Open letter to Bambu Lab about supporting user wants and needs

[julie777]

To Bambu Lab:

I was planning to write a one year review of my experience with my Bambu Lab P1P. In it I was going to list positives and negatives. I had already written multiple pages before I decided to write this open letter with suggestions to support ALL users instead.

I will provide a much shortened list without detailed explanation here.
Pros:

• Fantastic hardware
• usable software
• perfect for the user that just wants to download models and print them
• good out of the box experience

Cons:

• too much is proprietary and Bambu Lab tries to hide as much as possible even when they do not need to and even if it hurts the users
• their focus is on creating a walled garden. For example instead of building a great system with local networking first and then adding cloud support, they built the system around the cloud and only when the uproar of the user base got too loud did they add LAN support, but in an incomplete and awkward way
• many features are incomplete and bugs do not always get fixed. Instead all the resources are put toward developing more ways of locking users into their ecosystem. (Did we really need another public model repository in addition to the dozen or so that already exist?)

Bambu Lab please consider focusing on your core competency and strength, which is the hardware, and open up the rest of the system to allow advanced users to

1. help improve the system
2. invent new ways of doing things
3. use the printers in ways that do not fit well in your ecosystem vision
4. create custom solutions

Next, stop trying to hide everything possible. This hurts the users. This makes everything more difficult. This causes you to receive more support requests than necessary.

Now I am going to make specific requests, some of which I have already submitted here and on GitHub.

Provide Complete LAN support

LAN mode should not be an afterthought that barely works. It should be the most usable and easiest way to use the printer. (Cloud is not always functioning. Printers are used in internet restricted environments, or with sensitive data.)

Specific functionality that is missing.

• ability to connect to wireless network without using phone app. It should be possible to either put a file with wireless network info on the SD card to be used automatically, or for the X1 printers it could be entered at the console.
• allow the printer firmware to be updated from Bambu Studio without the printer having internet access.
• provide a “use local network” preference in Bambu Studio so it does not try to use the internet in LAN mode. Before the network log was encrypted, I could see that even when my printer was in LAN only mode, Bambu Studio made dozens of cloud requests before a print was sent to the printer.
• provide a preference in bambu studio to allow the user to choose if it checks for available updates for it or for the firmware of known printers
• maintain printer information when the user switches between LAN and cloud mode. It is terrible now that in order to update firmware I must turn off LAN mode, then use Handy to re-add the printer to the cloud, update the firmware and then change back to LAN mode.
• Always use the LAN when available to communicate with the printer. If the user sends a print to the printer then send it directly via LAN. In addition, if they are using the cloud the send a copy of the file to the cloud for storage. This eliminates problems when the cloud is not functioning.
• add the source code for the network dll to the Bambu Studio repo. Hiding this gives the user community the feeling that there might be network traffic that they would not approve of.

Store all log files in plain text.

The primary reason for storing all log files in text format, both for Bambu Studio, and for the printer itself, is to allow the users to easily access the log information which allows them to troubleshoot and solve problems that occur. This lets users quickly get things working again. This is a better user experience. This minimizes support calls.

The secondary reason for providing plain text log files is security. Many of us in the user community would never send a log file to a company or add it to a bug report on GitHub without being able to scan it for any sensitive information. For users, not knowing what they are giving away is a bad idea.

Fully document all G-code

We know that the G-code is based on Marlin, but there are many common codes that are not implemented and many custom codes added. There are also codes that are implemented in a non-standard way. All of this makes it hard for any users that want to write custom g-code. There is no reason to hide this from the users.

I use my own start and end g-code. Of course, this is not always easy because the default gcode provided in Bambu Studio uses codes that are not documented.

There are other uses for hand coded g-code. Sometimes advanced users want to do things that cannot be done in the slicer. There are also many users who test printers and filament by generating custom gcode with a program other than the slicer.

Fully document all error codes

Users must be able to quickly identify the cause of errors so that they can correct the issue and continue as quickly as possible.

• Currently error codes are not easy to look up. There should be a simple numerical listing of all error codes. Error codes should be pulled directly from source code so that none are missed.
• all error codes should be documented with cause and potential solutions
• the correct error code should be raised when an issue is detected by the printer. (This is not always true currently.)

When I originally asked for this I was told by a BBL employee that Bambu Lab did not want to provide all error codes because… (I do not recollect all the details, but there is no valid reason to hide error codes.)

Allow users to contribute to the wiki

I find the wiki hard to use because:

• organization is not good, although is is slowly getting better
• the search function is not good and search disappears when a page is chosen.
• most of the links do no allow opening in a new tab.

