This is mostly me just venting frustration, so feel free to move along if that’s not your jam. While a lot of us see the value in opening up the RFID as a standard, making the AMS more valuable, I get that Bambu could see it as undercutting their filament sales. But while my ideals still want it to be an open standard, I’d be perfectly happy with a more capitalist solution: licensing.
If Bambu wants their Apple-esque walled garden, they should copy a page out of Apple’s playbook. “Made for iPhone” is a huge profit center, and also expands the ecosystem for Apple products. Having a “Works with AMS” badge for filament gives Bambu the ability to do some basic quality control and also rake in licensing fees. And with the “Works with AMS” badge would come RFID support (probably including capacity estimates).
It’s win-win-win for everyone. Filament makers get a way to distinguish themselves from their competition for Bambu users, as well as more equal footing against Bambu’s first party filament. Bambu users get quality assurances and a wider selection of filament suppliers without sacrificing quality-of-life comforts. It’s worth noting that it’s not just the variety of filament, but also faster shipping times from Amazon, local pick up, and other logistics that Bambu might not ever be able to match. And Bambu gets more reasons for people to use their ecosystem, including Bambu Studio and whatever other vendor lock-in they want to push. Plus 5-50 cents per spool in licensing fees (including some sales that might not even be used by AMS users). Filament makers might want to use different SKUs for AMS-enabled spools (similar to how refill vs spooled sales work), but it might not be worth the extra logistics.
Do I wish they’d just open it up for free? Of course. But there are short-term profit motivated ways to go about it too.
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And a lot of users would still buy Bambu filament just because that’s the brand they’re already familiar with. And Bambu can still use the argument that their printers are tested first and foremost with first-party filament. Heck, I’d probably still go first-party for most of my purchases, but would have better options if I needed next day shipping on something.
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I contemplated about those tags for a long while when I started with my P1.
No problem reading them out but of course they are well secured and even IF you could change the data on them I just bet Bambu also includes the internal ID of the chip.
The issues and possible solutions were discussed before in several threads but it is a Bambu forum…
What’s it not deleted by the bot patrol and is too uncomfortable to touch won’t be touched by Bambu.
The license idea was/is just one of several possible ones.
Whatever Bambu uses to read those chips is able to read plain ones as well as long as the technology is somewhat compatible.
Mainly the frequency matters, the rest can be done with drivers and software.
We have to ask though what the real benefits for Bambu could be to start going this route.
Licensing is a great idea but how would that benefit already supported suppliers?
In some countries we can only find very few local filament suppliers, often providing several different brands and some of their own.
Bambu opening up on the chips would open a lot more doors.
Not sure if they would dare but if they WOULD patent their RF ID idea they could make it a feature for other brands if they get the major filament suppliers under their belt.
I guess it comes down to how much Bambu is willing to let go and how possible a patent or similar solution would be.
For us the heavy duty home user just being able to buy supported PLAIN chips that can be addressed through studio would be great.
Meaning they just come with a unique ID that would be handled similar to PA profiles and such.
Pick the number, add the required parameters for the filament and save…
Personally I would not mind paying 20 or maybe even 30 bucks for a pack of universal ID chips that Bambu fully supports.