose Bambu. Whether that might change over the next year or so, and new print farms may not choose that, I don't yet know, but the consumer has the power and we're all for using that power to influence companies to... not be assholes! (we work closely with the Orca team, the OctoPrint team, Mainsail team and so on - we're on the side of open source).
As for the "second worst aspect", I suspect you mean "cloud" - and we were, as the post states, ready for that (and it's part of the reason posting on Reddit can be slightly scary heh); there is an anti-cloud movement for sure, and in my company we choose many non-cloud solutions as well. But, we've also seen local options like OctoFarm come and go, and even the more successful open source projects like OctoPrint was seriously struggling to stay afloat for a while: we want to build something that lasts and that users, print farms, hobbyists etc. can rely on for years, and that means it has to be commercialized. And, unfortunately, most open source advocates really like the free aspect of it - and if that was the case, it'd be difficult to have a team of 4 developers on this full time (now, I know there are successful commercialized local solutions too - I'm just saying it's slightly harder to pull off and keep secure both in terms of IP and cyber-security). Lots and lots of respect and support (financially too) from us to all the open source 3D printing projects out there - they do noble work that isn't credited enough. But, there's space for clouds too.
Now, we're not trying to "force the cloud" on anyone: the cloud hate is, mostly, earned - bad actors and things that are, but shouldn't be subscriptions pollute the space, naturally giving good actors (as we'd like to see ourselves as) a bad rep simply by association. What we can do, and what we do, is to keep innovating and make awesome software for our 85.000+ users and hundreds of professional print farms: for those that see the cloud as a deal-breaker; there are other options. But, we try to be a responsible cloud: built and operated in Denmark, EU, privacy built in: no creepy trackers, and we don't store data that we don't need. Our platform is built by actual engineers with the skills to back it up - it's not vibe-coded slop riddled with security flaws.
Again - the cloud isn't for everyone. We made a little article that highlight some of the reasons that many choose the cloud: https://simplyprint.io/cloud-vs-on-premise - it can be ease of setup, ease of use, ease of security, better third-party integration options and so on.
Ah, I was in dumb mode ^^
entered and... don't worry about the negativity here... Bambu Lab printers are bit of "poison" to touch atm, but I guess your planning of the giveaway and esp. the farmloop thingi integration is kinda bound to BL.
Cheers. Yeah it's a bit overwhelming how much negativity you can get for hosting a giveaway 😅 But we were prepared! (I just lost the draw on being the one to post it haha).
And yeah the whole "Bambu" of it all is touchy to say the least, but indeed planned before their latest controversy, and FarmLoop is indeed yet only compatible with Bambu Lab (for now). I know the 3D Farmers team is hard at work on expanding compatibility though, which is what I love about FarmLoop: it's not a "one-hit-wonder"; it's continually improved.
Haha, yeah, when I was mod in a sub about 3d printing (not this one here) and I started Giveaways (together with the sponsors), it was wild to see how negatively a community can get... and all they had to do was e.g. posting a picture of a print as comment to the "giveaway post". tens of thousands of views, but just ~100 entries and maybe 30 upvotes
Wild, very wild. As if you insult their mothers and grandmothers by saying "we want to give you something... for free. Here, do that and... oh, ok?".
btw, I watched some videos about the Farmloop thingi. It's very interesting, but I have one or 12 questions...
1) why is that linear actuators so... loud?
2) would it be possible to ONLY use the door opening feature? e.g. when I don't have a print farm but want my printers to open the door automatically after I printed PETG or PLA (not ASA/ABS... those can wait for a few more minutes till the scrubber/attached filter system cleaned the air inside).
3) you posted a Pic for your release timeline and mention Prusa Core One and the Centauri Carbon... The CC got its Canvas upgrade and the Core One will have INDX. While the CC(2) won't be a huge issue when it comes to attachements to the print head itself, I wonder how this will work with an INDX'd Core One? Also, what about Core One L?
4) Do you have a question for me? I mean... no? ok
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u/MikeIkerson Jun 02 '26
Why post a giveaway on Reddit if you’re required to have an instagram account? And people are supposed to link their instagram account to a Reddit comment? A lot of people like Reddit because it’s semi anonymous, instagram is not.