[robflynn]

My main concern is, how long is it before you can't print a replacement part for something you bought because it looks too similar to an OEM part and the manufacturer doesn't think you should be able to do that so they throw a little money to the right politician.

[laylower]

This is part of the wider problem and heavily relates to the right to repair

Cory talked about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jsstmmUUs

[teo_zero]

> how long is it before you can't print a replacement part for something you bought because it looks too similar to an OEM part and the manufacturer doesn't think you should be able to do that so they throw a little money to the right politician

At least 25 years. That's the time passed since the first introduction of Eurion marks on banknotes. As far as I know, noone has used it to block reproduction of anything other than money.

[jrockway]

When I was in college I wrote a computer program (yes, involving yellow text) that couldn't be photocopied because I put the "o"s in the right place to trigger the eurion-finding algorithm. People thought it was neat.

[AlOwain]

That isn't true though, coupons, boarding passes, and even confidential documents use Eurion marks. It's not everywhere because it isn't worthwhile going through the hassle of getting printers that can print them; while 3D printing OEM parts would be much more valuable.

[klausa]

Who issues Eurion-marked boarding passes?

That strikes me as extremely counterproductive given the actually sensitive part of a BP is an (outside of the US) unsigned, semi-publicly-documented barcode.

[johann8384]

It would be extra counterproductive since you can print your own boarding pass.

[ndsipa_pomu]

When flying with easyJet, we can just print boarding passes using any old printer. As long as the number matches up, no security is required.

[JasonADrury]

Lots non-currency of documents around the world with EURion marks. If you're a secure printing shop and your business model primarily revolves around impressing your clients with long lists of document security features, it'd be malpractice to not implement this kind of padding.

[Arch-TK]

EURion marks are a feature you must include on your banknote for it to even be considered real. And it's _one_ feature. It's relatively trivial to make a chip which can detect their presence.

On the other hand, if I need a replacement part for something, it's unlikely I will find the manufacturer giving me models for it. And if a manufacturer is giving me models for it, they probably do so with the explicit expectation that I might end up using them to manufacture a replacement.

In most cases either me or some other volunteer will need to measure the existing part, write down all the critical measurements, and then design a new part from scratch in CAD.

Even if somehow you are able to fingerprint on those critical measurements, that's just _one_ part.

The only way this kind of nonsense law could work is if you mandate that 3D printers must not accept commands from an untrusted source (signature verification) and then you must have software which uses a database to check for such critical measurements, ideally _before_ slicing.

Except that still doesn't work because I can always post-process a part to fit.

And it doesn't work even more because the software will need to contain a signing key. Unless the signing key is on a remote server somewhere to which you must send your model for validation.

This is never going to work, or scale.

There are even more hurdles... I can design and build a 3D printer from scratch and manufacture it using non-CNC machined parts at home. A working, high quality 3D printer.

Where are you going to force me to put the locks? Are you going to require me to show my ID when buying stepper motors and stepper motor drivers?

What about other kinds of manufacturing (that these laws, at least the Washington State ones, also cover)?

Will you ban old hardware?

What about a milling machine? Are you going to ban non-CNC mills?

These are the most ignorant laws made by the most ignorant people. The easiest way to ban people from manufacturing their own guns is to ban manufacture of your own guns. But again, this is a complete non-issue in the US where you can probably get a gun illegally more easily than you can 3D print something half as reliable.

[NoGravitas]

> This is never going to work, or scale

Neither does DRM, really, but it certainly causes a great deal of inconvenience, and is upheld by the legal system.

[Arch-TK]

But that's the point. DRM works at all (in terms of causing inconvenience, not preventing copying, for that it will never work of course) because the people producing the data have an interest in applying the DRM.

But the people producing 3D printable gun parts are _not_ interested in applying the DRM.

If you want to draw an analogy to media, this is more like if the government mandated porn detection software on your computer which would prevent porn from being able to be displayed on your screen. Or mandating HDCP between your monitor and your computer so that your computer could implement restrictions on what you could view on the monitor.

Except that computers are extremely difficult to DIY from basic components (I mean raw chips and metal). Meanwhile I can literally buy aluminium extrusions, or even bits of wood, some stepper motors, some gears, some belts, some pulleys and some stepper drivers, an STM32 devboard and get PCBWay to make me a simple PCB, or just use a prototyping board. And at the end of it, I would have a high quality (maybe a bit slow) 3D printer. I can tell you with absolute certainty that it could print gun parts because I have personally taken a trash-tier prusa i3 mk2 clone and turned it into a machine which could probably rival the mk3 at least.

