Take a company that makes great 3D printers. Add to it a layer of security that is supposedly “indispensable” but which smacks of control. And BOOM, you have the perfect recipe to annoy me but especially the entire community that has supported you so far! Have you guessed who I’m talking about? And yes, because that is exactly what is happening with Bambu Labwhich has just announced very questionable changes in the management of its printers.

The latter have decided to unilaterally impose their new proprietary application Bambu Connect as the only way to control their printers remotely. So go to waste, third-party solutions like OrcaSlicer which worked very well until now!

And their justification is the same as all the Ministers of the Interior who lay down a restrictive law every 2 weeks: Security, obviously!!! We are starting to know their technique! So of course, we can’t know if they’re telling the truth, but they talk about DDoS attacks and up to 30 million unauthorized requests per day on their servers. I want to believe them, but was it really necessary to lock down their entire ecosystem?

Well yes, because not content with imposing their software on us, Bambu Lab also has the brilliant idea of:

  • Block access to critical commands for third-party software
  • Force automatic updates that can block printing
  • Deny access to their blog’s version history via Wayback Machine (very classy…)
  • Claiming to collaborate with third-party developers without their prior consent

So following their announcement and the buzz that followed, Bambu Lab is trying to calm things down with promises like: “We will never block third-party filaments!”, “No subscription required!”, “A developer mode will be available!”. But after these first betrayals, how can we believe them?

I’m very skeptical when a company starts to put in place the technical infrastructure to do just that… Moreover, rumors are already circulating about a future subscription system for printing farm management.

The most absurd thing in this story is that security could have been managed directly on the printer with standard authentication tokens. Besides, the “problem” they seek to solve is not really one for users and their solution unfortunately creates more problems than it solves, particularly for print farm managers.

As a result, the consequences were not long in coming. Everyone got heated, from creators who removed their 3D models from the Bambu library, to third-party developers left in the dark, to accessory makers like Panda Touch whose products stopped working and of course not to mention the users who swear to their great gods that they can never buy Bambu products.

And the cherry on the extruder, their super security system got hacked in a few dayswith the private key and the authentication certificate already floating around on the net. Just like that, life always finds a way…

That’s it, for the bad (and a little good) news… Inasmuch as owner of a Bambu printerI’m still disappointed because I loved their open approach until now. These changes do not look good for the future…


So my advice is that if you have a Bambu Lab printer, think twice before installing this update. And if you were planning to buy one… maybe it’s time to look at what the competition is offering.

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