3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
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Damn, I naively bought an A1 a few months ago for my first 3d printer. "Easy for beginners" was really all I knew about them at the time
The problem is they keep ignoring their own EULA and just change things.
Their slicer is a fork of an AGPL open source slicer, as such they cannot lock down the software without violating the license. Slice3r does not have the resources to sue Bambu, but Fulu does.
I have an A1 too, and when the news came out that third-party slicers (like OrcaSlicer, which I was and still am using) were going to be blocked, I set my printer to LAN only mode. I wouldn't recommend a Bambu to newbies to 3D printing anymore, but I'm stuck with mine and it has been printing ok. Like any printer, it struggles with overhangs and such, it's not always a magic "it just works" experience".
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.
not exactly, a bunch of patents expired and Bambu were the first to take advantage.
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?
My Anycubic Kobra 3v2 is really easy to print with. Never had a Bambu and I have had several printers now. By far the easiest to just have print a thing.
Just about any modern printer "just works" these days.
Prusa is fantastic in terms of openness and self-repairability, but it is pretty expensive due to the fact that it's all made in the EU, and not in sweatshops in China.
The Snapmaker U1 is a good alternative if you want something far less expensive, but it's not going to be quite as open and repairable.
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.
Only in the fact that they're restricting commercial repurposing of their IP. They're still just as open in terms of LAN only and using any software you want to interact with your printer directly, without going through their servers.
In terms of home users, they still provide every single part as a 3d model you can print at home.
I'm not sure what any home users would want beyond what they're offering.
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.
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.
They are... My daughter wanted one for Christmas last year because she's into cosply and it works great out of the box for someone who has no idea about 3d printing....
But from what I've read on here it's not the best company because of all the proprietary shit they keep coming up with.
For what daughter uses it for, it does the job and does it well...