As Prusa support tech, I know the bambu effect is real. Too many people print horribly, weak or fail in defaults, blame the machine, I try to show them what the slicer can do, they either get excited to learn more or start a diatribe about "too much tinkering, I want simple". The defaults can get you far with most models but not every model/production batch.
But its kind of like the learning curve with computers. It used to be similar to 3D printers, you had to know the ints and outs, how to really manipulate the machine to get it work how you wanted it. Now, any person can just turn on a machine and have it do what they want. Is that a bad thing? No, its just how far the technology has come. Sure, it creates a barrier if there is an issue, but no one would argue that computer tech is worse just because it doesn't force the average user to know what's going on under the hood. You still can in order to get the most out of it, but it isn't essential to owning the machine. Bambulab advancing the tech and making it more accessible to the average user isn't a bad thing, it just makes it so gatekeepers have a harder time making themselves feel superior to people who haven't spend the same amount of time on the tech as them. The only people getting upset about Bambulab machines are those that resent the fact that their knowledge is becoming outdated and they can't be as pretentious about it.
@ineedgoodname not blaming anyone, but I think everyone should tip their toes in their settings instead of relying on default profiles, and they will not regret it once they see the results
This is it. Been 3d printer fixing since 2013, from cr10s to enders to vorons to prusas and all in between. Just bought my first p1, it's going to sit right beside my v2.4 350 :)
No, no. You need to start on a non Bambu printer to learn about 3D printers and how to fix them otherwise when on the rare occasion your Bambu has a fault you'll know what to do. I don't regret learning 3D printing on my Ender 6 but I love using my A1 and X1C.
Well, it's not skill to 3d print, it's skill to diagnose and do things accordingly. As a hobbyist, it's sad that people see 3d printers solely as tools.
@@stevecade857 Every time my bambu printer has had a fault, I have been able to learn with it and fix it. I have also torn down most of it (on separate occasions) and put it back together with no prior tech experience (other than software and programming). I don't think people need to start with a different printer.
The discussion about "lost skill" could be used for anything. How many folks have programmed in assembly (vs used an arduino)? Adjusted valve lash on a motor (vs just use their car as an appliance)? Developed film by hand (vs used their iphone)? Also, the next discussion was based on "I have no idea how to do this in CAD but i can direct print from a scan!". You'll have a bunch of draftsman complaining about how "computers make it too easy" and "we used to have to know how to use scales for hand drawing!".....same energy from the other side of the fence. The whole point of the "hobbyist" market is to remove those barriers for entry. The people that enjoy it will seek out the "lost knowledge". Also how great is it that you don't HAVE to mess with slicers constantly anymore? I don't need another hobby (in the form of a printer), I need a tool to help me with my existing hobbies/jobs.
For a lot of people that's what works and for somebody who wants to run a quick easy business it makes sense, but honestly if somebody is interested in learning principles of fabrication one of the less "user friendly" options is a great tool to both learn and encourage through iterative improvement of designs and learning the factors through slightly, but not overly, painful experience (just losing a little time and relatively cheap filament) to empirically start adjusting variables and learn how they interact with specific aspects of prints that may cause issues
Agreed. It’s the difference between having 3d printing be your hobby vs it being a tool. Your example of tuning your own car is a good one. It used to be necessary for everyone to kind of know how to maintain a car. And now the car is more of an automated tool that self adjusts and monitors.
@@jamesx7424 thanks, and absolutely. My race motors require a lot more attention and diligence than the one in the daily driver. Was there a time where more diligence was required for a daily driver? Absolutely. I'm very appreciative that's no longer the case though. It's okay that we can have something as a hobby but its also okay when it's not required to use that thing. If there are criticisms about bamboo and decisions to remove features, or be closed source, or whatever; that's fine and those are valid, discuss them as such. However, choosing to focus on how "easy things are nowadays" is a worn-out trope.
I think it is kinda of a dual thing. While making tools easier to use and more accessible is great, I don't think people not understanding how their tools work isn't. When something does go pear shaped, the amount of explaining I have to do to help people has magnified. Car repair got significantly more expensive as fewer people work on their own, even when the process is not computer related.
Yeah you make a good point here! I work on my own cars, but it took me 8 years to learn how to do so on a professional level from rebuilding my engines to manual transmission rebuilds etc.., I'm not even a tech, but was trained by professional techs, but it's a lot of freakin work and so much to learn! That's why your average Joe will never be able to work on their own cars.
Not that extreme but it has got to a point were a lot of people cannot even do simple maintenance of cars, even though the country I'm from it is a part of passing a driving test.. People just learning a small amount would save them hundreds or thousands paying someone else do it for you, which is sad to see.
if you didnt mine the metals, smelt the parts, made the circuits and machined the engine out a solid block of steel and vulcanized all the rubber in the wheels. how can you be allow to drive.
I've been printing for over a decade, and most of what I print are tools. The printer is a tool, and if I have to stop to fix a tool, it's defeated its own purpose to me. I could not be happier with my Bambu. It works and it does its job of supporting my other projects.
I agree 100% i also use mine to print mainly tools, I started using 3D printing last century, that's over 1/4 century of 3D printing experience. I was the first 3D printing company in my province, and I paid over $50K for my first 3D printer. FDM has been one of the least viable 3D printing processes until I bought a Bambu printer. It is a game changer.
I've built printers, maintained printers, been from the robo3d to qidi, to creality, to Anker to prusa to bambu, I CAN do everything manually, but why the hell would I want to when trying to make functional parts that just Work, and don't have to spend half my time leveling, and maintaining and drying filament and so on and so forth when I can model my part up, send it to my printer and walk in in the morning and know it's just going to be there and right as I expected it to be
Agreed. I have an old ender 3 that I upgraded so it prints with relatively the same quality as my X1C, but it still requires fiddling. Dont get me wrong, I like to tinker, but sometimes I just want to hammer out a 3D printing project without all the mucking about. Being able to print in 1 day what would have taken me a few on my ender is a game changer. Prototyping a new design on my ender would take days, now I can get that done in an afternoon.