How exactly are they planning on stopping me from designing a part, slicing it, and then putting it on a DIY 3D printer?

They could maybe achieve this by restricting the sale of certain components such as hot-ends, extruder gears (although you can get away with generic gears), or stepper motors and stepper motor drivers. I just don't see it happening. Maybe they could ban open source slicers and CAD programs?

But I guess I better start stocking up on high quality stepper motors and stepper motor drivers and buy a milling machine and a lathe so I can manufacture the other parts myself. You never know when the UK government will steal another wonderful authoritarian idea from another country.

[anthk]

As an European I'd say any USAnite can almost get a gun with breakfast cereal boxes. But weapons' culture in the US it's obsolete. Militias can't do shit against tyranical govs because once they send drones it's game over.

[joe_mamba]

> But weapons' culture in the US it's obsolete. Militias can't do shit against tyranical govs because once they send drones it's game over.

Pretty sure those 50 thousand or so civilians killed on the street in the recent Iranian protests/riots would have been a lot less, if all those Iranians had easy access to guns, and not just the government.

Drones are not enough, you still need boots on the ground for you to claim control over a territory, and boots on the ground think twice about signing up for service if that includes facing armed mobs with guns on a daily basis.

So no, mobs with guns are not obsolete.

[anthk]

Mob with guns would be useless against the Iranian Guards which are pretty much elite commandos.

[rayiner]

Goat herders with guns in Afghanistan kicked the U.S. army out of their country.

[joe_mamba]

What's the commando to civilian ratio in Iran?

[abosley]

The Iranian guards, along with most of the armies in the second and third tier powers don't have elite anything. Please see Desert Storm, etc. Most of them ran. The ones that didn't were destroyed.

[rayiner]

It’s not obsolete. In a country where your military is farm boys, the important thing is being able to start the war. Eventually chunks of the military will defect. We saw this happen during the Bangladesh independence movement. The revolutionaries got lucky and knocked over a weapons depot early in the conflict. They started fighting and a large number of the Pakistani army that was of Bangladeshi ancestry defected. I am confident the same thing would happen if the government in DC tried to oppress Iowa or Texas.

Drones cut both ways. You’re correct that it allows a small number of people loyal to the regime to asymmetrically oppress a large population. But drone technology is in theory accessible to the populace in an industrialized country.

[FatherOfCurses]

The 2A crowd has been really quiet this past year. Hell, Trump even said in response to the Pretti shooting that only criminals walk around carrying guns in public. I guess no one cares about government tyranny unless they're asked to respect someone's pronouns.

[rayiner]

Why would the 2A people say anything? Conservatives aren’t libertarians. They think government has legitimate functions and draw a distinction between government performing those functions (which isn’t tyranny) and the government exceeding its scope (which is tyranny). Removing foreigners here illegally is a core function of the government. Social engineering is not.

[vdqtp3]

> Hell, Trump even said in response to the Pretti shooting that only criminals walk around carrying guns in public.

If you were paying any attention at all, you'd see pretty much every 2A community, advocate and lobbying group was outraged by that statement and made statements against it.

Having said that, it is actually illegal to carry a firearm to go commit crimes like destroying government property, assaulting federal officers and obstructing them in carrying out their constitutional duties.

[AngryData]

Drones may be good against foreign adversaries, but you can't bomb your own population and cities into being productive economy. A war between two well funded and supported militaries is far different than an insurgency.

[lenerdenator]

1) That's a mischaracterization of the FFL purchase process if I've ever heard one.

2) The weapons culture of the US is so obsolete that there are government officials parroting lines about it not being legal to carry a concealed weapon during a protest in Minnesota when it is, actually, very much legal. That is to say, it's not obsolete at all. Given the prior public stances of the Trump administration on firearms, this is incredibly telling, and all the more reason why you can't trust people like them.

[pocksuppet]

Those drones lost some wars against guerilla militias

[riskable]

Well, at birth every American is issued Baby's First Glock™

[ale42]

Actually I tried to use it just for fun on some vouchers, but it didn't work on the copy machines I tried. They just happily photocopied the vouchers.

