Last year I said I'd probably never recommend another Bambu Lab printer again.
I still use my P1S, but after Bambu Lab started pushing their always-connected cloud solution as the new default:
I blocked the printer from the Internet via my OPNsense Firewall I stopped updating the firmware I locked the printer into Developer mode I deleted Bambu Studio and started using OrcaSlicer I had to do that to keep it under my control, instead of Bambu's.
Bambu Lab printers to me are for the people who don’t care about tinkering on their printer as a hobby, and just want to print things without fuss. Stay in their Apple-like ecosystem and their cloud environment and you’ll be perfectly happy. If you want the printer itself to be the hobby, there are a number of similar spec devices that with some tinkering can work just as well.
Some tinkering. I’m done with that shit. I want to print stuff not mess with the printer to print something. Say what you want but bamboo brought that to the people as the industry was pretty stagnant till they arrived. Sure they are assholes now but they did move the industry forward.
Right there with you. Until there’s another product just like it, I’m going to stick with the ecosystem. I did the hobby thing tinkering on an Ender 3, now I just want my printer to print the models I make.
What are my options if I don’t want the printer itself to be the hobby, and I just want to print without fuss, but I also don’t want to deal with all that vertical integration crap?
You go for a commercial-grade machine and spend thousands, honestly. Imo, none of the other consumer-grade machines really offer that out of the box experience. They all require something, and that something depends on the printer.
Well, the most open you can get is Prusa’s machines. Repairable, upgradeable, with great customer service to boot.
Other companies are more open than Bambu but few support the open-source movement like Prusa. Qidi, Elegoo, etc. all have great printers that I can recommend (Q2 and Centauri Carbon are fantastic options based on feature set) but they don’t use a very open firmware. They are compatible with OrcaSlicer and aren’t as bad as Bambu though.
Prussa has its own issues and are starting to close things down.
You’re also giving money to a company that has completely screwed all the people who made 3d printing possible by a culture of open sharing.