There is a note about users being allowed to contribute to the wiki to help add more information and to correct small errors. However I requested access almost a year ago and have not heard back. This is another case of not letting the user community participate to make the Bambu Lab ecosystem better.

Complete the implementation of real Projects

One of the big features added to Prusa Slicer when creating Bambu Studio was the notion of a project with multiple plates. That is a great idea. It would allow bundling everything in one place. Sadly, it was never completed and projects are not providing the ability to use a project for many of the most useful functionality.

• although the ability to set presets (printer, filament, process) for the entire project is useful for simple projects with one plate, to be able to actually use a project to manage dozens of objects, which might use different filaments and other settings to print correctly, the ability to set presets per plate is an absolute requirement. (Currently the user will end up using multiple project files.)
• Plate naming and plate management must be simple and easy.
  • Plates should be in a sidebar in prepare mode like they are in preview. Currently in prepare mode more than about six plates is unmanageable because they are all shown. Selecting more than one to be visible is required also so allow moving objects among plates. Dragging an object from a plate to the icon in the sidebar would also be useful.
  • an unnamed plate should be automatically given the name of the first object added to it. In many, if not most, situations this will be a usable name and not require the user to go through the steps to name the plate explicitly
• Plate names should be shown in printer status. That should be the primary display and the project name secondary. It is the plate name that is specific.
• G-code should be saved in the project after a plate is sliced. There is no reason to require reslicing when the user opens a project on another day to reprint an object/plate. In fact, saving g-code can prevent the user from reslicing a model that printed perfectly and have it print poorly because some setting has changed. Currently this is an issue because presets are not saved per plate. (Presets are only settable per project.)

Fully document the IOT/MQTT implementation

While I am not sure that a 3D printer should be part of the IOT or use MQTT for communication, I can see how monitoring and MQTT are highly compatible.

Given that the printers do support MQTT, it should be documented to allow users to integrate printer monitoring and control into other systems. Preventing this does not benefit Bambu Lab, but in contrast just shows that it does not want users to be able to do more than what BBL allows. (To reiterate, users are buying your printers because of the hardware. Opening up the ecosystem and allowing users to do more with the printers with sell more printers.)

Encourage contributions to the software

Bambu Studio is on GitHub, but I do not believe that it is very open to contribution. Many of the issues that were reported more than a year ago are not fixed. Features have not been implemented. In fact, Orca Slicer was created to be able to quickly add new features that were not accepted into Bambu Studio.Open Source software gets better quickly when the entire user base is allowed to contribute.

BBL does not even point users to GitHub to report issues. Rather they let users just post them on the forum where they may never get addressed. There certainly is no status for issues reported on the forum.

Other

I am sure that I did not cover everything, but this should be a good start.
I hope that other users in the community will also put pressure on Bambu Lab to support our creativity and help us help them.

Respectfully,
Julie Jones

[JonRaymond]

You made some really good points.

@julie777

• ability to connect to wireless network without using phone app. It should be possible to either put a file with wireless network info on the SD card to be used automatically, or for the X1 printers it could be entered at the console.

FYI - This is something that is already possible ( P- series & X - series ). The issue is the initial pairing process must be done via the Handy App.

[Quietman]

I would be happy if they would give users back the ability to revert to previous versions of firmware until bugs are fixed. I kept canceling the last firmware update on my P1S until the .02 update came out. Look at the bug fixes in .01 and .02 and you can see why reversion should be allowed.

Stop blocking 3rd party add ons that make your printers more desirable just because your paranoid about losing money. That will make sure your sales go down.

The possible issue with the Panda Touch with future firmware versions, and the notice that custom filament profiles may be blocked by future updates of either Bambu Studio or firmware until a solution is worked out between the firmware and BS versions in future versions. For now, until I see how things shake out, I’ve quit recommending BL printers for friends that don’t care about a multicolor option.

[TravisNVX]

The firmware reverting would be especially handy with how bad their software QA seems to have gotten in the last few months in particular. Makes me super nervous every time I see an update come out.

[3dEd]

I am rather new to 3D printing, having bought my first printer, a Vyper, a year and a few months ago. Right out of the box, I was printing high precision gears, pushing the limits of what PLA was capable of. As far as producing machine members, the Vyper performed wonderfully, yet it didn’t always produce the prettiest of prints. There were little ripples here and there and the tell-tale signs of the last drop before it moved to the next part. I listened to people on YouTube and read things people wrote on-line and tried to tweak my printer into better performance. There were towers for this and that, cubes of various types, and numerous measurements and settings to consider. Nothing ever seemed to ever make things better, some made them worse. One fellow advised me that if one has to tweak their settings, then the hardware is most likely faulty. Turned out that every time a problem arose with my Vyper, a nozzle or hotend swap solved the problem. That is to say that it runs best on factory settings with a fresh nozzle.