[krater23]

Tried the same, doesn't do anything on my scanner. Interestingly, there are regions of banknotes my scanner refuses to scan. But had no time to investigate further.

[ale42]

Some more tests on this old page: https://murdoch.is/projects/currency/ (2004)

[rustyhancock]

Is this true? Couldn't I put the mark on a page of my book and photocopiers would still detect and refuse to copy that page?

[ErroneousBosh]

Yes, absolutely. It's a pattern of five rings, well-documented although Omron appears to keep the exact details pretty tightly held.

They don't have to be exact circles, they just have to be some dots in about the right place. In the UK, the Bank of England issued notes with Elgar on them and the EURion constellation picked out in musical notes ;-)

[tobyjsullivan]

No idea why this comment is getting downvoted so hard. This was exactly what I thought of too, and it provides a concrete answer to the question.

There’s valid concern with these types of laws and scope creep. But there’s also precedent which shows they can work and be applied reasonably.

[PunchyHamster]

Suuure buddy, we just need to throw away every gun and introduce new ones with special marks telling software not copy.

Go ahead, try that

[PlatoIsADisease]

I remember ~10 or 15 years ago, I had concerns about drones becoming illegal due to FAA.

I was assured by the internet, I was paranoid, blah blah safety...

Then a few weeks ago something about Minnesota and ICE making drones illegal to fly or something...

The weird part is that, in that 15 years, I've become more moderate and pro-democratic rule of law... but I was right about my previous concerns. Not that I believe in the Justice behind them anymore.

[salawat]

>I remember ~10 or 15 years ago, I had concerns about drones becoming illegal due to FAA.

My Plato hating friend, my "called it" list is filled with things the old-timers at the time said no one would be stupid enough to, and the old codgers went and died on me so I can't even give em a good lambast. I believed them, and helped them build things... Now I get to watch things get coopted by a madman and a NatSec apparatus. Pour one out.

[TOMDM]

The rights abuses occurring in Minnesota and at the hands of ICE are better characterised as a degradation of democracy, not a failure of it.

EDIT: To be clear, my belief is that a plurality of the voting population voted for this, that much is obvious.

My belief is also that despite the fact that the current administration was elected, there are democratic norms and rules for what outcomes require that a bill must be passed to enact, that states can decide how they can govern themselves within well defined bounds.

All of this is being ignored despite the structures defined in the American democatric system, not because of it.

[sheepscreek]

Yep. Democracy is working according to a non-minority in the country. Agree to disagree?

[mystraline]

Sure. I'll bite.

The majority in this country is "didn't vote". Multitudes of reasons for this.

They forgot.

They dont care.

They missed the registration deadline.

They're homeless, and no address.

They can't get proper papers, even though they are US born.

They're in prison/jail.

The candidates suck, so you dont vote.

Can't afford to take time off work.

They've been gerrymandered, so their votes are significantly degraded.

To think that the minority segment that, due to election game rules and FPTP, that a minority of the minority somehow reflects a majority? I wholly reject that.

[pton_xd]

It's always been this way. According to Google 64% of the voting age population voted in 2024. In 1972 it was 56%, in 1976 it was 55%, in 1980 it was 55%, in 1984 it was 56%... you get the idea [0].

[0] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/vitalst...

[mystraline]

"This is how its always been" is one of the banes of my existence. It explains why we're here, but not how to do better.

There are ways to do better. A national holiday for elections has been mentioned countless times.

We could do like Australia and mandate required voting.

Prisoners should be able to vote. But this country is too hell-bent on punishment.

Registration can be made on the same day of voting, rather than some states require 30 days, and others per state.

But in reality, none of these are done. Changes are glacial, if they do happen.

But these would all increase a democratic choice. Right now, its a horrendously gamified minority of a minority who decides, based on electoral college results.

[crote]

Yeah, and those figures are horrible. In other Western countries the turnout is closer to 80%, with some even hitting over 90%.

The fact that ~20% of the population either wants to vote but is unable to do so or is disillusioned about the democratic process to the point of not voting at all is extremely worrying. This is not what a healthy democracy should look like.

[thayne]

That doesn't change the fact that the majority of Americans didn't vote for Trump. In fact, the majority of people who did vote didn't vote for Trump. Yes, he won the "popular vote", but that just means he got more votes than anyone else, not more than half of the votes.