Ever since the lightbulb, kids stopped needing to remember how to use kerosene lamps! These guys are gate keeping 3D printing. That is freaking weird. Technology evolves. That's how the world works! Everyone benefits when the market is opened up for everyone, at every skill and knowledge level.
Just wait a few years until the market is more established, they will start introducing locks to the filament you can use and rack up the price. Or even forcing you to their 3D assset market.
"Not to sound gatekeepey .... but I'm gonna be gatekeepey."... it's not a "Loss" of expertise... but it's a thinning of the expertise because more people are getting into it who DON'T want to have to know how to slice... we're perfectly happy printing other people's projects.
3d printing community has turned from nerds with no money to entitled snobs that run print farms. Nobody needs to know the exact same things they do in order to produce good prints. People just need to practice a skill until they figure it out. There is no set way to learn anything besides practice. I use all the helpful software and methods that I want to get the exact results I want, I don't need some random loser to "gatekeep" me out of their little community because I never built my own printer from scratch or some nonsense.
@@shamancredible8632 And even with practice, everyone's journey and experience is still gonna be different and unique to them. Just because you had to learn a skill to solve something for yourself does not make you more "superior" to someone who just never had a need to cross that bridge. You are only more superior to the version of you before you learnt that skill.
My first 'personal computer' had an 8080 processor, floppy disks, 32Kb of RAM and an LS-3 clone for a display. I could dial in to the company and occasionally send mail or read a USENET group. It required constant tweaking of the BIOS, lots of cleaning the drives. My current laptop does my taxes, CAD drawings, finances, correspondence, and lets me wander down rabbit holes and chase shiny objects at will. And after 4 years, I've never opened the cover. I've been thru 7(8?) different printers and modded the heck out of each one to get it 'more functional'. My Bambu is the same as my laptop - it just works.
my first computer was a zx spectrum with tape cassette for storage and tv for a monitor, but the games were cool! lol floppy disks were so much better.
yapping about innability to slice while not knowing how to cad profesionaly is just absurd in my opinion. Not everything can be scanned and printed, the whole point of having a fdm, cnc machine is MAKING ur stuff
"back in my day, slicers only supported stl!" meanwhile now I can go direct from step file of my design while in the cad software to gcode... oh how fast tech changes.
Not really. Instead what they're trying to say is that as more people convert to Bambu printers and they work so well with default settings people aren't learning how to change all the slicing settings as much and therefore the quality is going down. For example way too many people use grid infill for situations where adaptive cubic or triangles would be better. Overall Bambu is amazing and I love mine but the experience of using printers where you have to learn more about slicing is invaluable.
@@cameralife8 Maybe couple months later, Bambu slicer will have automatic adaptive infill type according to your model. Things will only get easier, sky is not the limit.
@@seanzhouz3478 that would be amazing, but I really hope it would work well. I want them to implement the print in thin air supports that went invented a couple years back. That would be amazing!
Yeah it is but people still use it for a reason. A lot of my co-workers have 3d printers. As bad as it sounds you can tell who got into it in the prusa era, the ender era, and the current bambu era. There's a pretty big discrepancy between the first group and the last.
They have just widened the range of expertise or interest needed to get into 3d printing. I got a P1S as my first printer and then immediately learned CAD and parametric design and how to diagnose bad prints and what the slicer settings do. The ease of use didn't discourage me from going deep. But if I was the type of person who just wanted to print things, I could have. It's all upside. More people in printing means more investment in lowering filament prices, and more features like auto bed leveling.
Yes, you are gatekeeping brother, but that's ok. This is a human reaction to technology becoming more accessible. It's great that you are self-aware though, most people never get out of their bubble. This happens in every industry.
That "just going to work" thing is exactly what 3D printing needs to be. Being nostalgic for when things were hard and shitty isn't the way. 3D printing was stuck in hard and unreliable for far too long.
@@zerotweaks With significantly more frustration and much higher barrier to entry. That's the point. Feeling superior because you have a machine that doesn't work as well without significantly more frustration and startingly less efficiency is one of the strangest quirks of the gatekeepers in this community.
@@zerotweaks that is exactly the point. There need to be printers that allow both noobs and pros to get great results. Gatekeeping won’t help anyone. It’s so dumb. It’s like saying everyone should be able to operate a letter press because pressing ctrl-p in your word processing software is too easy.
I see the Bambu Effect as me being able to iterate faster, see the effect of changes in slicer settings faster, and the industry forced to make using a tool easier.
I think the bambu effect has actually had a beneficial effect on design. Previously, a lot of people wanted to design thing, but spent so much time "tweaking" their printer to actually print something successful. This constant failure to print caused a lot of people to not even get into the field because they were turned off of the geekiness of it all. Now, with Bambu's, people are willing to take the time to learn a CAD, design some seriously amazing products and items, and then can print those items effectively. This is why I sold my previous 3dPrinter and got a Bambu. I didnt want to spend the majority of my time "tweaking" my prints to get it perfect, I wanted to spend my time tweaking the design in CAD and learning new design skills. Dont get me wrong, I built a 3d printer from scratch, but I'd rather have spent that year learning design. I think there is room for all types.
That's it, I bought an Ender 3 years ago but only made 10 prints with it and then nothing for 3 years. Because the tinkering with the 3D printer took me so much time to make the print usable at all. I would have put the time I put into it much more into designing the object. Now, with a Bambu A1, I print almost every day and improve the parts in CAD. That's what I enjoy.
That’s exactly it for me. I’m not a 3d printer enthusiast. I’m a design and prototyping enthusiast of parts for other systems. I knew all the previous 3d printers would make you pull your hair out with the chronic failures. That’s why I never got one until last November. The X1 Carbon. Cope and seethe boomer scum!
