There has been a tremendous amount of back and forth over this January weekend from Bambu Labs, Orca Slicer developer Soft-Fever, YouTube influencers, bloggers, Reddit, Facebook, Discord,etc.

Seemingly everyone who owns a printer got in the action, and now that some of the dust has settled, we can take inventory of where we are. The best way to break this down is from Bambu Lab’s latest post.

Why use this post? Well, it’s coming from Bambu, and it does a pretty good job addressing what is going on. There are a few finer points I would like to make on it, though.

On the many rumors swirling about

A few things to pick apart here:

Bambu Lab will remotely disable your printer ("brick" it)

This one seems pretty easy to agree upon. There are many consumer protections in place that would make this difficult, and the outcry from the maker community would really make this unlikely to occur. It’s possible that they could prevent “cloud” printing, but that isn’t something that is guaranteed anyway.

Risk Level: Low
Worry Level: Low

Firmware updates will block your printer’s ability to print

This is likely true as well. What is missing is the details though. I am 100% sure it will not block our ability to print using Bambu Lab firmware. What isn’t said is, will it prevent 3rd parties from printing? Very unlikely however.

Risk Level: Low
Worry Level: Low

AMS functionality will be restricted, and the use of third-party filament will be disabled

This is a very much “for now”. The codebase had commented out these restrictions. This means developers had writing this code prioritized even if they later took out the commented-out code. Also, while they are saying this, there is very much no reason they couldn’t disable it in the future. The RFID keys have been broken, however, so a 3rd party could open-source AMS compatible RFIDs if they really wanted to.

Risk Level: Medium
Worry Level: High

Bambu Lab firmware contains trojans or backdoors for unauthorized remote control

This is likely true. With the Cloud controlling the printer and what goes to and from the printer, you don’t need to implement this at the firmware level. That said, there is no reason to believe that Bambu Lab would want to do this even at the cloud level without a state-level directive.

Risk Level: Low
Worry Level: Low

The printers have a timed killswitch that disables them after a certain period

There is no reason to believe this is true, nor would it make sense to implement. This rumor nearly no one mentioned, and I am surprised Bambu even bothered mentioning it themselves.

Risk Level: Low
Worry Level: Low

All 3D files printed are monitored, duplicated, or stolen

The devil is in the details on this one. There is no disagreement that “all” are monitored, but that doesn’t mean that “some” couldn’t be. None would be duplicated or stolen. Bambu Lab is a hardware and software maker, not interested in selling your models. That duplicated or stolen is a bit of a distraction from the monitoring, though. They absolutely COULD monitor your files. You can see it yourself in the printing history tab of your Bambu Handy app. As you can see, you can see previews of and stored versions of all your STLs. It would be trivial for Bambu to look at your printing history. That said, they would realistically only monitor if a state actor told them to. For example, they had a warrant to turn over your history. There has been some recent news in the United States about 3D printed weapons that could make this more likely in the future.

Risk Level: Low
Worry Level: Medium

A subscription will be mandatory to use your printer

The key word is “mandatory” here. A subscription is coming, and it’s fine. Streaming video to your phone costs Bambu Lab real money. Storing your G-code in the cloud costs money. These are monthly costs that a one-time purchase can’t recoup. What is important to watch out for here is what do they put under the umbrella of subscription and what do they keep free.

Risk Level: Low
Worry Level: Medium

All in all, this is a fair response from a company that does consider and take the time to respond to its customers. I do not believe they are being completely forthright with some of their wording, but not purposely misleading with the above either. I appreciate the time they took here and where I find risk is acceptable and in the spirit of following potential laws.

Allowing Continued Use of 3rd Party Software

Bambu Lab’s stated the following:

This is fantastic and close to desired outcome those concerned wanted fixed for a proprietary device. The majority of printer owners just want click and print functionality but a core user base of “pro” users wanted more then the “Bambu Connect” app could provide. Thanks to all of the debate and back and forth this weekend it sound like a Developer Mode is being added which should allow those pro users to continue to use apps like they have been in the past. This to be is the best possible outcome. Where all users pro or not, minority or majority get to use the printer the way THEY want to.

Bambu Lab’s has submitted a pull request (basically asking for code to be added to Orca Slicer) that shows how the new workflow would work here. While this clearly adds more steps to the process the workflow changes should be minimal for most users and shows a good faith effort to maintain 3rd party and open source slicer support. If Soft Fever the main developer has more to say I will update this post.

That said Bambu Lab keeps mentioning Orca Slicer and suggestion a larger partnership then is actually occurring. Bambu Lab should revise how they speak about how they work with Orca Slicer as they way they talk about it is well beyond the direct experience and response from the Orca Slicer lead developer. It’s clearly backfiring for them and yet they keep suggesting more of a partnership then is actually occuring.

Wrap Up (for now)

Bambu Lab addressed concerns about their latest security update, clarifying that they will not remotely disable printers or restrict third-party filament use. While some features, like AMS functionality, may be limited initially, a developer mode will be added to allow advanced users to customize their printers. This outcome satisfies both casual users and professionals, providing flexibility and choice. Let’s hope they follow through and release the Developer Mode at the same time as the main set of updates.

Sources