[rayiner]

Multiple polls have found that if everyone had voted, Trump would have won by even more. https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2...

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...

The average person who doesn’t vote is a low-trust individual who is skeptical about government and institutions. Those people are Trumpier than average.

[mrguyorama]

I would prefer that reality to our current one.

[Zak]

I thought I had a decent understanding of the 2024 election; people were unhappy with the status quo, therefore mistrusting the people and institutions they believed responsible for it. Then I saw this and its supporting data in your first link:

> Voters saw Harris as more ideologically extreme than Trump

... what?

[monero-xmr]

I mean you can make up all the excuses you want for losing an election but you still lost. Doesn’t make the result illegitimate

[olyjohn]

"you" lost? Did this guy you're replying to run for office? This whole my team vs your team bullshit is really one of the big problems in our country. No independent thought. Just stick with what news says. Always vote my team. Dumb. Here's a news bulletin for you, everybody lost.

[watwut]

It is not democracy anymore. It is authoritarian regime dismantling the democracy.

[direwolf20]

67% of people didn't vote against it.

[JKCalhoun]

A half-empty kind of guy!

[monero-xmr]

When democracy votes for something you don’t like just call it populism

[rpcope1]

They sort of tried with the remote ID and FRIA shit, I really doubt anyone but the kind of person that buys DJI or maybe the most broken hall monitor types bother with remote ID on fixed wing even above 250g. I think the Trump admin banned (or tried) to ban all the important parts for all RC craft, so maybe they'll keep jousting with windmills even harder.

[catgirlinspace]

Recently they banned all new DJI drones and as far as I know they were basically the only option in the consumer space? And there's nothing domestically of course :/

[watwut]

To be fair, ICE is not particularly caring about rule of law. And DOJ is currently not caring about rule of law or constitution either. They are kind of irrelevant.

[nemomarx]

I guess it was a predictable outreach from the Patriot act - the new justification is flying drones "over a mission" from the border people, and they claim a lot of territory for their missions, right?

[butvacuum]

they also don't publish the NOTAMs ahead of time. So, they're effectively allowing ICE to retroactively make flying a drone illegal if an agent takes issue with the color of your cheesburger bun.

[bluescrn]

More likely the videos of FPV drones from Ukraine showing that an inexpensive quadcopter can be a very effective weapon of war.

And that radio jamming no longer neutralizes that threat.

[crote]

That could be used to justify banning drones in general, or banning all drones which aren't radio controlled (not that those are being used domestically). And "it can be used for war" is a bit silly in a country where you can buy guns at the grocery store. Not to mention that cars can be very effective weapons as well, and those haven't been banned yet.

The far more likely explanation is that they just don't want people filming them. They can't legally stop someone with a cellphone from filming them, but that hasn't stopped them from using up-to-lethal force against observers. On the other hand, you can't exactly beat a flying drone into submission, so the obvious move is to observe using drones instead.

Luckily for ICE the FAA already has the mechanics in place to criminalize flying drones in certain places, so with their magic "no drones anywhere we operate" NOTAM they can now punish observers with a year of jail time.

[nemomarx]

I agree with your point but they definitely want to kill you for being in a car and driving near them if they get scared so IDK if we can use cars as an example of something they don't mind

[djmips]

It's my understanding that they are no longer the border people as Trump extended their reach to every square inch of the USA

[2muchcoffeeman]

Too bad everyone jumped shipped to Bambuu Labs. If only we still had open source hardware.

[dns_snek]

We do still have open source hardware but that's the last line of defense against actions like this, not the first. They'll target distribution which will affect open source and proprietary hardware equally. You need to kill this sort of legislation in its crib.

[Brian_K_White]

You need both, because there really is no such thing as kill it in it's crib. The people that want this will continue to want it forever, and will continue to propose it forever. And eventually it works.

[no_wizard]

The missing the third ingredient which is passing rollback resistant legislation in its place that protects these freedoms.

That makes efforts far more durable.

Than it’s a matter of showing up in court to defend attacks against the law(s) that protect it.

In this way, we can have durable change, but it’s a high cost road. By design I am sure.

[dns_snek]

How would this situation be any different if BBL printers were open source?

The law doesn't care about licensing, there are just 2 groups of printers - those that follow the law and implement effective blocking technology and those that don't.