In my professional life, designer has often been part of my job title. It has been my job to design objects that others then built. Part of that design process is the producibility of the part. If a machinist is unable to machine a part, then it is the job of the designer to design a part that can be machined. It is one of those issues that matters greatly as to productivity and profitability. My year with my Vyper has taught me the capabilities and the limitations of 3D printing and of various filaments. During that time, I often thought that my Vyper would make better prints if the flow control was more dynamic, if it had the ability to make adjustments on the fly. I had my eye on one of the new fast Anycubic printers when the A1 became available, with dynamic flow control. With my son’s assistance I bought one the day after they became available. Then he gave me a P1S last month. (yes, I have a great son.) The idea of a desktop prototyping machine has long appealed to me. Both the A1 and P1S produce prints of the highest quality as long as one creates quality models that fully take advantage of the nature of the printers.

Currently the consumer level 3D printing industry is going through a phase that is a bit like what the computer industry went through 30+ years ago. The personal computer began as a mostly open-source project, consisting of a lot of college students and dropouts, as well as hobbyists and tinkerers. The idea was that everyone would contribute to the collective, and everyone would benefit collectively. The problem being that the model is rather limiting - to only those of sufficient technical interest and know-how. Steve Jobs is often touted as a genius because he saw the potential of the personal computer as a consumer product and had the ability to act on that vision. There were a lot of people who objected to Windows, preferring the “simplicity” of DOS. But at least it was built on an open platform, unlike the Macintosh, which was built on a closed, proprietary platform. The open-source community survives, yet mostly in the shadows, being eclipsed by the superior development capabilities of for-profit organizations.

When I read comments by users talking about playing with settings and those complaining about not being able to access every little setting and play with every line of code, I wonder what it is that they are up to. I just don’t see the need to twiddle with the internal workings of the printers as the printers work just fine. As I have already said, my interest is in design, not in operating a machine. When people like the OP make statements such as, “perfect for the user that just wants to download models and print them” and then claims to be an “advanced user” it comes off as rather condescending. Is the OP really an advanced user, or just someone who likes to twiddle with the knobs? Someone who spends a lot of time on test prints, rather than creating useful objects? What is most intellectually insulting is the idea that Bambu, or any company would just give up their proprietary intellectual property to hackers and tinkerers. A lot of money was invested in creating the Bambu printers. Dozens of top engineers were involved in state-of-the-art facilities, yet the OP thinks that they can just twiddle a few settings and discover something that no one ever thought of. I find such an attitude rather laughable. I highly suspect that those who twiddle the most, call customer service the most.

The OP claims that hardware is Bambu’s core competency. Apparently, the OP is unaware of how the Bambu Lab printers work. That things such as the quietness and dynamic flow control comes from advanced software. The A1 has advanced technology that the P1 series does not, showing that Bambu’s technology has been growing, developing. Operating my printers, either through the cloud or via an SD card has been flawless. Bambu has created an environment that, for me, has worked seamlessly.

Bambu Lab has produced printers that greatly support my creativity by allowing me to create multi-color designs of the highest quality, with no need to worry about the printer. I don’t need to hack the G-code to help my creativity or to get better quality prints. Plus, I am not so sure that the OP knows how to manipulate objects across multiple plates all that well. Or is aware that a sliced file can be saved for future use. Or practices adequate configuration control.

[lkraus]

I was pretty much right there with you until your last two paragraphs. As a relative newcomer, you may not be aware that OP is a very experienced 3D printer who has made valuable contributions to this forum and the Studio Github.

@julie777 has been a little less active here in recent months, I suspect either being too busy actually printing, or possibly just tired of answering newbie questions (many of them mine).

[TommyL]

I would add the ability for many people to share 1 or more printers without having to share an account. Ultimaker had a great system for this and made it easy to implement.

[Josh-3D]

I think a lot of the old school 3d printing crowd seems pretty entitled.(I’m being dramatic for argument’s sake) They don’t seem to entirely get what Bambu is about. They aren’t just their printers. They are the ecosystem that they’ve setup. I mean it’s made mention of why do we need another model repository, and to make that statement shows a lack of understanding of what Bambu is trying to do. Bambu isn’t catering to the old school open source crowd. That’s not the market they’re after. They’are after the consumer market. The market that wants to print their own designs, not to play with a printer all day and have to tweak everything every time.