13 วันที่ผ่านมา
This was my situation. I got the Little Monster when it first came out. At the time, it was the biggest and fastest printer on the market (until Creality dethroned it literally a month later with another mammoth bed slinger lol). My background is mechanical engineering and I have tipped my toes into comp sci (which makes my head hurt 😂) so I'm no stranger to computational or manual drafting. I jumped on FDM printing with ambitions to mod my car and help my team mod our race cars. That idea quickly wanned when I had to consistently fiddle with settings, chasing my tail and making one thing better but worsening another aspect. Failed prints and let's not even mention the woefully inaccurate dimensions. It went from 'lets make functional parts!' to 'well... I can print this cute statue to display on my desk...' and the printer eventually went into obscurity. Then Duet came along so I snagged a Duet2, converted my printer and finally the thing was more reliable but also had SO much more potential than before. It was still a hassle but it was much better and I didn't have to babysit it when printing. Fast forward to now, my BL touch finally quit and I'm getting strange behaviour from the motor drivers somehow reversing themselves and crashing the head. So I was going to get an X1C but it was too small for my typical projects; figured I'd wait but politics for 2025 made me panic-buy a K2+ instead. This K2+ is the tool I was hoping to be near, potential wise, when I got the Little Monster way back in 2018. Now I can focus on problem solving for life and mods rather than problem solving a tool that just doesn't want to behave 👍 Heck, I might even do another conversion on the Little Monster to turn it into a lite-duty CNC.
This is hilarious. Back in 2011 I was working in the contract R&D world on making PLA blends for a filament manufacturer. We didn’t have a slicer at the time, we used excel to assemble the gcode and then walked that over to the machine. It was a giant pain. I don’t miss that era of 3D printing. The machine was Mendel Huxley Frankenstein that would occasion fall apart because we shoddily made it in 8 hours. I
That's the thing, no one misses that era of the tech. Nobody would want to go back to that, its awesome how the tech advances, but then videos like come along, lamenting the advancement of the tech because it allows average people to engage with it. Huh? It makes no sense.
It's having an extremely low floor, but an extremely high ceiling. Those are the best things that have longevity. We see it in video games, coding, car care, van life, construction (soon to incorporate more 3D printing in the future for the structure), etc. That's a GOOD thing. So, no. It didn't ruin 3D printing. Not at all.
Oh yes the gaming industry is so good! all the preorders, "DLCs", loot boxes, pay to win, and half-assed new releases that need about 150Gb of disk space and that look barely better than games of 10 years ago.
Back in my day, we had to pick our own cotton, weave our own cloth, and sew our own clothes. Because of mass-produced clothes I've seen a drastic drop in the ability to make your own clothes from scratch!
@@LilApe Here we can observe a Prusa fanboy on the wild, spewing their nonsense not realizing Prusa just copied the RepRap created a cult and sold overpriced DIY kits.
I can't think of a single person who has ever said "I wish my inkjet printer wasn't so reliable. Nobody knows how to print now, because they just work". Why is it any different with a 3D printer?
The one thing I noticed with the rise of Bambu is that less and less objects are being shared freely. It got even worse after Makerworld started their exclusive program.
I know I am showing my age, but I am seeing echos of how the software industry started. First, people made models to share freely, usually on Thingiverse, but as time goes on, it seems that is going away, either locked behind licensing, or commercial subscriptions, or one had to go to an exclusive site for that model. I think part of it is the people who will grab someone's STL and start cranking out loads and loads of stuff, like articulated dragons, but it is sad to see that start to go.
@@ryanlandry8214 No one's saying you can't monetize your 3D models. Everyone is just going to either make open source alternatives to the paid ones or pirate them lol.
@@ryanlandry8214 That's an interesting topic we can talk about if you've never downloaded a model for free or at least paid every designer that asked for a tip. You might also want to pay the developers of the slicers and/or firmware you are using and the ones that developed those for free in the past. Heck, you should also pay subscriptions to the sites you download these from. This whole hobby only exists, because people pushed it in their spare times. Every hotend you use, every motion system is based on free work of others.
Is great but only to a point. Do you want the kind of people that use tiktok, do challenges and injure themselves in the most fantastic ways steer the 3D printing industry? Because that's what might happen. Later you will be only able to print certain registered things because "certain prints might be dangerous or obscene" and you will have to pay a lot for brand locked filament.
@@teresashinkansen9402 What? That's like saying "because kids can use a computer, computer technology has gotten worse." Such a myopic take on technology growth.
@@KCInherent Exactly! they are easily manipulated and used because they don't have enough brain development to realize, haven't you noticed how the videogame industry has become quite bad and predatory? You own no games, not even a copy, DRM and anticheat that are borderline rootkits, lootboxes, pay to win, gacha genre and all that. As I said dont be surprised if in the future, 3D printers are like apple products.
@@KCInherent Yes, haven't you seem how crap is the gaming industry? haven't you noticed how people complain about video games being too expensive, badly optimized, etc. In fact even youtube is an excellent example, you cannot say anything or else your comment gets censored. This is the second time I restructure this comment because it keeps getting censored by youtube.
I for one, since I'm the person my whole family calls for help, love it when new wifi routers just work for those with zero networking experience...or their 3d printer just works without having to know how everything works. When things just work, life is actually easier for those who understand how they work because they don't have to help everyone with the same exact question or problem.
Exactly why I'm the only one in my family with an Android and why I'm happy everyone else has an iPhone. It just works. If anyone asks me what 3D printer to buy, 97% of the time it's going to be a bambu because they just work. I've been printing for 10+ years now, starting from a homemade replicator, my first ANET A8 fire hazard, several crealitys, various resin printers, and when my Ender 5 Pro finally broke enough I bit the bullet and bought a bambu. It's been nearly a year and I haven't done any work to it besides swapping nozzles and upgrading the feeder gears for filled materials. Literally I just select a material and a profile, hit slice and print and I love it. I work in industrial additive and it hurts going back to these massive machines and clunky slicers that take hours to get to do exactly what you want. Maybe they're upset that sales are down because a $700 printer requires less work and training to get great engineering level parts and people don't want to buy $15k+ 'engineering' and 'industrial' printers are just worse? The vast majority of people just want to print PLA trinkets, and fix some stuff at home and will us ASA or some nylon/carbon blends. If you wanna print PEEK/ULTEM, the industrial world still exists but I really see a downward trend.