If BBL sells an open source printer that allows someone to trivially bypass proposed mandatory blocking technology, they'll be fined and held liable for any crimes that result from guns printed using their 3D printers.

So BBL, as open source as they might want to be, is not allowed to sell such a product.

[kiba]

Nothing is forever. This whole thing rose in the first place because a novel technology was used to make weapons.

To give another example, the whole modern anti-vaxxer movement was started by a doctor to sell bogus tests.

[bradfa]

Just print the code to do what ever is disallowed on a t-shirt, ala DVDCSS. Is that not a legitimate way around things like this?

[vincnetas]

Prusa is still kicking... if open source hardware is your priority.

[crote]

Prusa had been moving towards proprietary licensing (if they release files at all) for a while now, due to their open source design files being used to undercut the original with cheaper clones.

[regularfry]

I seriously doubt it's the undercutting that's the problem here. When they release a new model they can't keep up with demand anyway, they max out production capacity on legitimate orders.

I think, if anything, the problem is when people buy a cheap clone and blame Prusa when it fails.

[pocksuppet]

This is why we can't have nice things

[hedora]

I’m new to 3d printing. I saw bambu pushed a firmware update that bricked offline mode, so didn’t really consider them when shopping around.

I’m really liking my (better specs for less money) elegoo centauri. I compiled the slicer from source because there weren’t Linux binaries.

All problems solved. It even happily prints exotic stuff like TPU, which I guess bambu has been cracking down on for unclear reasons.

Maybe I don’t know what I’m missing, but I’ve had zero issues downloading files (even from bambu-centric websites) and running them through the slicer.

I can’t imagine wanting to use their cloud whatever thing, or it providing any value beyond the open source stacks.

[kanwisher]

Bambu is leagues better than other printers. Also its super convienant to queue up a job from your phone and then watch it live video feed.

[hamdingers]

My Bambu printer is working great in LAN mode on a vlan with no internet access. Never even complains about it. I'm not concerned.

You can still make an open source printer with some extrusion and stepper motors, same as always.

[MegaDeKay]

We still have open source hardware in Voron. High performance and almost infinitely moddable. Pair it with the open source Klipper firmware and open source slicer OrcaSlicer and you're there.

[sharperguy]

This bill would effectively make prusa illegal, which is my main issue with it. I refuse to buy anything else if it is not open in the same way.

[bluescrn]

3D printer hardware is pretty simple. All the magic happens in software, and there's plenty of open-source options.

[qmr]

Sovol open source hardware and software.

[alnwlsn]

All the open source designs from 10 years ago still work, not like they went away.

[ddtaylor]

AnyCubic AMS is great

[gambiting]

I had the Kobra S1 with the ACE Pro and I couldn't get rid of the thing fast enough, probably the worst electronic device I have ever owned in my entire life. In 8 months with it I completed one multi-colour print, and that was only with ~30 filament changes - to be fair to Anycubic, their support has been excellent and they kept shipping me more and more parts to replace, none of which would solve the fundamental issue of the ACE being generally unfit for the job. In the end if was just a fancy £300 filament dryer, and I decided that you know what, even my Ender 5 was giving me fewer issues than this whole thing. I got an H2D with 2 AMSes and yes, they cost a fortune but they just work. I finished a 9 colour print with 800 filament changes the other day and it just worked fine, not a single problem.

I will always admit that maybe I was just unlucky with my S1 but both the printer and the ACE was horrendous experiences and I wouldn't recommend them to anyone based on my problems with them.

[ddtaylor]

I have a friend that runs a small print farm and he had similar issues, but I didn't know if it was a one off. Thanks for sharing.

[0xedd]

None I know did. If you do your research, all the hype around Bambu is paid. Influencers pushed it. Tech deep dives show it is sub standard. Posted on HN.

Prusa is king. High quality. Open source. EU made and engineered. Slicer is a market leader (Bambu's a fork of it).

[bluescrn]

Prusa may still be king if you're using printers commercially, running them hard 24/7 in a print farm, wanting to be sure your investment has a decent lifespan with readily-available spare parts and upgrade options.

But it's a premium brand now. For lighter use by hobbyists, Bambu is the clear winner on price/performance. The 'less open' downside is not a factor to most people, and the printers generally work so well out-of-the-box that repairability isn't as much of a concern as it was on printers of the past.

