There’s something going on with the Bambu Lab / Open Source situation, and it is not what you think.
What’s happening? There is an ongoing dispute between Bambu Lab and the open source community. Bambu Lab’s desktop software, BambuStudio, is based on the open source slicing tool PrusaSlicer. Therefore, it is also open source, according to the license.
BambuStudio connects directly with Bambu Lab’s cloud network to access your account’s fleet of 3D printers. OrcaSlicer, based on BambuStudio, used to do so as well, but Bambu Lab closed that option because they feared random actors could access their cloud and create mayhem — which actually did happen a few times.
To solve the issue, Bambu Lab changed the software to allow only BambuStudio to directly access the cloud network, and any third-party tools like OrcaSlicer would instead have to go through a special utility, Bambu Connect. This added an extra operational step to anyone using a non-BambuStudio tool, which wasn’t well received.
Recently, someone made a modification for OrcaSlicer to regain direct cloud access, thus restoring the original direct functionality. Bambu Lab then requested it be taken down as it would enable random access to their private, non-open source cloud network.
However, the modification was done using open source principles according to the licenses, so the open source community is not happy with Bambu Lab’s decision as they believe this is all legal.
While we don’t yet know how this dispute will end, there are large numbers of technical 3D printer operators who say they will “never buy a Bambu Lab machine again”, or “they are moving to Prusa”, etc.
While it’s not clear how this will end, I believe there is something else going on at a higher level.
I’ve long wondered about how open source principles can work with increasingly powerful equipment, as we are now seeing from not only Bambu Lab but other manufacturers.
As an example, consider the common 2D paper printer we all own and use. These are quite powerful devices that can produce incredibly good output, even with photographic quality. They are also quite inexpensive.
But they didn’t used to be so. Years ago, cheap printers were available, but the output quality was awful, and to get anything good, you had to go to a print service. However, over time, the technology caught up, and now these printers are everywhere, and everyone uses them.
And none of them are open source. The technology is so powerful and available at such a low cost that it doesn’t make sense to even attempt to build an open-source 2D paper printer. Just buy one and use it.
Meanwhile, widespread 3D printing started to emerge about 15 years ago. At that time, the technology was amazing, and also terrible: quality was awful, reliability was non-existent, and costs were high. You had to be a technical wizard to operate the equipment, and even then, it was challenging at times.
Because of that, the market for desktop 3D printers has been mostly those who were sufficiently technical to use the machines.
But things are changing. In the past few years, very powerful 3D printers have been released that are far smarter than the original systems. They perform almost all calibrations automatically, and many systems are so easy to use that regular consumers are easily able to buy and operate them.
There is far less need for technical knowledge these days.
3D printer manufacturers went in that direction for one big reason: there are many, many times more consumers than there are technical wizards. If they could make a machine that consumers could actually use, they would grow far faster and larger than they could by only addressing the technical audience.
That is what is happening now.
We are now seeing the beginning of the technical, open-source community detaching from mainstream 3D printers. This is a step along the way towards the same place 2D printers have ended up.
The open source community believes that 3D printers should be open source. Bambu Lab and other companies want to automate the systems to grow access to larger consumer markets. I don’t believe these are compatible trajectories.
We may see the open source community instead cluster around machines from manufacturers offering true open source options, while other 3D printer manufacturers pursue automation and consumers. It’s a split that will grow over time.
Meanwhile, since their machines are now consumer-compatible, the importance of the technical community matters less to Bambu Lab. They won’t need that part of the market in the near future, and maybe even today. The calls you see online to avoid Bambu Lab products really shouldn’t matter to the company, because Bambu Lab is moving towards a much larger market.
So we may see two universes of desktop 3D printing being created: one focused on consumers and automation, and the other catering to technical needs and flexibility.
In the long run, however, the consumer side will become vastly larger than it is even today, and manufacturers addressing the technical market will have an increasingly difficult time competing. Eventually, they may even disappear completely.
And then 3D printing will look very much like the 2D paper printer market.
