I just watched a new interview Stefan from cnc kitchen had with Dr. Tao. I felt this was again a very open and honest interview. Lots of design choices and thought behind the scenes. I understand the why in their decision-making a bit more. I thing it was an interesting 1h50 mins.
Some topics discussed:
Different nozzle sizes simultaneously
Size of printer
Why the laser
the vision plate benefits
the heatbed design
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Everybody should stop buying Bambu they have raise their prices saying it’s because of tariffs. That is a lie other companies like Anycubic and creality has lowered their prices and makes very good products for half the price
I own 22 Bambu printers and will not buy a new one because of the raise in price, they came out with one price and then a couple weeks later they raise their prices. Why they raised their prices is because of their sales not because of tariffs they seen people buying it so they said OK let’s raise our prices. That is sad way to run a business.
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Im not going to challenge your opinion, but I do believe thats not quite on topic on my message. Have you even watched the video?
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Thanks for the heads up @OfthewellNL. I was on the lookout for that interview and look forward to taking the time to watch it. I thought I had turned on notifications for Stefan’s channel but apparently not.
Naturally I will have my filter turned on but I am quite interesting in the insights it might have to offer.
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Thanks very interesting. You can post the youtube link directly I think, I’ll try…
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If tariffs was not the reason for increased prices in the US, how do you explain prices in Europe, Canada, Japan, UK, Asia etc have not increased a penny?
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Exactly, wait till pharma products … medicines and stuff get tariffs. I find it mindboggling that so many people do not understand what a tariff is and what the consequences are.
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@OfthewellNL Cheers for sharing! I just watched it.
So back on topic?
There are things in the interview I liked hearing and things I liked less. Nearly the entire duration of the video I was interested in the engineering discussion around the printer, save some necessary glossing over from stefan and Tao.
The last bit about the controversy surrounding developer mode and MQTT left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Claiming the victim over suspicion about your product where the advancements you are using to profit are built on the many backs of free open source development in the industry would not be my first move.
I understand Bambu’s opinion on the subject and realistically I think they are doing as much as they can in the circumstances of being the industry leader as they are. But I don’t think criticizing the community that built you for its reaction is very considerate.
That aside I would be excited to see more discussion from the bambu team around engineering decisions and the testing that informed them. I think that largely quells the vitriolic responses from the community or at least contextualizes them.
People that actually print want the best printing experience for the money. In a largely experimental manufacturing field, sharing the information around what makes things work gets us all closer to the fabled perfect printer.
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Some people can only learn these things the hard way, unfortunately. Sucks for the rest of us though!
I got the impression that Stefan was reluctant to drill any deeper than whatever was offered in a first answer. Not wanting to put Tao on the spot. I get the predicament. It’s not a deposition. Tao isn’t obligated to say anything at all if he doesn’t want to. The net effect was that Stefan elicited some amount of information, but probably orders of magnitude less than what, say, Steve Jobs or Musk would have volunteered regarding an already released product. Or maybe even Prusa for that matter. But, admittedly, different culture, different mores. I did get at least some small insights I didn’t have before. It just is what it is.
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In all honesty, the result of the tariffs depends on the company and the amount of profit margin they have baked into their product and how long and how much they are willing to reduce that their profit margin. As such, tariffs can be selectively absorbed by the vendor or passed along to the consumer depending on the product strategy they are employing and the market sector they are targeting. Interesting to note, in observing and speaking with other 3D printer manufacturers, I learned that, unlike Bambu Lab, they are taking the long view and they will be temporarily taking the hit with the full expectation that the tariffs will only be temporary for the next several months.
In their mind, they want to keep the prices down to maintain long-term customer satisfaction. Whereas Bambu Lab has opted to raise their prices which has the potential to shoo away customers, they view it as a long-term investment. Ultimately, they hope to convert that market share of lost Bambu Lab sales toward their side of the column by taking the high road of making themselves look like they put the customer above profits. They are still making a profit from what I understand. I am not sure what Bambu Lab’s PnL looks like. They invest more heavily in marketing than any other company I know of with MakerWorld’s constant giveaways and hardware pricing also subsidize their free cloud services for their customers.
I would say that while the MakerWorld investment is a cash cow, it may be advisable in the short term to divert funds from that marketing campaign and focus on keeping hardware prices down or they may run the risk of lost sales and diminished customer prospects by that prioritization scheme. I know myself in speaking with fellow makers that a common complaint is the raised prices and a common solution they are considering is going with Creality’s K2 Plus or other brands like Qidi or Anycubic. I know myself that the Creality K2 Plus has significant higher failure rates and hardware issues, including taco-shaped print beds, failing toolhead cables, sticking buffers, cracked doors, broken feet, and the list goes on and on, to the point that I have a hard time now purchasing one, but that does not seem to dissuade people nonetheless.