Personally I went from a Prusa MK3s to a Bambu P1P (after looking long+hard at Prusa options), and so far, no regrets. (Although I've kept the old Prusa as a 2nd printer and upgraded it to a MK3.5, but mostly just because I do enjoy a bit of tinkering with them)

[luma]

If your goal is to buy the cheapest machine you can find in the world, chances are good everything you buy is going to come from China. That Prusa Mk3 you bought ages ago can be upgraded to the latest model, which means you have the option of turning that device into a lifetime machine, something ONLY Prusa offers.

Yes, the initial purchase price is higher, the lifetime price might not be.

[bluescrn]

Last time I looked, the MK3->MK4 upgrade kit is basically the same price as a complete MK4 kit (very little can be reused. New electronics, motors, extruder)

The upgrade kits are definitely a good thing, going from MK3 to MK3S to MK3.5S was a worthwhile upgrade path and has prolonged the useful life of the printer. But they have their limits.

(And with 3D printing going more mainstream, there's a large segment of the market that has no interest in building printers from kits or stripping down printer to install upgrades - even though some of us find that quite enjoyable)

[crote]

Prusa used to be king.

Their QC and customer support has gradually been getting worse. Their printers are rarely competitive feature-wise. Several printer lines are quietly being retired - with bugs remaining open for years and new features only occasionally being backported from other printers. The open-source part is mostly abandoned due to cheaper third-party clones abusing it.

Don't get me wrong, I really like my Prusa printer, but in 2025 I'd have a really hard time justifying buying another one. The "Prusa premium" just doesn't seem to be worth it anymore.

[JKCalhoun]

I'm a hobbyist and price, in the end, sold me on Bambu Labs.

(And I stayed once I saw the quality. Likely Prusa can match or exceed it, but not with what I was willing to lose from my wallet.)

[ebruchez]

Not criticizing your decision, but I went the opposite way, deciding that I was ok spending a certain extra amount initially in order to encourage a non-Chinese manufacturer. But I understand not everyone has this luxury.

I bought the Core One kit to understand better how the machine works, which reduced the price delta somewhat.

It remains to be seen over the long term which way is actually better financially, as Prusas have historically had long lives, while there is only limited data on the Bambu Lab side yet.

So far, I am quite happy with my decision. But competition is on. I am excited about the upcoming INDX system for the Core One: if it delivers on its promise, it will be fantastic!

[JKCalhoun]

In hindsight, I would have been happy to spend more if I knew the quality of what I was purchasing would be high.

My Ender that I had purchased years earlier sat in the closet gathering dust because of how much of a pain it was trying to dial in the bed to level, etc. I took a second chance at 3D printing on the Bambu, but might not have if it were costly.

If someone now tells me a Prusa (or whatever) is as good as and simple as the Bambu, I would not hesitate to spend even double.

[bmelton]

This _cannot_ be true

I'm new to 3D printing, so grains of salt abound, but since I started in on the hobby this Christmas, I've purchased four 3D printers. 3 budget-but-highly-regarded kings to start, but they all gave me tons of trouble. The Elegoo Centauri Carbon I got for Christmas that sparked this mess is a budget knockoff of the Bambu X1C, but in the first 30 days of ownership, I experienced 2 hardware failures that (thanks to having to ship parts from Mainland China) have resulted in 16 days of downtime.

To deal with the downtime, I bought a stopgap Qidi Q2, but it had tons of problems -- problems which, according to the reviewers, have all been solved for. Ambiguous error messages. Poor English. Choices between "OK" and "Confirm", neither of which advanced the system. Mainboard errors. Extruder failures. Boot failures. Firmware upgrade failures. I experienced all of these within the first 3 hours of ownership, and filed for a return.

I was working on a project that needed a printer, and now despite having bought a bunch of printers, I didn't have any printers that could print. Looking around locally at what I could buy that day amounted to either a Bambu P2S or a Sovol SV08. I struggled here, because I would _much_ rather be the Sovol owner than the Bambu owner, but I needed a printer, not a project, and so I decided I'd try out the Bambu until I got done with what I needed it for, and then I'd return it.

