I get the appeal of Bambu printers, I've been tempted myself to get one... but the thing that keeps me away is that they are closed source and I don't want a world with closed source 3D printers because when the company goes evil - and they all eventually do - I don't want to be held hostage. I've fallen in that trap before and don't want to again.

Don't give them backlash, instead stop using their printers. Release your models under a license that requires the printer that prints it to be open source. Let friends and colleagues know the dangers of supporting such a company.

Orca Slicer’s developer, SoftFever, has publicly declined to adopt Bambu Connect, calling it unnecessary and of no meaningful benefit to users.

This is a frustrating take. If they don’t adopt Connect then at some point Bambu users are going to be forced into that update and will lose what I consider critical functionality. Seems pretty meaningful to me.

Any good alternatives to Bambulab printers?
Don't want a printer that I habe to tinker with, want one that just works

If they do no push back, then they are just kicking the can down the road, at great expense to themselves. This is exactly the sort of pushback needed to get bambu to walk back their push towards a walled garden.

Prusa Core One. Can buy it prebuilt or as a kit.

Disclosure: I do not have one. I have a creality k1 and it’s mostly great for me, but it isn’t perfect and I personally would buy a prusa if I was buying a new printer.

It's also the only way they have to act against the change, which might cause enough users to protest, which might (temporarily) get Bambu to back out. Or delay at least. Probably not, but again it's their only option.

If they go along with it, the users that could or would proper will just use Orca until inevitably Bambu also removes that possibility, then everyone is fucked anyway.

What percentage of Bambu users are using Orca? Single digit percentage? Maybe barely double digit? It's probably not gonna change anything in the end. Clearly this has always been their plan.

I always thought their entire product strategy was clearly designed to be an eventually rug pull just like this, which is why I never got one. Other people that care about fully owning and controlling their devices probably didn't either, or that number might be higher.

Can someone come out with a main board swap some time soon.

But is a 1000€ printer an alternative for a 200€ Bambu A1?

I support protesting. If they had said “we know this will impact some of our users negatively and we regret that, but we are choosing to protest this change anyways” I’d be much more on board.

Calling it simply useless though I think hurts the protest.

Bambu lab is just doing a capitalism, no one should be surprised. These guys have wide reach and bring many people who'd otherwise never 3d print into this world.

Also, they push all kinds of innovation in the industry. The h2d is arguably the best consumer printer on the market currently. My a1 mini is a workhorse with over 700 hours of prints on it. The thing is a champ that will likely never receive another firmware update and I'm okay with that. I already have a security camera pointed at the thing for better viewing, I can easily put the thing on a controlled outlet if Bambu handy stops working. I guess I'll lose the ability to exclude failed objects in a print, but I'm still not gonna knock this machine. It prints good and made me love 3d printing.

That being said my new qidi Q1 pro is open ish source, runs on a modified klipper and often produces better prints but is definitely quirkier. It has already frustrated me more than my a1 and taken more hours of troubleshooting and calibration at a third of the print hours.

I'm into electronics and a huge nerds who halfway got this to be able to tinker, mod, and fine tune, but I could imagine my experience with the qidi would turn off many to 3d printing. But my journey started with Bambu, a printer that just worked and turned me into a full fledged 3d printing nerd who is eyeballing a third printer because now I want a kit or bom and to build one.

I hope that wasn't too long winded or nonsensical, I'm a little on vacation

They're not comparable printers though, you should be comparing the Prusa core one to the Bambu P1-series. The Bambu P1-series is still less than half of the prusa core one of course.

I’d argue that 5-10% are some of their most valuable users though. The creative one that make models, run YouTube channels or influence purchasing decisions for schools or businesses. Voron has a huge name in the business without spending a penny on advertising due to those people. While they make the best bang for the buck printers out there right now, they can be easily knocked off their perch if they’re not careful. What open source hath given them, open source can taketh away. e.g. look at all the upcoming multi filament solutions in the works.

My Q1 Pro was awesome for weeks without issue, but now the motor is jammed (I can see the little gear trying and failing to move) and I've been too afraid to take it apart.

I have an A1 and it's been a fun learning 3d printing. I got it before all this started last year. While I'm happy with my device I'll probably just wait for it die or a major upgrade comes along. Elegoo looks nice.

While I agree with the most valuable users statement, I can't imagine that is how they see it. Or that they even should realistically care from a purely financial standpoint. Most users buy their printers and just use them with whatever software came with them. And most of those didn't even watch or read reviews. Or worse: they did, and possibly heard about the firmware and online thing and just didn't care.

I disagree with your second part though. Voron is only relevant for the complete opposite end of the spectrum. People who are multi-discipline tinkerers (electronics, hardware, ...) and capable and interested in building their own printer. Actual overlap with all Bambu customers is probably sub-1%. The commercial printers that are Voron-adjacent (inspired by or based on the design in some way) still have a different demographic and severely lack in software polish and especially out of the box experience. It isn't remotely close. Even if they innovated over night and made it even with Bambu, there is nothing that would cause that to be actually relevant in the market without millions in marketing. They might be able to gain momentum, but only slowly and I highly doubt they can catch up to Bambu momentum even in years.

Release your models under a license that requires the printer that prints it to be open source.

That has about as much sway as me telling you what bowl you must eat your breakfast from. Completely unenforceable.

Restricting models in such a way is also in itself against core values.

Bambu make great printing appliances but that's about it. It's still a good recommendation for someone who just wants to print as a starting point, and unconcerned with much else. The same kind of people would buy OEM cartridges at 3-5x cost for their paper printers and simply don't care. File goes in, model comes out. Vendor lock-in doesn't matter to them.

Other options exist for those of us who want to tinker, learn a thing or two, or simply just be in control of their shit.

Still, there will always be a 'but...' when I'm mentioning the company to someone looking to start printing. Then they can decide based on their own values.

Bambu as a company are pretty much the poison for 3D printing that made ink home printers a nightmare. That and lobbying to regulate and criminalize a lot of what makes 3D printing great. I fear we‘re at our peak already and it can only go downhill from here. We are just not allowed to have nice things in the 21st century.

Voron carries the original community torch that started all of this with RepRap and Adrian Bowyer. That is not some minor guerilla thing around Voron specifically. It grew out of the era when Prusa started making excuses and doing anti community stuff. Like they are still great, but not for the same reasons that built them. You can't build Prusa firmware and mod it easily like with a Marlin config or Klipper. And the Mini is a custom hacked Marlin config that looks nothing like Marlin at all. That killed community contributions and the iterative nature of open source. The offshoots and side projects of Voron used to exist around Prusa and were around RepRap before that. Joseph got his start with RepRap selling kits on the side. That is where the MKx nomenclature comes from.

Adrian Bowyer broke what was a stratasys commercial monopoly and singlehandedly built the open source community and entire hobby. If Adrian did not exist, there would be no hobby 3d printing at all. The whole thing is due to this open source project and the community it built. That is why Bambu is hated so much. They are a stratasys like parasite here to exploit and oppress as a capitalist cancer. They are the ultimate type of leopard eating face buy.