I would argue that bottom of the barrel printers had more of a negative effect over the past few years. Consumer printer tech really stagnated for a long time, because so many brands were racing to the bottom with printers that were too cheap to be true and under-engineered. How many people bought the cheapest printers possible and then threw bolt-on parts after them, like they were trying to tune up a 4th-owner Civic? The forums were just inundated with folks who honestly believed that a $99 printer (with $200-$300 of "upgrades") was all you needed. Most of the problems they were attempting to solve had already been solved a decade earlier. The higher-end printers just had to be more competent than a used Ender 3, which wasn't really a high bar. I'm happy that it's possible to buy a printer now where the only troubleshooting steps are drying your filament and cleaning the print bed.
Agreed, apart from space limitations... one of the primary reasons I hadn't even considered buying a printer before bambu arrived in the scene was due to it practically being a hobby in and of itself maintaining it / upgrading it / leveling the print beds / all of the troubleshooting before you could benefit from owning a device that can print 3d objects reliably.
So many comments totally missing what you are saying. Printers are tools. Printers have become so easy that folks don’t HAVE to learn how to diagnose issues. I constantly get asked how to improve print quality or fix issues, and folks don’t know the basic terms or slicer settings I’m pointing them to. It’s making helping people more difficult. Printing becoming “democratized” is excellent, and you said that, but it does mean understanding of the core concepts is headed downward.
People with Enders and Elegoos are going to have the EXACT SAME QUESTIONS. They don't automatically download all that knowledge when they buy a hard to use printer. Everybody has to learn those things at some point. These questions weren't caused by Bambu, but an influx of new people to ask them was.
@@ERA93 A more complex and open ecosystem, ironically that any one can use. Instead 3D printing might go the way of paper printers, in the future you will have to pay $$$$ for brand locked filament.
It's great 3D printers slowly evolve to an appliance. We need that and want that. Just make sure it doesn't turn into sucky strategies like with 2D printers. Bambu is pushing to that with their newest software update.
On the Bambu Reddit all you see is people who are clueless as to why their print didn’t come out perfectly and asking others why. Confused by the situation because they bought a Bambu labs machine and that’s not what they were sold. (By many influencers). But like with a car there is still the need to understand why something doesn’t work if you expect to fix the issue yourself. I think it’s true that if you were there in the old days when 3d printing was a struggle then you have a better understanding how to print a complex object with challenging features. Otherwise you’re reliant on those defaults which let’s face it were setup for speed primarily in this case.
"It's so sad that no one knows how to hand-crank a car and use a manual choke and timing advance lever to get their car going..." said no one ever. It's similar to lamenting the loss of unproductive troubleshooting and bodging that used to be required when 3d printing gear was less evolved.
I'll give you a little jab at your (self-admitted) gatekeeping over "lost skills", and then admitting that yeah, you need to learn CAD so you can better design new and unique components, instead of just copying what exists. But also, now I really want a 3D scanner and want to go through my home, take apart everything I can, scan every component, and index them so I have a whole-home archive of replacement parts, and would be able to readily reproduce them at any time, without ever worrying. The real thing I personally want to do, is build a full computer isolation pod, entirely to my own spec. Living in an apartment, I don't have a lot of room for working with things like wood, so I can't really fab something up that way. But if I can bolt a few structural bars together, print up all the panels and surfacing for the pod, and be able to print upgrades any time I think of it? Heck yeah. Many major material fabricators build their own workstations to their personal spec, whether out of wood or metal, why shouldn't it be the same when the workstation is your computer desk and your material is pre-ducted, hand-sculpted, 3D printed plastic panels? It's all Tab A into Slot B, in the end. You just have to know how to model the tabs and slots to fit properly.
It's fun watching you call yourself old. I'm 58 and I remember my girlfriend's dad hating the Mac because (I felt) he had spent so much time "figuring out" MS-DOS, and now these kids were coming along with there 'mouse' and 'graphical user interface' and no one really understood how to navigate a filesystem anymore. :-) It happens to us all.
Perfected may be a better word than ruined. When I print, I need it to just work and that’s why we’ve always used Stratasys. It’s nuts expensive, but it just worked. Now Bambu can give amazing results on protos for a fraction of the cost without the hassle and that’s exactly what a tool should do.
Today I got my A1 as my first 3D printer and the first thing I printed was a replacement part that went missing for our dishwasher. It is a relatively complex design that consist of two half rings with flanges that then form a whole ring that slides in, rotates and locks to hold one of the spray arms. No luck finding it anywhere on the market. So I reversed engineered it in FreeCAD using measurements and a similar part that only had different dimensions. Since it should be durable in the machine (water, chemicals and heat) I used PP, which people said is not especially beginner friendly, but I wanted to give it a shot, even if it is just to gain experience. I just used the Generic PP filament profile. For adhesion I used double sided tape. And what can I say, 18 minutes after hitting print I got the part first try. It was only a small part but still. It is mindblowing to me how good this was working right out of the box.
Only problem with Bambu is the lack of open source and the proprietary parts. It ruins the 'old spirit' of 3d printing, apart from that they did wonders dragging every other manufacture up to scratch.
Nobody is stopping you from continuing to do it the hard way. Some of us just want a printer to augment an existing hobby, not a whole other hobby in and of itself.
Only reason I don't like bambu is their printer is not open source. I have had so many old electronics that became useless because of proprietary software that's either broken or unavailable. An open source bambu printer would be nice and might change my mind on buying one in the future, but until then they're basically the Apple of 3d printers, which is a good or bad thing depending on what type of person you are.
@@shamancredible8632 You can run open source firmware on the Bambu and all of the various popular open source slicers support it as well. Go look for info about X1Plus (the open source firmware) then finally order one already. lol.
And like that the ecosystem will become just like smartphones. You will have to pay a rental fee to use your 3D printer and all will be garden walled, I wouldn't be surprised if the printer also will make you watch ads before printing or even printing ad objects.