But it turns out it was amazing. The others (admittedly, budget units) were loud and cantankerous, but the Bambu was only uncivilized for a few minutes of each print, and the rest of the time you barely noticed it running. The ecosystem is obviously great. Being able to monitor jobs or initiate prints from my phone is admittedly a novelty, but it's a nice one, and one that speaks to a consistency of integration. But the important part is that it just worked. There were printable upgrades available, I didn't need to print modular pieces to fix design flaws like the other units. I didn't need to move it further away to deal with the noise. I didn't need to investigate arcane error messages because none ever arose.

Now, I haven't owned a Prusa, so I'm not trying to compare them. I understand that Prusa hardware quality is amazing. I believe that. I'm also wildly interested in the community efforts to implement tool-changing with INDX and INBXX, and they're the kinds of projects that I want to tinker with. But if I'm to own a Prusa, or a Sovol, or a Voron, it'll have to be as my second printer (well technically third, because I still own the Elegoo because it's too cheap to bother trying to return) because most of the time I want to print things, not tinkering with the printer. But while the Prusa machines might be amazing, the Prusa XL is wildly expensive for 5 colors, and the Core One right now can't be bought with multi-color capabilities.

I'm not trying to argue against Prusa here, but the idea that only shills are into Bambu seems flatly wrong. I am ideologically opposed to how Bambu got to the market position they've reached, and for sure they've undoubtedly got a fair amount of shills in their employ but sadly, their products more than live up to the hype.

[whynotmaybe]

You are a "new" type of user for the 3d printing world.

In the last decade, most 3d printer users were hobbyists and liked to know the internals of the machine they were using.

That's why there are so many useless models of random gadgets on thingiverse. People didn't care about the output, more about the process.

With the arrival of bambu and the last Creality, the market has shifted to a plug and print model where more and more buy the printer as a tool to produce and output and they don't care about the internals or gcode.

They must be able to control their printers from their phone.

The people that started in 3d printing when they had to assemble the whole machine by hand are now sad to see their hobby replaced by something too easy, it feels like cheating.

"How come you don't know how to level the bed and measure the offset with a piece of paper? "

Just like senior dev are sad to see vibe coding replace "true development craft".

[gambiting]

>>You are a "new" type of user for the 3d printing world.

Why can't you be both. I loved my time with my Ender 5 Pro, I had it for 3 years and I will always freely admit that 90% of the fun was with the tinkering to make the machine work correctly. But you know, you get bored of it. I got an H2D just before christmas and it's incredible to have a machine that "just works". I can print things for myself and others and not worry whether it's going to work or not - it just will.

Same as I used to tinker with my cars when I was younger, now I want an appliance car - I want to get in, press start and drive across europe not worrying whether I'll have to fix it on the roadside or not. I would say it's just getting older, but I Don't think it is - I think everyone goes through stages of developing things they enjoy about their hobbies.

[kortex]

> The people that started in 3d printing when they had to assemble the whole machine by hand are now sad to see their hobby replaced by something too easy, it feels like cheating.

I have a 10 year old kit-built prusa I3 sitting next to me. Its brother is in the basement next to a kossel. It's been years since they have seen action, there is a litany of small bits of work they need.

I unboxed an A1 Mini and it's been like an epiphany. I've been printing almost nonstop. It's so much FUN. I just send from my phone and it just works. Everything has been nearly flawless until last night where half a batch of mini utility knife frames started to spaghetti, probably my fault for not fully cleaning the build plate in a bit.

Beats the hell out of glue stick or blue tape, fussing with slicer params, babysitting the first layers, etc etc. Fuck that, gimme the cheat.

[kube-system]

There are plenty of us “old” type of users who made and designed our own printers and parts and spent hours on calibration, who no longer want to unnecessarily waste time doing so.

I might be a software engineering but I’m not going to waste time writing a bootloader for my next PC when it is a solved problem.

[bmelton]

Sorry for the old-heads, but just because I'm new doesn't mean I don't appreciate the craft, or the pains endured by many others before me that enabled this painless experience.

But if nobody was fixing the problems everybody was experiencing except Bambu, then frankly, good for Bambu.

Boo to the gate-keepers. Vorons still exist and likely always will for those that want to dork around with printers, but for the rest of us, printers that work empower the field. In the past 5 weeks, I've started to learn and understand how 3D printers work, I've started to do some simple 3D modeling, and I've begun making models with OpenSCAD, which wasn't a thing that I knew existed before. Those parts are currently on Github.

