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Is this the reverse "you wouldn't download a car"?

I always put printers (2d and 3d) behind a firewall so they cannot reach the internet. This prevents auto-updates and surprises like disappearing functionality.

> This isn't actually possible

This is only true due to a firmware they pushed last year. It's an artificial limit.

There's no reason at all a local client couldn't just talk to a local printer without any cloud.

Every problem BambuLabs have here is self-inflicted. They could allow simultaneous cloud and local queue management with or without authentication.

Ok, so as a heavy user of Bambu printers:

> I didn't understand what people wanted here

Great: very few people care enough to actually try to understand! This is very much appreciated.

> What users want is to "have their cake and eat it too;" they want the local token authentication _and_ the cloud authentication enabled at the same time

No.

What I want is to use any slicer software (specifically OrcaSlicer, which is really good) with Bambu printers without losing functionality.

What most people who do not use 3d printing regularly do not understand is that there is more to 3d printing than just throwing a sliced file over the wall. For example, before I slice, I sync information from the printer so that the list of filaments I have in the slicer reflects what is actually in the printer. This sounds silly to people who imagine a printer with a single spool of filament loaded, but when you have multiple printers, each one with an AMS unit housing 4 spools, this becomes essential.

Please also remember that many people have printers in remote locations (workshop). "LAN mode" is a non-starter unless you set up a VPN.

I also want to monitor my prints using my phone, which is what Bambu Lab sold me: it is part of the functionality of the printer. I do not want to lose that functionality.

In other words, "LAN/Developer Mode" is NOT EQUIVALENT to "Cloud" mode (which used to work well with OrcaSlicer until Bambu killed it).

On our Bambu H2D Pro printers at work, we can print in cloud mode and LAN mode at the same time. Bambu literally has this firmware built but they reserve it for “pro” users. The other thing pro users can do is disable cloud without any developer mode stuff. Of course we do this.

Excellent machines by the way, primarily let down by the proprietary binary Bambu forces users to use for LAN mode which is extremely buggy and slow on Linux, and entirely technically unnecessary.

> This looks to be a clone of the prior state of the repository that caused all the Bambu drama earlier this week.

It looks like it might be a clone, but the git history is squashed for some reason.

I would recommend against installing this unless/until someone can do an audit to figure out which commit it was forked from and what the changes are.

Or better yet, find one of any of the other copies of the repository that don't have their git history squashed.

This looks like someone's attempt to capitalize on the drama to bring attention to their foundation (?) but losing git history is not a good thing for code provenance or security.

I'm also trying to get my head around this, as an interested-but-not-directly-involved observer.

> What users want is to "have their cake and eat it too;" they want the local token authentication _and_ the cloud authentication enabled at the same time. This isn't actually possible, so this plugin approximates it by emulating the interface to the cloud authentication to make the "Bambu Network" cloud RPC calls from a local slicer (one of these calls is a local_print call, so ostensibly this allows you to send prints without running them through the cloud, although with all of the online functionality still enabled and required, this seems like a pretty brave thing to trust).

AIUI Bamba has made cloud access all or nothing: you either use local mode, with local slicing, and no cloud feature access at all, or you use cloud mode, with cloud slicing and access to all of the cloud features.

Can anyone explain what the cloud features that people want to retain are? Is it just app control of the printer, and print monitoring? Or are there other things to miss out on?

There is some context missing, which this video [0] explains.

tl;dr: The original developer does not (or cannot) go into legal battle with Bambu Lab, so Louis Rossmann's project picked up the fight and hosts the (allegedly) troublesome code on their organization. As they have more financial resources, they look forward to the C&D letter.

The point he has (and I agree with that): The original developer is using the un-modified AGPL-code to talk to the cloud API. Bambu Lab states that the modified client pretends to be a Bambu lab client. But in fact, the modified client just uses the code as-is, which is perfectly fine from a AGPL perspective. From my non-lawyer point of view: If Bambu Lab would have made the User Agent a configurable variable, which gets set by some configuration files from outside the code, that get bundled with the binary version, but not the source code, they wouldn't have this leverage.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jhRqgHxEP8

Personally I'd be fine with the LAN mode assuming I don't have to use their cloud even once.

You're missing two things from the whole picture: 1. Cloud mode works without local network access, so their server is involved in the transit of the data to the printer. This is pretty minor, but still within their rights to preserve. 2. For printing from the app, they actually run the computationally expensive slicing algorithm on their servers, so this is totally reasonable to protect.

Just to confirm so I don't break anything accidentally, I currently have the app version where Bambu Studio is how I send prints to my Bambu P1S and I can look through its camera and see what filament is where and so on, but I also have the token that Home Assistant uses to watch the printer and its camera etc.

