The announcement of the Bambu Lab H2D Pro might have something to do with the Stratasys lawsuit.
Back in mid-2024, Stratasys brought a lawsuit against Bambu Lab, in reality against their formal company name, Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology Co., Ltd. The lawsuit alleged that Bambu Lab infringed several patents owned by Stratasys.
That lawsuit is still ongoing, as we continue to see activity on the court tracking page. There have been zero announcements from either company about this lawsuit, but it is quite possible they are quietly negotiating behind the scenes.
Some of Stratasys’ patents almost certainly apply to the products marketed by Bambu Lab, so Stratasys does have some power in the case.
Stratasys has had these patents for many years, and they could have been brought against dozens of players in the 3D print space, but were not. Why Bambu Lab? I speculated that the case might have been brought to Bambu Lab because Stratasys feared Bambu Lab was about to launch a product that would directly compete against the market for their FDM equipment: professionals printing high-quality parts in engineering materials.
Sure enough, Bambu Lab later announced the H2D, a seemingly professional machine, and perhaps that might be the infringing machine Stratasys feared. However, the H2D was strangely bundled with a laser attachment. This was highly unusual, and I speculated that perhaps this was done to enable Bambu Lab to declare that the H2D wasn’t really a competitor to Stratasys’ equipment because it was a different kind of device.
Now we have the H2D Pro, announced just this week. This device does NOT have a laser attachment, and in fact doubles down on engineering materials. The H2D Pro runs at higher temperatures and has a number of features that make it ideal to print production parts in engineering materials. Could this be the machine Stratasys feared, causing them to launch the lawsuit? Even more striking is that the H2D Pro is apparently sold through resellers, just like Stratasys equipment.
I’m not sure what all this means. Could it be that Stratasys and Bambu Lab have come to a quiet agreement behind the scenes already? Could Bambu Lab have agreed to pay royalties to Stratasys to shut down the lawsuit and proceed with H2D Pro sales?
Or perhaps Bambu Lab feels the lawsuit is not valid and they are simply continuing to market what they believe to be a better machine that just happens to compete with Stratasys — and several other companies as well.
I think there could be more to the story here, and the next few months could be quite interesting.
