Hi everyone, is anyone else experiencing the problem that Bambu Studio is practically unusable without an internet connection? The software’s responsiveness is significantly slowed down, and many features don’t work at all.
I’m using a laptop, and as soon as it has internet access, everything runs smoothly. However, since I operate my P1S in LAN-only mode (because I don’t have Wi-Fi in that area), I have to move the laptop to an environment with internet whenever I need to slice something new or make changes so that Bambu Studio works properly.
Has anyone found a solution or workaround for this issue? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Yes. The solution is Prusa, Creality, Qidi or anything else that is “NOT Bambu”.
In case you haven’t been following current events. This is at the heart of Bambu’s current controversy. According to Bambu, you’re imagining this problem, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, there’s nothing to see there. Except, people keep coming back with the same issues, the product simply is unstable without an Internet connection.
The bottom line is that LAN-only mode was clearly a stopgap measure implemented when Bambu Labs was caught off guard at the introduction of the X1C in 2022. To their credit, in 2022, they admitted they were humble ex-robotics engineers—mostly from DJI—with little expertise in networking. At the launch of the X1C and P1, Bambu placated the community by introducing LAN-only mode to silence cybersecurity concerns about their lack of security with their cloud offering.
Last month, Bambu came back with a vengeance, implementing—for our own good—the new Bambu Connector to ensure our LAN was “properly protected” from us. How fortunate we are to have such shepherds watching over their flock. Except these measures were defeated within 24 hours, accomplishing nothing except blocking third-party hardware and software like Orca Slicer from working in future releases. Orca has stated they will not support Bambu going forward and suggested people refrain from updating their firmware.
Er… not sure the firmware security lunacy relates to Bambu Studio being used offline though …
What sorts of features are you referring to though as not working? And generally unresponsive/slowed down or is it specific things that are slow? As it sounds odd that Bambu Studio itself would require internet just to perform slicing tasks… Sending to the printer, sure, that slows down as you are sending directly to the printer, not uploading to the Bambu servers (and it then being downloaded by the printer autonomously).
Thank you for your response, but I have not performed an update, and I don’t understand how they could influence the performance of the slicer without an internet connection. Without an internet connection, it doesn’t make sense to me.
Some functions for aligning parts cannot be selected, and everything else works, but extremely slowly. Things like selecting the layer height or other settings in the menu, as well as switching between tabs, are extremely sluggish. Slicing doesn’t work at all. I have not encountered this issue with any other slicer, including Orca, which I have tested.
I see the exact same behavior with Bambu Studio when it’s denied outgoing Internet access by my local firewall. (Even though I’m pretty much using Orca only now, I was trying to test out BS to see if the video worked better… it didn’t.)
It occurred to me that I overlooked a possible work around. Apparently there is a method by which one can create a file called user_network.cfg that contains the SSID and password to one’s WIFI. I was not able to get it to work. However, here is the Wiki on that topic. If you test this, please post your results so that the community can benefit.
I tried that when setting things up from scratch with the last update.
First two times nothing at all happened.
After basically getting the printer back to all factory defaults it did connect to my Wifi but I was still unable to reach it through Handy and Studio.
Might be a nice gimmick if it works but so far I can’t get it to work reliable.
This has been mentioned in a few other threads on here (some by myself). It does work, that is how I use my printer (P1S). Since I have no cell service and phone is not connected to wi-fi the only way I can set up my printer was this method. Supposedly notepad ++ works better. I haven’t tested yet if the cfg file has to stay on the card or if the settings are loaded into something like nvram. I really don’t like the thought of storing ssid and password in plain text on a micro card and certainly wouldn’t do it in a buisness environment. BS works but I have to reconnect to printer a lot. Sometimes from just changeing between tabs in studio. Orca can connect to it also.
OK, just tested the card in/out boot. My printer has been off for a few days so I popped the card out and powered it on. Came up, showd SSID name in display area. Fired up BS and connected to device. Had to enter the super secret squirrel number but it did connect fine. And having to enter the number is no new thing, I have had to do it a couple of times. At least so far it is always the same number.
I think the thread changed topics. I thought we were hating on Bambu Studio’s behavior, not the difficulty of getting the printer connected to your LAN.
The code for BS is trash. There’s no reason it should be spinning a thread at 100% CPU (apparently the same one that handles UI events!) trying to connect to the Internet when it’s being denied access. It kinda works offline, but its so slow that it’s pointless.
However… I unchecked these two options in the preferences part of the menu. And then it seems to behave better. @user_Alex