However, Creality has been doing something that Bambu Lab might consider copying: they are sending sales teams to Micro Centers throughtout the United States. Despite the negativity, that simple strategy did a lot to sell their units (regardless of Creality printers’ actual quality or lack thereof) at my local store, much more than any fancy 3D rendered, professionally edited marketing materials would ever accomplish. I personally saw this this last weekend while visiting my local store where Creality was holding hands-on demos, gathering feedback, and running giveaways. The personal touch goes a long way. Word of mouth is what sold the Bambu Lab brand from Kickstarter to a million-plus marvel in the consumer space. And I think continuing that legacy by meeting people face-to-face locally through stores might be a good way to make inroads with customers.
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That strikes me as off the mark.
I believe they’re keeping prices down to maintain sales volume, and that if they cared about customer satisfaction they wouldn’t sell such unreliable products, and support them better as is so often necessary.
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Creality “quality” is exactly it, but most customers do have a threshold for pricing plus many are not going to do their due diligence either and of those customers they are going to just go with it thinking that $1300 with a few headaches is far preferrable to $2400 without–bless their hearts. You know that, I know that, but we both also know that seeing something at half the price that claims to be just as good in a market where the competitor’s offering is now double the price (Micro Center just raised the price of the H2D Combo this morning to Bambu Lab’s current MSRP) as it does now has a highly tempting “forbidden fruit” appeal about it. Now, put a company representative in the room in such an environment and it can be just the thing to give customers who are on the edge the confidence boost thinking the company cares, and that is exactly what I saw when I was in my Micro Center location: sales conversions.
I think the best part of the whole interview is in the last few seconds. The obvious sigh of Stephan when Dr. Tao doesn’t give clear answers about certain decisions, and that while the screen is already black.
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The engineering insight I liked very much, and I do thin,k they make good (though obv. not flawless) products, and have a knack for finding good combinations of features people actually want vs what they say they want (excluding the laser-thing, I still think that is a bad idea to include). Many people say they want a humongously large printer and true idex, but I do kind of agree with his statement the volume is large enough for wat most people want to do with it, and that the dual-extruder setup is a good compromise between function and cost, esp. combined with AMS
The part about the firmware “security” lockdown however worries me more: from the statements he makes I take it they are more sorry they “forgot” to lock it down at the begining, instead of seeing how a more open (and this doesn’t have to be totoaly open, just publish an actual local api or something instead of having everyone reverse engineer it) ecosystem benefits them as well, as it can augment the products they sell themselves (and thus make them more attractive), while still kepping a “just works” integration with their own products. I would think they do not need to lock it down to squeeze us for the money, as “everything” they make routinely sells out, and even their filament is regularly out of stock.
Though I guess enough money is never enough these days.
Bambu’s variable cost in making the H2D is perhaps a couple of hundred dollars. So they have a lot of ways they can handle selling the lower volume H2D to the U.S. The A series is likely much more problematic for them.
Without knowing specifics I think they are handling pricing about as well as they can so far. Even the orange man doesn’t know what he will do next week, so planning is just guessing.
In the long run Bambu doesn’t want to appear unreliable to their U.S. customer base.
A hot company making some customer sad about pricing is usually desirable. When manufacturing near capacity, if some customers are not mad about cost the price is too low.
For me it was missing whether some other new printers are on the way, but
I understood they are going to bring a Laser-only device. No my point of interest.
I would more like to see a pimped X1C or P1S with bigger size and maybe adapted mechanics (but would not be a must). The “explaination” of the name H2D was poor.
Dr. Tao seems to be a clever guy, but why they need to choose Carbon rots on X1/P1 but
can now use linear rails with a much heavier printhat was also not conclusive.
Anyway I wait for what printer comes next. For the time being the H2D does not fit into the place I am using actually.
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Comparing The A1 and P1 series to anything from creality or anycubic is how i know you must work for one of them.
I only say A1 and P1 series because those are the only ones I’ve worked with from Bambu but they are solid machines and were well worth the price paid at the time. I’m sure the other brands lowered their price to sucker people into buying a machine they have to screw with every other print. Seriously bambu printer (ftmp) are like a daily driver car; runs reliably witu minimal maintenance. Any other brands I’ve used are like a beater with a heater; somethings always broken or needs fixed or diagnosed.
Bambu is well worth it in my opinion
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