I've seen that same problem overall in all fields: at work, we have switched our logistics infrastructure to an entirely different system, so rather than using two independent software packages and "marrying" them together rather gracelessly (and expensively), the company now uses a fully-integrated software solution that offers applications across all devices, top-to-bottom. While all that sounds good on paper, the company has had no seminars whatsoever to properly train employees in its use; at the same time, most people working in the company are either too old or too young for this shit - "looking under the hood" of software that is at times nebulous is not exactly their forte, nor something they are obsessive enough to do anything about. Being born in 1984 and doing all that since I was a teen, have ended up becoming the unofficial local troubleshooter.
I started in 2009. I had to hand wind my own hot-ends out of nichrome wire and whatever parts I could find. My first printer was made out of plumbing parts. I had to use Skeinforge to slice my first prints. There were no kits available then. Today, sure I still have a printer I built but I also have a Bambu X1C and Creality printers. Every time I use them I marvel at how far we've come and wonder at how far we might go. I don't lament the progress because I recognize how much it has widened 3D printing and how it has opened it to so many new people.
I think we are close to reaching the apex, maybe there is a small plateau, but I think things might not go that great. Im afraid if 3D printing really reaches the masses it will become another victim of enshittfication. On one side there will be tremendous "innovation" but everything will become so simple and garden walled due profit maximization and market control that you will be locked to only printing reviewed models from brand locked 3D asset stores as well as filament.
I'm a CNC technician and I can tell you from my experience that CNC guys are not checking the G Code before running their cycles. They generate their code in Solidworks or Fusion or whatever, send it to their machine, load the necessary tools and in some cases offsets, and hit go. The only checking of code is making sure the whole file was received, and some don't even do that.
Worked for years with Germans, they ALWAYS checked the code on the machine and in software, checking tool passes, then rode the speed dial watching it make the first program pass sloooowwww. But we were making some pretty wild stuff that needed very high precision (optical stuff).
Is better that way, else things become shitty because they have to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator while also paradoxically going for unsustainable "innovation".
I started with a Wanhao i3 and CR10...was great for tinkering, I learned CAD and 3D Modelling for tabletop gaming terrain. I'm old school, back in the days...no compiler for machine coding, binary to hexadecimals...printing on paper...we had to put command for spacing between paragraphs to print. Today with the 3D printers, Bambu's have changed my productivity and my workflow in an amazing time saving ways like back in the days when paper printers didn't need command codes throughout a page to print. I think this is great, the new 3D printers are appliances now. So people can buy my models and then print them without having to tinker. Making them that easy to use, you need things around the house, you just buy or design and print. Saves on everything, transportation, manufacturing, reducing pollution child labour from 3rd world countries. More of that other wasted energies can shift into a healthier consumer society.
You two are not old ...and mass-produced automobiles haven't ruined cars for car enthusiasts, the old ones are still loved and used. BTW My Bambu is now an appliance like my coffee maker, only it's more functional. toi put that in perspective, I was using 3D printing before Windows 3.1 was an OS.
No the skill dilution is real, I know of a person who bought a $1000 printer and then proceeded to break it from not knowing how to do basic maintenance, and struggling to do something as simple as clear a jam... Went from bragging about his new "business" to calling it a waste of time hobby in 24 hours after a hot end failure. He just didn't know how to fix it, and threw a fit when he had to pay to have it returned, and they refused to refund due to "user error". Would not be surprised if he broke something and just didn't want to admit it. And from the amount of other printers on ebay, and other resale site listed as "for parts" its a common thing. But hey at least cheap parts for me.
@@Awrethien that has nothing to do with skills. We live in a time when people are desperate to break free from the 9-5 job and this is how desperate people act. They give up without any effort because they expect everything to just happen like the social media influencers suggest. People fail to realize that influencers don't post all of their struggles and failures, so we have this delusion that everything should just work smoothly 24/7 with 0 mistakes. I've seen this all around me and it's not just related to 3D printing, it's with everything and anything to become an entrepreneur and quit your job. Look at all the crappy AI videos on TH-cam and social media. These involve little to no skill, but people make money, some make millions. So people jump into it thinking they can get rich too, only to give up when they don't have the same results. This shows it has nothing to do with the "Bambu Effect". This video itself was made for views (money), because Bambu videos are popular and complaining about things is viral these days.
The editor must have seen the hypocrisy because in five minuets you guy go from saying the hobby is losing skill because people buying off the self products that do everything for them, right to talking about buying off the shelf scanners because of how easy they are to use instead of CAD.
I just ordered my first printer. I’m a 90’s kid and I still to this day tinker with absolutely everything. Being that I am a huge believer in right to repair, open source, strong community, no cloud nonsense, and I didn’t want to give more of my money to China. I ordered a Prusa MK4S kit at an amazing price. It’s gonna be a new hobby so I’m going to build it and actually learn to create/slice and upgrade everything. That’s most of the appeal for me. I won’t deny the industry needed something like Bamboo. It lit a fire under every other company and there is no better motivator to ramp up innovation.
You could also apply this to the sciences. I'm not a physicist, but I know a good deal for not being one. I run into knowledge (or skill) blocks all the time. Is the answer for me to go back to school and become a physicist, or is it OK if I just ask an actual physicist to clarify things? 3D Printing is the same. There will be every spot in the spectrum of expertise, and to say that most people should be able to do the stuff that the experts can do is 100% gatekeeping. I was there a decade ago, struggling with everyone else to get these things running and printing quality prints. My expertise in this field is valuable to those who don't need to or have no business going as deep as I did. The Bambu didn't ruin 3D printing for anyone. It's not meant for the tinkerers/experts (even though you can still use them if you want). It's meant to open 3D printing up to people who would normally not even try. Again, there will always be those of us who go the extra measure and develop expertise. We're just entering a period where that doesn't have to be 99% of the users, which is a good thing.
I'm the person who likes playing with the printer hardware more than actually printing. I love learning how exactly everything works from the stepper to the innerworkings of Klipper. I still like what Bambu has done because it pushed the industry forward instead of a race to the bottom.
It's rare I put a dislike on a video, but clinging to old tools and resisting new technology reflects a stagnant technological conservatism-a fear-driven mindset that not only stifles progress but also limits the potential for innovation, creativity, and broader participation in the field. You guys have gone from embracing technologies cutting edge to being boring show stoppers.
