Is now a good time to get a Bambu?
Is now a good time to get a Bambu?
Thinking about getting my first printer to print some organization stuff around the house, some nerf parts, as well as some small toys and fidget for friends/kids. The Bambu Lab A1 seems to be notable for being beginner friendly without a lot of fiddling.
Read recently about the lawsuit and I'm wondering if I should wait until that's resolved before pulling the trigger. I'm worried that some outcome there will eliminate important features or worst case make it obsolete entirely. Any thoughts?
That lawsuit is going to go on for years, so uh, I wouldn't wait.
And, frankly, those kind of suits settle out of court and end up in a licensing deal anyways so there's very little chance that anything important will change tech-wise.
I haven’t seen the light of day for a few months now, what lawsuit?
Stratasys is suing Bambu over things like having a heated bed and using purge towers. Basically stuff that every decent printer does.
Yes, but a better time was last month during the sale
@RacerX For $339 for an A1, I wouldn't consider it a major risk at all. I have an X1C and I love it. If they lose a lawsuit and have to remove features, I figure I just won't update the firmware and hope that does the trick. And if so, that potentially another reason to pull the trigger now.
This is a good point. Like someone else said here, it'll probably take a while to resolve the lawsuit and if I get as much use as I think I will between now and then, then the money spent will be worth it. Thanks!
@RacerX Good luck and enjoy!... I imagine it will be like my X1C, in that firmware updates are strictly a manual thing that the user has to trigger, so if they do have to cripple something in the future, hopefully you can just keep your printer working as it had before.
Just make sure it never connects to the Internet ever
I thought it needed to be connected to the internet in order to send prints to it? Does it work fine if never connected?
Isn't there a group working on open source firmware? https://hackaday.com/2024/01/09/x1plus-open-source-bambu-lab-x1-firmware/
So if they are forced to remove something, it can be re-added
With bambu Lab, however, you are supporting a Chinese closed source manufacturer that makes use of the open source community and has no development costs. This only supports the fact that open source alternatives have to become closed source in the long term and thus destroys the market in the long term. But greed is good, right?
You make a good point, and it's really the reason I have and like Prusa printers. But I do look with some envy at the bang for the buck you get with Bambu
In case anyone stumbles across this post in the future, I got the A1 with the AMS. It's amazing and I've been really happy with everything I've printed so far. Been using Bambu Lab matte filament and Polyterra as well. Both work great.