Let’s circle back around to Makerworld, and the question, why does makerworld exist? It’s because of full vertical integration. Bambu can’t do what they’re doing with makerworld, by just ushering users to a third party site. They can’t get that high level of integration that makes the whole system seamless for end users. (There’s a lot of security concerns that go with building a system like that out too, and that’s something old school 3d printer peeps don’t seem to understand as Bambu works to better secure the underlining system of their printers. They are blocking off certain access, but they’re also working to provide secure channels for that same access… so).

I spent the time to get to know the system and how it works. From my perspective as a designer, to the perspective of an end user using the app to download and print my designs. I wholeheartedly believe it’s a great system. I upload exclusively to makerworld anymore because it allows me, as a designer, to better present and prepare my work for the end user to print!

Bambu isn’t for people that want to endlessly fiddle with their printers. It should be fairly obvious. Their system is built around a consumer end user, and it should be obvious that’s where their focus is. There’s fine points in all of this, but I feel stuff like this is a bit tone deft to what Bambu actually is trying to achieve too. It comes to that point of, why are you trying to force Bambu to be more like Prusa, when it’s just, not what they are? And there’s nothing wrong with that.

The question was once posed about why do people make questions like this, demand things like this of Bambu, when this isn’t what they are. Maybe it’s that annoyance that such a good printer comes with these restrictions, and right now it’s still difficult to find a printer of this same level in the full open source space? People make lengthy post talking about alternatives, afterall, yet here we still are.

For me, at the end of the day, I want what Bambu is making. I like their whole system. It needs some maturing, but see, I feel it needs maturing in ways that are counter to OP. I want the cloud embraced better. I want more work done on makerworld. I don’t want to have to sit there and fiddle with an endless sea of options, and I really enjoy how refined things are out of the box. I’ve not yet once felt the need to sit and have to fiddle with a bunch of printer settings. As a designer, my ability to design has exploded! I can actually make complex things with certainty and smoothness now because the machine is getting out of my way. I don’t want to ever have to mess with gcode again. I don’t want to ever have to think about starting and ending gcode again. I don’t ever want to have to fiddle with firmware settings again. I am sick of trying to tweak printer settings because the manufacture never bothered to put any effort into setting that stuff up beforehand. All I’ve changed setting-wise is what I’d call personal preference settings. I shouldn’t need access to every underlying setting and system.

It reminds me of the days of Mental Ray and when Vray and render engines like that started coming out. Mental-ray was a mess to work with. It gave you raw access to every setting imaginable, but it was a beast to work with because of that. Vray took those same concepts and settings and over their years refined them into a very simple to use UI that gets out of your way. I don’t need to personally be the one to control and tweak all of this stuff. Some smart dudes/ladies already did that! I feel like 3d printing should be the same. I shouldn’t, as an end user, have to or need to tweak all of this stuff endlessly. As a consumer device, I just want it to work. That might make some people shriek in horror, like how can you do that with 3d printing?! Impossible?! But Bambu shows it is possible.

I’m not trying to say OPs points are invalid or anything like that. There’s a lot of thoughtful and valid points. There’s a lot of it too that I would say frankly just doesn’t matter to Bambu’s target audience, and the percentage of users wanting stuff like that is low and likely going down as Bambu expands into that consumer market. If you truly and deeply need those things, you need to be looking at 3d printers for people that want to mess with 3d printers.

To that end though. Lan support should be improved. Fully documented g-code should be a thing, as should be error codes. They said they’re working on an API for the IOT stuff, so.

[chrysler1941]

Never understood the Handy requirement. Never used it. My X1C connects with no issues. Same with cloud. Click print and it starts after 3 seconds.

[Josh-3D]

By the way. I made this post not to discount what OP is saying, but to say there is value for people in certain aspects of what Bambu offers, that others might not see the value in, or think matter. I made this post specifically because of the comment about makerworld. Because for me, that’s one of the parts about their system I like the most. It provides value that I can’t find anywhere else, so. I mean, it’s an area where I want to see them put resources and develop further. I have my own opinions and wishlist for that side of things. Haha.

[Josh-3D]

@chrysler1941

Never understood the Handy requirement. Never used it.

If I were to review it, I’d say “It’s not the most useless app”.

I do like the way things are presented when printing from the app. However, that’s when it’s setup right. I mean, it can be like browsing through a catalog of parts, you select the one you need, hit print, and bob’s your uncle!

If no care is given to setting up the print profiles and stuff though, then it’s meh.