He’s mostly right. The tech class only creates things to protect their jobs. Every new “advancement” is just a way to push the average persons skill level one step further away from the tech nerds. They’ll push people further and further away from the source until an outsider comes along and “disrupts.” Then the cycle starts all over again. The Bambu effect is great for insulating Bambu from the open source-ness of 3d printing only until someone uses their X1 to prototype something better.
losing the ability to slice is akin to losing the ability to fix your car engine. it's great to have the skill, but if I need the printer to do rapid prototyping, I would want the slicer to figure out what needs to be done to print it; same way most people buy a car to get them from A to B but have no desire to tinker with it or even understand how it works under the hood.
I think in the world of 3D printing just like in cars, DIY or creating a custom PC it's good to have both things that just work and some stuff that require you to learn some fundamentals. For a business or small hobby I can understand why people just want things to work as at the end of the day time is money. The problem comes when something inevitable happens like something breaks or you need to do something slightly different, ONLY people who understand the ins and outs will be be able to solve that problem, others are faced with an expensive repair done by someone else or completely replacing the device (so wasteful). I personally repair my 3d printer, phone, pc etc myself, I just don't trust anyone to do it. Knowledge as power!
This is literally the best thing ever for people who enjoy the deep technical depths of 3D printing because it creates future jobs for them. I’m not a car mechanic, I don’t have time or interest in being one, I want my Honda civic to drive and if it stops, I take it to a car mechanic and give them money to make it drive.
Same goes for RC model airplanes.... I remember my colleagues from the RC club: BACK THEN you first had to buy some woodworking machines and tools and learn how to use them (craftmanship) BACK THEN you had to spend many hours to build your plane from wood, you even had to build your own receiver and transmitter BACK THEN when your plane crashed you had to spent hours and hours to repair it and try again BACK THEN you always had to fix different problems with your engine or RC system BACK THEN only the ones that really, really wanted to do this and dedicated almost all of your free time to this hobby succeeded. Yeah, the entry hurdle for that hobby was intensivly high BACK THEN. And in the 2010s ... the foam planes and drones started to emerge and suddenly almost everyone was able to give it a shot! Same story with 3D printers.
For me the "bambu effect" had a positive impact - with so many printers amongst people, it was so much easier for me to convince higher management to let me upgrade our 3D print lab equipment ... so now Im happily printing on HT 90 :) I understand there are much more expensive machines - but its always satisfying to complete the task with cheaper machine (before HT90 we only had MK3 and MK4s - and yet we managed to create all prototypes needed).
Every person who chooses to purchase a computer numerical control (CNC) machine (which 3D printers are) must accept that these are not plug and play devices which can be operated without having knowledge of the technology and how to maintain the equipment. I've been working with CNC machines since the early 80s. Early on I found it necessary to learn all things necessary to fully utilize the capabilities of the machine tools, including metallurgy, tooling, fixturing, and maintenance and/or repair of the firmware, mechanical, electrical, electronic, hydraulic, and pneumatic systems. CNC equipment is complex and will not simply produce high quality output over weeks, months, or years without a significant investment of time by the owner or his key employees. The failed expectations of people who were misled into believing 3D printers were like desktop laser printers was foreseeable.
Shitting on people for not looking at their toolpaths before hitting print then admitting that you don't know how to do CAD is insane dawg. Hope that glass house never springs a crack, you'd be shit outta luck.
that's fair. Since switching to a Bambu, I've spent way less time tinkering with temps and speed and general slicer configurations. I instead started to learn cad, since I know I'll be able to print most things I come up with
I've been printing since 2018 and from what I've seen you've got two groups. Those who like the printer itself and those who like what the printer makes. While I do enjoy tinkering with stuff and fixed my old Ender many times, I got tired of the inconsistency and swapped over to a Bambu. I love the consistency and it allows me to focus much more on making good quality prints and not just getting it to print in the first place. I do acknowledge though that I fall within the group who loves the prints more than the printer. This same argument can be made about cars with manuals. Though I can enjoy a good manual, I don't think I could realistically drive one to and from work on a daily basis. Though it is feasible, it takes way more effort than I can to put in. Now this isn't to say I don't love my automatic or don't care for it. I love my car and really enjoy weekend drives in it, but I think it comes down to personal preference AND how prone the person is to tinker with stuff
TLDR some butthurt losers fear that the bambu replaces their "expertise" and their very expensive professional 3d printers basically they say f the consumers what about us . this gatekeeping is ruining a lot of things in this world
If the 'Bambu Effect' means getting more people interested without the hassle, I'd say keep it coming. I've been wanting to get into 3D-printing from the get-go. But never did so due to - mostly - the price, the poor printing quality and the limited resources back in the day. Not so much the fact that you had to assemble everything yourself, I would have loved doing that. Like 6 months ago, somehow, my interest was re-kindled and I went searching on YT to see the state of things. And Bambu printers were all over the place. So I ordered an A1 Mini and I loved it. I printed all kinds of stuff I downloaded from all the known sites and it just worked. BTW, I now also have an A1 and an X1C that all serve their different purposes. My main interest however, is printing models, miniatures and so on but didn't want to get into Resin printing due to not having a proper place to deal with all the downsides of resin (fumes, toxicity, ...). My point being, after the honeymoon period, I realised that everything is a lot more involved. Especially when you start printing stuff like miniatures. You DO need to get into the nitty-gritty of the slicer. I've had a lot of prints that simply ended up in the bin due to simply bad slicer parameters. So yeah, if you 'grew up' with it, I can imagine the 'Bambu Effect' is real to you. But - to be honest - once you try to do some more 'sophisticated' (and I don't mean printing engineering materials) things like e.g. miniatures - not only do you need to know what a slicer can or can't do but you also need to get into CAD, Blender, ... to manipulate STL-, STEP-files and so on. Once you get deeper into the matter, and I mean printing other things than simple stands and boxes, you need to get into your slicer in and outs. I think it just depends on what you want to do. If you want to p**p out prints to sell on Etsy, the 'Bambu Effect' is a blessing. If you want to go deeper into things, the 'Bambu Effect' goes away more and more.