This isn't the thing you're talking about. There's a mode where I can send prints directly over the network which disables Bambu Studio, I assume?

> where the device displays a token and you put it into your app.

This sounds really unpleasant to use. Maybe users just want a better UX for the local mode?

> What users want...

Take a step back. What users want is to be able to use the machine they bought the way they want. The outrage is because Bambu are doing a bait-and-switch: selling an autonomous 3D printer, but switching to a 3D printing service. Enshittification pure and simple.

Why should I have to send all my prints to Bambu when the printer is sitting right next to me? Why do I have to choose between being able to stop my printer remotely or Bambu not tracking my every move, when it's trivial to have both?

> clients can send prints locally

Using an AGPL violating mystery meat binary plugin that you run on your host, which potentially compromises any airgap you put around your printer (it attempts to connect to bambu servers, or did last time I checked it) and potentially your entire host.

> (...) I don't see the current system as particularly bad and find the appetite to restore "untrustworthy" cloud functionality a bit amusing.

This is a very dubious opinion to hold. Taking your claim about local mode at face value, there is absolutely no reason to disable monitoring when working on LAN mode. You need to go way out of your way to implement that restriction so that it works differently when the thing phones home or not. You are free to criticize implementation decisions that you feel make it "untrustworthy" but those are trivial to address if you think about it.

I really recommend you to reassess your whole philosophical stance on having corporations prevent you from using what you bought and paid for.

Found the corpo cuck

> I'm not sure why their entire domain has been excluded from archive.org

Because they have a track record of altering their website, gaslighting the community, and then getting caught through archive.org so they simply blocked it, not realizing that other archives exist and then getting caught again.

They tried to alter their warranty terms and got caught. They altered their ToS which would allow them to block prints until the printer firmware was updated. When the community got upset, they not only backpedaled but altered the associated blog post and accused everyone of spreading baseless misinformation because "it's clearly explained in this [edited, backdated] article".

That's precisely the article you linked to. See the original version:

http://archive.today/2025.01.16-173123/https://blog.bambulab...

>I'm not sure why their entire domain has been excluded from archive.org

Think about why they'd make such a request to archive.org.

> whether users can keep using hardware they already own without depending on a vendor cloud path.

That’s a complete misunderstanding of the current state of affairs. Bambu didn’t take away local network support, and you can use any Bambu printer without any cloud or internet connection.

What you can’t do is use a 3rd party slicer with their cloud servers…

That’s a vibe coded AI slop website if I’ve ever seen one. It even has a careers page that they didn’t try to edit out.

There’s basically no information there. Is this just a copy of the other GitHub repo that was removed and someone is trying to rebrand it as their own? Or did they do some different work?

Synology works with any hard drive. I bought a new unit and installed WD drives in it. No issues.

Wild speculation here obviously, but it could be a regulation play--there's a lot of potential legislation that would regulate what you can legally 3D print, which would warrant a system to be the age-verification equivalent for 3D printing.

I've wondered the same thing because lately I've noticed a bunch of consumer companies forcing cloud-required models where it's not necessary and many/most users have no need for whatever features cloud connectivity may provide. Yet the companies keep insisting on it even when there's significant user blow back and bad brand PR. When they even bother to comment on "why", the answers never make much sense.

When it's companies based in the U.S. or EU, like Chamberlain / LiftMaster garage door openers, it's pretty obvious they plan to monetize some cloud services subscription for upgraded features beyond the free basic tier as well as probably selling consumer data.

However, the China-based companies like Bambu Lab (and many others) are more puzzling because meaningful ongoing subscription revenue seems unlikely. Especially in the case of lower-end consumer tech peripherals where the companies usually invest as little as possible in their websites, ongoing feature updates or direct end-user support. Which makes no sense if they really aspire to build long-term subscription revenue. Here's my theory: the Chinese government is quietly compelling them to require cloud connections to China-based data centers as a long-term strategy.

I'm not even saying the companies are some direct arm of the Chinese government or planting nefarious firmware. I think that's too likely to be caught if done at mass scale and it's not even necessary. As long as the cloud servers are in Chinese data centers, the Chinese government can get consumer IP addresses and usage data just from passive packet sniffing and if things turn icy with some foreign countries, they can cause a lot of turmoil simply by selectively blocking packets at the firewall to brick millions of consumer devices.

