core xy? or multicolor?or enclosures? Software? Not sure which one is Bambu’s original idea.
For the other guys post, creality copied prusa but did it cheaper. Prusa copied stratasys and made it diy.
“Stratasys was founded in 1989 , by S. Scott Crump and his wife Lisa Crump in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. The idea for the technology came to Crump in 1988 when he decided to make a toy frog for his young daughter using a glue gun loaded with a mixture of polyethylene and candle wax.”
Prusa came in 2012, creality in 2014 and Voron in 2015. Then the flood of mixtures of copies followed until still today
Which, ultimately, it ain’t a bad thing per se, as cloning as it may be, it pushed competition and innovation, developed new technologies, increased productivity and reliability, lowered production costs and provided end users with affordable 3 d printing machines… and demonstrates that holding an industry hostage through IP patents doesn’t encourage R&D, innovation, healthy competition and progress.
Ever looked up Bambus patents? Theyve taken mostly prior arts and patented them. Im interested to hear what you think about that. Do you think they are held for a reason other than suing people down the road? Its such a funny argument
Google bambu patents, a reddit thread should pop up at the top. The guy covers it well. Lots of patents for things that have been around for years. Including orcaslicer stuff. A real shot gun blast of random patents aimed mostly at the open source community. Looks like they just tried to patent everything possible.
Very first thing I thought when I saw a bambu was, “oh, a cheap voron slept with a prusa”. Then I thought “hope it runs a fork of klipper”
I’m not denying it that Bambu has gone way over the line with many things, especially with IP/patents and taking (or assuming) credit for the work of the open source community. Which points out how derisive and clearly unreliable the Chinese legal system is. Joseph Prusa, and many others - myself as well - has pointed this fact alone, repeatedly, and everybody out there knows it’s true, but choose to do nothing (until Stratasys came)… but then again what can a single individual or a handful of individuals can do by themselves? Neither you, or I, or anyone user out here, when acting as simple individuals, can do a damn thing about it.
Boycotting Bambu’s products might seem to work, but won’t change much either. Their products are good, they sell, you know it, I know it, everyone who bought one of their 3d printers knows it… even Bambu knows it. Hell, even their competitors know it and are trying to copy from them. So they have no morals, no business ethics, no respect or consideration for anything that can be taken away from others (preferably for free) and used for profit, Bambu will definitely do it. That much is clear to everyone. Their walled-in busines model, (Apple style), doesn’t help or make things better…and to top it up, their government will protect them for as long as they stay based in and operating from China and bring in a constant revenue stream while sticking it to the guys on the other side of the Atlantic pond.
And while they might be forced out of the US market, that doesn’t mean they won’t continue to sell elsewhere, continuing to appropriate other people’s work go make profits out of it…
And the thing is that, despite knowing all this, people won’t care and continue to buy Bambu machines as long as these are reasonably priced and renders accessible features that otherwise were unthinkable for the common Joe or Jane to have.
Eventually Bambu’s existing "business model " will be stopped, either by litigation or other means. Even Bambu’s management is aware from the beginning that their approach ain’t sustainable for medium to long term. Have another look at their Terms and Conditions… Read carefully for how long they planned to provide support for their sold machines, and of their “commitment” to publicly release and render their proprietary software code “open source” once they’re done. Knowing what you know now about them would you believe a word or promise they’ve made to date?
Patents that are so blatantly obvious that they should never be granted, or patents that are trying to claim things that have been invented and published ages ago:
Lots of these patents appear designed to leverage the existing (typically open source) slicing software, and cut off various, obvious, development pathways. It would be worth going through Github" for PrusaSlicer, SuperSlicer, Cura, etc to see how many of these ideas have already been described or suggested prior to Bambu claiming them.
Also, have a look at the following article, covering “the patent parasites” from open source community perspective
along the same line of thought (mentioned in my two posts above) see this MakerBot patent on ’ Three dimensional printer with composite filament fabrication ’ :
I conclude with a quote from Spaghetti Monster (CEO Bambu)
And a personal conclusion: Patents are the reason why the widely available, hobbyist 3D printing came to be about 20+ years later than it otherwise could and should have.
It was the open source, patent free spirit of the RepRap community that created the 3D printing ecosystem that we all take for granted today, and that paved the way for Stratasys and Bambu to even exist and make a very good living out of it.
A lot of people don’t realize 3d printing was commercialized in the 1980’s. Back then it was limited to expensive machines in a few industries like dentistry and educational institutions. There was a scene in Jurrasic Park 3 that was released in 2001 that featured 3d printing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfllzwFay_U
Counterpoint - without patent protection there may not have been a 3D printing ecosystem at all.
That’s the thing about patents. They provide protection to allow inventors time and opportunity to profit off their ideas and technological developments. Without patent protection, inventors are discouraged from publicizing their inventions or else megacompanies and billionaires just take what they want and sell their own products and the inventors get nothing. Worse, they get robbed.
It’s not that unlike the predators that look for popular models here that people have worked hard to bring to fruition who steal the models and publish them under their own name to take the boosts and points.
So who is going to work on refining 3D printing if as soon as anything leaks, someone else steamrolls them? And what big company would tool up and build a 3D printing division if other big companies could do the same thing and cut into profits?
Patents do indeed hinder some innovations and can even make things more expensive, but without them you’d have inventors find other ways to make a living where their work isn’t just outright stolen by profiteering companies and rich tech billionaires. And companies would possibly look to other things with less risk for being copied.
Patent protection is a double-edged sword but without it, it would be a free for all that only benefits the more fly-by-night among us.
Same here. I’d get the Ender 3 Pro to the point where it was “stable” and then prints would fail. And I really got tired of reading forum posts about how every problem had a solution that required an upgrade: Bowden tubes, fans, print surfaces, hot ends, all of it. The only thing good about the machine was that Octoprint worked well with it.
The X1C, by comparison, has been a remarkably stable machine, with stock print settings and no “upgrades.” The only printing issues I’ve had were my first attempts to use PETG – the stock settings in Bambu Studio simply don’t work. But, someone on this forum posted settings and those just worked.
The only complaints I have with the X1C are the half-assed “LAN only” mode and the lack of hardwire Ethernet. But the LAN-only mode does work – the machine is never connected to Bambu’s cloud and I never log in to that cloud in Studio, and my WiFi set-up is capable, so these are less complaints than annoyances.
And yes, I am well aware that the X1C and the AMS cost five times what the Ender machine cost. So it should be better!
(And all of the complaints about Bambu support are noted, but Creality simply has zero support.)