Bambu bringing 3d printing to the average human is magnificent. It allows people to create on a whim, maybe take up CAD and learn to model. However, the downside is it has given people a false sense of overconfidence when they just click slice and run it. There is a pro and con, the pro is they work, the con is when they don't the average consumer has 0 idea how to troubleshoot the issue and make the proper repair/adjustment. Thus resulting in the massive influx of people in online communities with simple issues and absolutely 0 idea what their next step should be. Or a machine they bricked because they just started messing with things they didn't need to and broke something non-servicable. A proper working machine is great but having a proper knowledge base behind how to operate and maintain the machine should be emphasized by manufacturers. At the end of the day a 3d printer is not a user friendly machine, it is still a machine made to manufacture something.
Ive waited over a decade for something like the Bambu simply because I didnt want my hobby to be building and fiddling with a 3d printer. I want my hobby to be 3d printing.
When I joined the community I started with an Ender 3. Why? It was fun. I learnt, but I wouldn't force anyone else to do so. The people who want to learn more will and those who just want a functional printer will have exactly that,
As a 3d printing technician for over 10 years, I understand where youre coming from about the 'simplicity of automation' from bambu machines, but I completely disagree that it ruins 3D printing. Having worked with and repaired machines from Creality, 3D Systems, Luzbot, Prusa, Makerbot, Bits from Bytes and Elegoo, the one month of work I've had with my A1 Mini blows them all out of the water. The simplicity of being able to hit "Print" and know that the machine will create flawless parts makes printing fun again. As much as I love tinkering on my creality and ender machines, I absolutely *HATED* coming back from a 10 hour print job only to see the machine gave up in the final hour. Bambu has been consistently reliable and I can always 3D print using additional slicers if I so choose.
I do think competition is a good thing that drives innovation. I do think most 3d printer manufacturers are just making copies of what Bambu Labs has done instead of asking, “Gee why did Bambu get so popular and how can we do something innovative in 3d printing?” Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad that 3d printing has become more accessible to more people but I do think more people should learn something about their machine and their software too in case something does go wrong
i had the idea that i wanted to print stuff not slice, slice is part of the process. Do you cook because you like cooking or because you have to in order to eat your food?
I’ve got 3 Bambus, and I use all 3 of them all them all the time just for things around the house /garage. Bambu helped me get in to hobby and quickly became another tool that now me, my wife and kids use as a tool not a toy, despite not having full (or any, frankly) knowledge how everything works. It also pushed me to get better at fusion, and about 75% of things we print were designed by me, and that wouldn’t have happened if I had to twinkle with printer all the time, instead printer does its printing stuff and I work on design. I’d argue 60-80% of hobbies don’t need more than this. Whenever Bambu releases their larger format, I’m sure I’ll be first inline. If I can afford it haha
The first questions from many new Bambu owners is who can make me this or where can i find a model for that... This is fine but they expect that all you need is a printer and you can make anything. Modeling is very important. Of course, I own a n X1C and love it.
I have printed a break caliper mount to my custom bicycle first from PLA than Nylon6 CF , then 3D printed the tool to make it out of forged carbon fiber. The PLA was limited by temp but it was enormously strong, the PA6 CF was a good balance just not quiet rigid enough, which made me learn how to make forged carbon fiber part manufacturing and how to print tools for it. And the adapter works great! And knowing how to slice was essential.
This happened with drones and TCN planes flight controllers… everything has plus and minus’s. I am sure who is not just a hobbyist like I am and want to dive deeper into 3D printing g-code and so on , will still do that. As for people like me who wants to print for hobby and only use the 3d printer as an extension to their work , it’s an amazing time.
As someone who still uses a Ender3, designs objects on tinkercad, slices it in creality, and prints them up. I’m not sure I entirely understand the conversion. What is the bamboo effect? Do you just download a file, load it on the bamboo and press print? No splicing? No analyzing of layers? No adjusting the wall thickness so your AR lower doesn’t explode? LOL Then that kinda contradicts the “Honda civic” analogy. It’s more like buying a Tesla, the car drives itself and ultimately makes society less critical thinking. Where there is no manual transmission, no manual windows, one air bag and no tachometer(2004 civic), just get in push a button and go.
Wait. You guys are "old" because you worked in Win 95 and didn't have Internet? I grew up with my PCjr with DOS 2.1. What does that make me? A fossil? 🤣 I truly don't mind there being the ability for beginners to slice easily for their walled-garden printer. It's so cool to see so many more people getting into the hobby without having to go through a lot of the pains I had to. However, I hope I NEVER lose the ability to choose an advanced mode in my slicer, or to have a printer with an open ecosystem. I love being able to fix what is broken, to troubleshoot when something is somewhat off. In the end, I wish everyone who 3D prints, regardless of their printer, slicer, or material of choice, a wonderful experience.
I have so many old tech skills that are useless or unneeded now. All Bambu did was push other manufacturers to automate more functions and they don't want to pay for that.
I started on a Stratasys Titan with their Insight software back in the early 2000s, and THAT software let you directly edit toolpath, like trim and extend individual lines in the toolpath, select individual lines and change their extrusion thickness . . . I've been annoyed ever since that nothing else gives me that level of control. But, even Stratasys has gotten away from it for most things. And to be fair, most of the time, it's good enough. Bambu is the same; most of the time, it's good enough. HOWEVER - every once in a while, something is a PIA, and the knowledge and the functionality would save the day. The more you know, the more you can do. It's that simple. But, Bambu is making the craft more accessible for people who don't know, and ultimately that's good for everyone. The 3D printer will become an appliance eventually if it keeps getting easier. VERY few people know or care how their microwave works either. For the rest of us, the knowledge is still available if you want it.
I just ordered the X1 carbon but I am so glad I started with the Ender 3 pro. It’s a lot easier to dive into fixing something yourself on a sub $200 printer than it is on a $1200 printer. Now that I have that knowledge of 3d printers I believe I can figure out any issues I have with the carbon
I think there are pros and cons to both, but personally I like being able to slice my own parts. It allows a different kind of control over the output.