I know it maybe sounds paranoid and, to be clear, I'm not claiming Bambu Labs specifically is doing this. I actually came up with this theory before I ever heard of Bambu Labs because I have a lot of inexpensive Chinese home automation devices and was surprised by their bizarre insistence on forcing cloud connectivity despite there being no apparent business model incentive and these smaller-scale Shenzen hardware companies showing zero enthusiasm for making a real business out of cloud services. Their cloud implementations are almost invariably the bare minimum possible and seem woefully underfunded. After all, for a low-margin hardware peripheral, every dollar spent running a no-revenue cloud after the sale is pure overhead in a business that live or dies by pennies. It's almost like requiring a cloud connection is an export tax the company is paying just to be left alone to sell their hardware overseas.

For home automation gear, cloud-connectivity is a non-starter in my book. In some cases, it's literally built into our walls, so I only buy devices which will work on a local-only subnet or on which I can install open source firmware like Tasmota or ESPHome.

Probably regulations, there are a few states trying to make it illegal for felons to own 3D printers by EOY. These things are about to get regulated like firearms, which is wild.

Bambu had any credibility to lose? Isn't this behavior exactly what was expected from them?

People just ignored it because, shiny!

Prusa printer are really good. Well at least a few month after the first release :D They tend to release banana products that ripe at the customers.

But for example I had some problems with my linear rods, talked to support for just a few minutes and 2 days later I had replacement parts at my door. This was a few years back though.

Also they give firmware updates, and even hardware upgrade for years! This IS really nice and I'm not sure any other printer manufacturer that sells to private people does this.

Yes, your upfront price is a bit higher. I say it's worth it.

I got a second hand Prusa Mk3s about a year ago as my first printer, around 300 € perhaps. I'm still enjoying it a lot, even though I'm now eyeing one of their upcoming (more expensive) models.

I think it depends mostly on how you expect to use it. There may be alternatives that give you perfect prints with minimal fuzz. But for me it was great to have a machine I dare play around with. Like getting a tractor before a race car :)

I've only had one Prusa printer, a MINI+ and it's been an absolute workhorse and easy to repair using the official instructions (I assembled my unit myself and pulled a zip-tie too tight, which caused the part cooling fan cable to break). You do pay a premium. I, personally, also found PrusaSlicer to have better presets and usability than OrcaSlicer or it's forks.

it honestly depends on your budget. prusa is definitely overpriced for what you get. but, i bought one anyway specifically because of their stance on OSS, and this kind of bullshit the bambu is pulling. even though bambu objectively has a better or at least equal product for significantly less money.

Presumably the original dev that implemented the changes for this functionality that pulled the repo does not want to be associated so some level of squashing was required but yeah, the whole history was maybe a bit silly.

People want the option.

There are many reasons one might prefer OrcaSlicer over Bambu Studio. One might be perfectly fine using Bambu's cloud services while preferring OrcaSlicer for different reasons; this is for those people.

Others might not want to use Bambu's cloud services at all; OrcaSlicer as it currently exists is fine for them.

People want remote access to their printers, a feature which seems to be tied to Bambu servers.

Even with an Ender3 many, including myself, would connect it to a raspberryPi with octoprint to be able to send prints over the network. The SD card flow gets very tedious very quickly.

I think people like having an option for remote over the network communication. The cloud is not technically required for that. Bambu made it required for no good reason.

I can imagine not having to do the “save to sd card, eject, put in printer, fiddle with the printers crappy ui to select the print” flow might be attractive to some. Find the model you want in the web, click “send to printer”, done.

I don’t mind the sd card thing, also happy with my bottom of the barrel ender 3.

I have an Ender 3 too. And I have a Bambu machine - that I leave offline and use via microSD card as the Ender got me used to.

I get it. The convenience of networking - when it works FOR the customer - is great.

But networking controlled by corporations is a path to enshittification.

Good joke if you think more than 1% of their customer base will care about that.

Bambu is not (never has been?) targeting 3D printing hobbyist but everyday people; and for them cost/reliability is more important than running your custom slicer. Until there is a serious competitor that has a polished and cheap printer, Bambu can alienate all of the open source community and still be fine.

As long as 3d printers are less than 50% harder to use than normal printers, they're dimensionally easier per capita.

Incidentally, almost all color 2D printers insert serial number tracing artifacts, and many 2D scanners and photo editing software prevent manipulation of images containing either EURion constellation circles or Counterfeit Deterrence System patterns. Interestingly, I didn't have a problem downloading, manipulating, or attempting to print currency-detected fragment images on iPadOS 18.x.

I’ve been running mine offline for years, I don’t know why other people haven’t been. They’re the only competent and reliable printer that isn’t a project car in itself, but they’re obviously not completely trustworthy. Easily fixed with an air gap, updates work just great from a USB drive.