That’s the failing of their system though, is there’s a lot of meh effort you have to dig through, and it reflects poorly on the system as a whole. It’s difficult to see how well it can work, because it’s gunked up by meh.

[3dEd]

Somehow I am not impressed.

[Ankou556]

Here’s the thing. I really don’t have a problem with a closed system like BBL has made. I absolutely love the “plug n play” aspect of my A1. My issue comes with the lack of responsiveness of BBL when there is an issue. Example, the camera “stream” has been screwed up for months and BBL hasn’t fixed it. I think where BBL needs to improve is the Customer Service aspect of their business model.
The fact is, that the BBL machines aren’t built for the tinkerer, the person that wants to tweak every aspect of the whole process. There’s plenty of options out there for that, heck I’ve got an Ender 3 S1 Plus that required so much tinkering I tinkered it right into a box and stuck it in a closet…and I’m a bit of a techno geek. The BBL are made for people who want to click print, and have it print. I think the issue is, the hardware is so good that the tinkerers want to use it but they want to use it their way, which is not the way it’s designed to be used.
Could BBL make improvements by opening up some, absolutely. Does BBL have a financial stake in controlling access, absolutely. Better customer service from BBL would go a long way to reducing the griping.

[Patrick_UK]

Opening up the system will only cater to the small group who want to tinker with their printers. This is not really the main demographic that bambu are going after, they are looking more at the market where people want a machine you set and forget, with a high percentage of success. This is the main reason for a walled garden, lots of tech companies do this.

I think people are stuck in the past where they think everything should be open source, maybe in the early days that helps get things moving but as technology progresses this model does payback on the investment put in to make great leaps. You will often find when hardware is opensource the end users are expected to accept a product which isn’t polished and hide behind the OS wall as an excuse to release a part finished product.

MQTT is a great thing to have for me as I can monitor my machine using this on my local network. I do have a X1C and not a P1P.

[msmith18]

You bring up some valid points. I love our Bambu BUT I cannot use it to make our companies products because they must go out to the cloud and we lose all control of our designs. In those cases we must use our Prusa printers which are not as fast. This will hurt Bambu because we will have to buy other manufactures (slower) printers as we continue expanding.

[j0chn]

I hope that BL will do as you wish. X1CPlus may be an alternative (did not fully check it yet) but would be the last option to not loose warranty / support.

[iAreku]

Warranty is lost at one point or another so… here are your options too

[bearsports]

Having been around at the start of personal computing – my first was a 40-lb Compaq suitcase “portable” – I completely agree with your analogy. I vividly remember DOS and CPM coding and imputs to get any-damn-thing to work. More frustrating than anything else, but you could see where it was all going. The first Apple and IBM PC were revelations! Finally no more need to type arcane text instructions to get the computer to do something!

Instead, you could just WORK on them, producing words, spreadsheets, graphics, etc and much more etc.

Exactly why I love my A-1! I’d messed around long enough with the fiddley-bs of other 3D printers, trying to get prints made, but having to constantly adjust things, level the bed countless times, etc and much etc. My SIL, who also went through this stage before discovering Bambu Labs, now runs two X1s nearly 24/7, PRODUCING his builds, which he sells.

Is Bambu perfect? Of course not. But it’s far better than anything else on the market, and part of the reason is that they’ve simplified the process of 3D printing so that you can quickly and easily do actual work with them . . . just like the first Apple and IBM PC.

[3DSAT]

It is nothing new to say that the ecosystem created by Bambulab delights all those users who do not want to have to adjust, modify or improve their 3D printers, they just want to print.

It is also not at all unreasonable to assume that they are printers with a closed environment where we cannot, nor should we, modify anything because most of the time it is not necessary.

It also doesn’t make sense to me to offer help from the community to improve their products and participate in their developments when they are the first to not want it that way.

I am a person who spends the day repairing, modifying and improving 3D printers for his clients, I love knowing how things work and I would like to know the ins and outs of these printers, but it is not a priority because they work really well and have no excessive breakdowns

From my point of view, the problem with this environment is security; the fact that it is based on a cloud system poses a lot of risks and problems for developers, companies or even any printing service that has signed an NDA with its clients.

It is perhaps at this point where Bambulab should be more transparent and allow its system to function 100% isolated from the internet if the user so decides.

Perhaps for this more professional client, who cares about confidentiality and who needs to have security about their designs, this will be solved by the X1E, but there is no exact information about it either.

[a_tiny_lion]

you can save the gcode direct to the SD card plugged into your laptop without having to process it in the Cloud.