If Bambu Lab responds to this criticism with lawyers instead of clear technical answers, it will only make the forced cloud requirement look more suspicious.

To me, this is an obvious security risk. These printers are often used in labs, startups, engineering teams, and potentially even government environments. If print data, models, logs, or usage patterns are routed through a company controlled infrastructure, that creates a real opportunity for corporate espionage or data harvesting.

I would not be surprised if Bambu Lab eventually faces the same level of scrutiny that Huawei network devices did.

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drum55 5 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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nik282000 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

They are an adversarial player in the market, actively trying to lock users into an ecosystem that is incompatible with other printers.

Like Adobe's 'creative' software and Onshape, they are working as hard as possible to make YOU pay more to have less.

	▲	parasubvert an hour ago \| parent [-]
		When you're the best at what you do, you do what you can to fend off competition without entirely alienating users.

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thot_experiment 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

idk, my 10 year old makerbot 2 has been pretty reliable, ever since Prusa slicer came out and I tuned a profile for it maybe 6 years ago it's been spitting out quick dimensionally accurate prints. i use it all the time, probably go through a spool every month or two and all i've had to replace is the cooling fan for the extruder once

i'm mostly printing small mechanical parts and i can't say i have any complaints, i assume a modern prusa would be much better, surely there are other FDM printers that are good?

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SchemaLoad 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I tried it but switched back to the online mode because being able to remotely check in via the app is very useful to check the print hasn't failed.

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nirav72 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Bambuddy and tailscale was my solution to losing access to mobile app once I went lan-only. Has video stream ,monitoring and control. Plus home assistant integration via MQTT. Only thing I’m missing is the ‘AI’ spaghetti monitoring. But those are rare for me.

	▲	Mogzol 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There's also the Openbu or LanBu android apps if you just want a basic app for monitoring from your phone like Bambu Handy did. Although if you want to access your printer from a remote network you'll still need tailscale or similar.

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ThatPlayer 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Another feature locked behind the app is individual part cancelling which is nice for partial print failures.

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_carbyau_ 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Mine is now offline.

But when it was online, I never checked the app for failed prints. If the print has failed, I'll find out when I'm near enough to it to do something about it.

When offline, it amused me when there was a "hairball" and the printer detected it advising "AI Detecting Print Error".

At what level does an image analysis algorithm become "AI"?

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SchemaLoad an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If the print has failed you can stop it from the app to prevent it becoming a huge mess and possibly causing damage to the printer.

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mh- 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm curious what concise phrase you'd display to convey the same information to that audience.

"Computer Vision Model and Nozzle Telemetry Analysis Detect Print Error"?

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Dusseldorf 3 hours ago | parent [-]

"Print Error Detected"?

	▲	mh- 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I laughed pretty hard at this, and you're right. Problem solved.
	▲	Barbing 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		“Print Error Detected (Maybe?)” This isn’t a PC Load Letter we can trust!

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sho_hn 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> They’re the only competent and reliable printer that isn’t a project car in itself

Prusa.

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drum55 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah I’ve had one, still do, it never gets used because it’s a project car. Compared with one button press and coming back to a print in a few hours, it’s a constant nightmare of debugging, print issues, and manually changing filaments that aren’t stored in an airtight container and get wet. It’s not even competition, as much as I would like to support open source tools the Prusa stuff is an order of magnitude more expensive than a A1 Mini that will make a reliable print every time.

It’s like saying a bicycle is a serious contender to a train, they both have kind of similar things going on but you’d have to be insane to suggest that they do as good of a job as one another at the things people actually want to achieve.

	▲	sho_hn 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I've done zero debugging on my Prusa and it's been pretty much fire and forget. I had one spaghetti print failure in years on it, and it was my own fault for disabling supports and the print falling over :) Automatic filament changes would be nice for sure, I look forward to upgrading to one of their new INDX models.