I totally get wanting to capitalize on being the only one selling a certain product and also selling all of the tools and hardware as well. But to breed innovation I believe that having other companies in the space all competing to make the best parts would be infinitely better for the product and truly show you what the machine is capable of. I have seen 1 aftermarket nozzle for your printer on alibaba but I don’t really trust it, but If I was to see Matterhackers or E3D had just dropped a bambulabs hotend I would be all over it. Please try to expand the parts availabilty and makers because I have been waiting for about a month for nozzles and the textured build plate to come in stock. Having more options would be nice.
Don’t expect Bambu Labs to jump into this, but the aftermarket probably will over time. You can already get alternative steel sheets and, as you note, nozzles. Bambu’s own manufacturing will catch up too - the demand has been very high at the start.
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I think that other manufactures are going to be hard put to sell a standard .4mm hot end, not just nozzle for less than the $9us that BL is selling it at.
Even at $34 for a complete plug and play (fan, sensor, heater, sock) in hardened steel in .04, .06 and .08mm options is a great deal.
I think you would be hard put to do the same with the other printers on the market.
I have a mill and lathe and built my own 300c hot end assembly for my Ender 5 and have more invested than that without labor. Waiting for retrofit kits for putting a BL extruder and hotend on the Ender and clone printers. Betting the flow rate is up there with the Volcano hotends…May have to give that a go myself.
My 2 cents. I think Bambu Lab is so far doing pretty well (just replenish the stock faster!) - prices are in fact lower than what I found aftermarket, PEI sheet price is a steal (which must be why it sould out few hours before my order :-D). Assuming Bambu is not losing money on this, I think they should keep it tight for a little while more to recuperate some costs. I think X1 is still only just really getting mass produced in larger numbers, P1P is still new and both have really competetive price for what they offer. I hope later, ecosystem opens a bit and we get access to some cool mods, but that will happen whether Bambu want that or not, reverse engineering is a thing. When more people get their printers, more companies will try and sell us parts, like nozzles.
It would of course be great for Bambu to release their NFC keys, specs to everything, firmware source, CAD files for parts etc., but then they’d go broke and I’m pretty sure nobody wants that 