I've organized a billion things. I've modeled a corner for my weird desk's keyboard tray so that it stops cutting my knees when I swivel my chair too quickly. I've delighted my wife by printing some conveniences. I have (admittedly infinitesimally) advanced the availability of 3D models in a way that I simply would not yet have if I were still messing around procuring the Voron parts list. Quality tooling advances the craft as it makes it more accessible.

But the main thing is that it doesn't actually help anybody for 3D printing to be more difficult, nor does wanting Bambu to be bad make them not good. They are good, and they're leaps and bounds better than most of the products in the field.

[theodric]

My first printer was a delta in 2015. I spent more time calibrating it than I did printing, and it was never very good. I then got an Anet A8 in 2017, but it was too flimsy. Cheap, tho!

Around 2021 I spent quite a lot upgrading and dialing in an Ender 3 V2 so it was repeatable, whisper-quiet, and dead reliable.

That's it. This doesn't end with me buying a Bambu. It's still all of those things. I'm very happy with my printing appliance, and also that its only data connection is via microSD sneakernet.

[2muchcoffeeman]

I built my Prusa from a kit and was interested in the internals, but I was always annoyed I spent more time working on the printer sometimes than learning CAD.

And the Prusa is a real workhorse. I’ve only had a couple problems in almost a decade.

A lot of the hobby is people printing out useless things. But the it doesn’t even work for people who are interested in learning CAD. There’s no surprised everyone is turning to Bambu. So will I when my Prusa breaks or there’s a sale too hard to pass up.

[passwordoops]

IP/BigCo lawyers are probably the main lobbyists behind this article in the bill so I would think soonish

[dmux]

I wonder if you could circumvent this by adding a thin appendage to whatever it was you're printing and then just snip it off post-print.

[PunchyHamster]

probably about 6 months after people start screaming about the issue

[hedora]

It’ll happen the day this bill is passed.

If they cared even a little bit about gun violence, they’d focus on mental health and other preventive measures.

If they just wanted to provide the illusion that they cared about gun violence, they’d go after high-volume manufacturers first.

This reminds me of Trump’s Venezuela coup. I’m offended they aren’t even bothering to properly lie about their motives.

[nerdsniper]

I’ll just build my own 3D printer lol. Did it college 15 years ago. I’ll do it again.

[nish__]

"And when you're done that, can you build another one and sell it to me?"

You see how it's impossible to regulate technology? I don't want my tax dollars funding impossible missions.

[int_19h]

> And when you're done that, can you build another one and sell it to me?

Yep, that's exactly what the fed undercover will say.

And sure, they can't catch everyone, but they don't have to. They just need to catch and visibly prosecute enough people to create a chilling effect. It's about making it harder, not making it impossible.

Whether the cost/benefit here justifies those gains is a different question.

[estimator7292]

The RIAA tried that. It did not go well for them, and piracy has never been more prevalent or easy.

[Am4TIfIsER0ppos]

Are you sure about that? All the normies use streaming services for music and movies. Techies around here tend to too. The normies don't know about and can't work torrents. They can't even work their own file system. The techies decry it as "inconvenient".

[buellerbueller]

I just don't believe I have the right to consume the creative output of others for free if they've put a price on it.

[crote]

The obvious next move is to ban all sales of 3D printer parts. You got a license for that extruded aluminum profile?

[b00ty4breakfast]

I would unironically love to see the diy 3d printer scene come back.

[SequoiaHope]

It never went away. The Voron continues to be a popular DIY 3D printer, tho many people choose to buy ready-made printers.

[nerdsniper]

DIY used to just be “the way”. Today “the way” is Bambu. But the scene has also grown a lot, so I could see the market size of DIY staying the same or growing, even if its lost a lot of market share.

[_flux]

It's just the difference between having 3d printers as a hobby vs 3d printing as a hobby.

[b00ty4breakfast]

THis is a case of me not knowing and assuming, ha. I remember the peak days of the RepRap scene so I just assumed as that slowed down, the entire thing was dead

[SequoiaHope]

I was attending Bay Area Reprap Club meetings in 2010! Got my first printer (Ultimaker V1) in 2011. My how things have changed. We just got a second Bambu H2D Pro at work. Incredible machine.

[Mashimo]

Open Source and DIY 3d printer scene is very active.

[jazzyjackson]

I’ve unclogged enough nozzles in my lifetime thanks

[DeathArrow]

You can do that if it is still legal.