[function_seven]

Thanks for that link. It’s cool that people are hacking on this thing. But my question should have ended with “from Bambu?”

This sentence from your link…

> Since we don't know how Bambulab will react on this guide and the general reverse engineering of the tags: Please don't share you tag's UID and the related keys for now.

…means the answer is “no”. That the RFID system is meant to drive sales of their own inkjet cartri—er, I meant filament spools.

People have hacked the Keurig 2 coffee pod system, people have reverse-engineered Lexmark’s toner control system. Neither of those initiatives made me a more likely to purchase from Keurig or from Lexmark.

[iancmceachern]

That sentence does not mean that.

That sentence means, we (the hackers) have no idea what BambuLab (the company that makes this printer) is going to do in the future, so please don't do things that would help them make it harder for us to hack these RFIDs in the future.

Yes, but what ink jet printer did you buy?

In this case, this printer prints 4x as fast with 2x the quality of all the competitors on the market. Would you then still not buy it based in this theoretical, hypothetical, future con?

[function_seven]

My interpretation of that quoted sentence is the same as yours. That’s my point. The RFID system is a kind of vendor lock-in, and I don’t go for that.

If the RFID system was truly meant to improve the user experience, Bambu would offer it to other filament producers to make it a standard, and really make it useful to the user.

I gave up on consumer inkjet printers because they all seem to be wildly expensive on the consumables. I have a Brother laser now that is still using the same toner it came with 10 years ago. I do not have an account with brother.com.

I know this printer is bad-ass, technically. If that was something I needed to optimize for, I would probably hold my nose and get one. I might actually still do that!

But for now, my existing Monoprice printer still works, and it respects me as a user.

[iancmceachern]

It's not. You are misinformed and clearly have not used one personally.

I have one you do not need the rfid to load filament.

There is a hole on the back of the printer, you put filament in it just like any other printer and then tell it what you have.

It doesn't even have a rfid reader back there.

That's in the case you don't want to use the AMS. If you do want to use the AMS it's similar. Open AMS, put filament in, push it into hole, select what filament it is on the touchscreen. If the filament happens to have an rfid tag, you don't need to do the last step. That's all.

I have 4 bambu labs rfid enabled spools loaded now, 4 spools from matter hackers without rfid in my second AMS right now, works great.

[function_seven]

OK I guess I’m not making myself clear. I am not under the impression that the RFID is required for the printer to accept filament. I understand that it’s a nice-to-have feature that makes it seamless to swap things out without punching a bunch of buttons.

You know what would make it even better? If those RFID tags were available to filament makers. This would improve the user experience.