Bambu Lab announced new software to operate print farms made of their printers.
“Bambu Farm Manager” fills a long-standing gap in functionality from the company. Many customers have purchased dozens or even hundreds of Bambu Lab machines for farm deployment, but had to rely on third-party farm software solutions.
The software runs on Windows 10 (or higher) and provides a number of functions, including:
- Remote monitoring and control
- Batch commands to multiple machines
- Job queuing with automatic dispatch to available machines
- File organization using tags, folders, etc.
- Staggered print initiation to avoid power overloads
This is good news for Bambu Lab print farm operators, but there’s also a reason for the sudden introduction of Bambu Farm Manager.
Earlier this year, Bambu Lab introduced new firmware into their 3D printers to implement additional security features. Previously, the machines were basically “open,” and a variety of third-party software tools were able to direct operations on the devices. Examples included third-party slicers that could launch jobs directly and third-party farm management software.
Bambu Lab feared a malicious attack on customer 3D printers via this channel and cut that off with a new security regime. However, it also cut off all the third-party software access points.
That didn’t go well with the community, where many felt that this was a step Bambu Lab took to gain more control over customers. In response, Bambu Lab introduced a developer mode where operators take responsibility for security on opened machines.
Third-party apps can now run in this mode, including third-party farm management software.
However, it’s likely that many companies may simply opt for using Bambu Farm Manager because it’s coming from the printer manufacturer. In fact, Bambu Lab is offering it for free to customers indefinitely. But there’s a catch. They say:
“We do plan to introduce more advanced, paid features in the future. These are still under exploration, and no decisions have been made regarding their scope or pricing. Our focus is on building out the software in a way that brings real value to teams running serious 3D printing operations, without compromising access to the core platform.”
This is a very good step for Bambu Labs, but it might not be the greatest development for third-party print farm software systems.
Via Bambu Lab