It's a shame. I assume you heard a lot of that kind of thing from your parents: 'In my day, we didn’t need that washing machine; we had to figure it out ourselves.'
Ok, I will agree with you on this. Going from my Ender 3 V2 to my A1 and my nephew getting his A1 mini, not having to slice is nice for my nephew but it annoys me that I am not looking to make sure every print is like I would want it instead of just printing.
As Prusa support tech, I know the bambu effect is real.
Too many people print horribly, weak or fail in defaults, blame the machine, I try to show them what the slicer can do, they either get excited to learn more or start a diatribe about "too much tinkering, I want simple".
The defaults can get you far with most models but not every model/production batch.
yes but blaming bambu for making it easier is the stupidest thing to do.
With this dumbass analogy nobody should drive a care unless they are a mechanical engineer or even a mechanic. Ridiculous
But its kind of like the learning curve with computers. It used to be similar to 3D printers, you had to know the ints and outs, how to really manipulate the machine to get it work how you wanted it. Now, any person can just turn on a machine and have it do what they want. Is that a bad thing? No, its just how far the technology has come. Sure, it creates a barrier if there is an issue, but no one would argue that computer tech is worse just because it doesn't force the average user to know what's going on under the hood. You still can in order to get the most out of it, but it isn't essential to owning the machine. Bambulab advancing the tech and making it more accessible to the average user isn't a bad thing, it just makes it so gatekeepers have a harder time making themselves feel superior to people who haven't spend the same amount of time on the tech as them. The only people getting upset about Bambulab machines are those that resent the fact that their knowledge is becoming outdated and they can't be as pretentious about it.
@ineedgoodname not blaming anyone, but I think everyone should tip their toes in their settings instead of relying on default profiles, and they will not regret it once they see the results
@@johnjoe769 then use the defaults, but if your prints are not as nice, dont blame the machine.
I think people are missing the point of 3d printing. It's 3d printing, not 3d printer fixing.
This is it. Been 3d printer fixing since 2013, from cr10s to enders to vorons to prusas and all in between. Just bought my first p1, it's going to sit right beside my v2.4 350 :)
I agree with you, if someone miss or want the tinkering....that becomes innovation...
No, no. You need to start on a non Bambu printer to learn about 3D printers and how to fix them otherwise when on the rare occasion your Bambu has a fault you'll know what to do. I don't regret learning 3D printing on my Ender 6 but I love using my A1 and X1C.
Well, it's not skill to 3d print, it's skill to diagnose and do things accordingly. As a hobbyist, it's sad that people see 3d printers solely as tools.
@@stevecade857 Every time my bambu printer has had a fault, I have been able to learn with it and fix it. I have also torn down most of it (on separate occasions) and put it back together with no prior tech experience (other than software and programming). I don't think people need to start with a different printer.
The discussion about "lost skill" could be used for anything. How many folks have programmed in assembly (vs used an arduino)? Adjusted valve lash on a motor (vs just use their car as an appliance)? Developed film by hand (vs used their iphone)? Also, the next discussion was based on "I have no idea how to do this in CAD but i can direct print from a scan!". You'll have a bunch of draftsman complaining about how "computers make it too easy" and "we used to have to know how to use scales for hand drawing!".....same energy from the other side of the fence.
The whole point of the "hobbyist" market is to remove those barriers for entry. The people that enjoy it will seek out the "lost knowledge". Also how great is it that you don't HAVE to mess with slicers constantly anymore? I don't need another hobby (in the form of a printer), I need a tool to help me with my existing hobbies/jobs.
For a lot of people that's what works and for somebody who wants to run a quick easy business it makes sense, but honestly if somebody is interested in learning principles of fabrication one of the less "user friendly" options is a great tool to both learn and encourage through iterative improvement of designs and learning the factors through slightly, but not overly, painful experience (just losing a little time and relatively cheap filament) to empirically start adjusting variables and learn how they interact with specific aspects of prints that may cause issues
Agreed. It’s the difference between having 3d printing be your hobby vs it being a tool.
Your example of tuning your own car is a good one. It used to be necessary for everyone to kind of know how to maintain a car. And now the car is more of an automated tool that self adjusts and monitors.
@@jamesx7424 thanks, and absolutely. My race motors require a lot more attention and diligence than the one in the daily driver. Was there a time where more diligence was required for a daily driver? Absolutely. I'm very appreciative that's no longer the case though. It's okay that we can have something as a hobby but its also okay when it's not required to use that thing.
If there are criticisms about bamboo and decisions to remove features, or be closed source, or whatever; that's fine and those are valid, discuss them as such. However, choosing to focus on how "easy things are nowadays" is a worn-out trope.
I think it is kinda of a dual thing. While making tools easier to use and more accessible is great, I don't think people not understanding how their tools work isn't. When something does go pear shaped, the amount of explaining I have to do to help people has magnified. Car repair got significantly more expensive as fewer people work on their own, even when the process is not computer related.
Jim, you hit the nail on the head!
With this type of thinking, no one should be able to drive a car unless they are a professional mechanic
Yeah you make a good point here! I work on my own cars, but it took me 8 years to learn how to do so on a professional level from rebuilding my engines to manual transmission rebuilds etc.., I'm not even a tech, but was trained by professional techs, but it's a lot of freakin work and so much to learn! That's why your average Joe will never be able to work on their own cars.
Not that extreme but it has got to a point were a lot of people cannot even do simple maintenance of cars, even though the country I'm from it is a part of passing a driving test.. People just learning a small amount would save them hundreds or thousands paying someone else do it for you, which is sad to see.
if you didnt mine the metals, smelt the parts, made the circuits and machined the engine out a solid block of steel and vulcanized all the rubber in the wheels. how can you be allow to drive.
I would agree because I believe most drivers on the road don't deserve licenses, but I get your point.
This is why mechanics rip so many people off.
I've been printing for over a decade, and most of what I print are tools. The printer is a tool, and if I have to stop to fix a tool, it's defeated its own purpose to me. I could not be happier with my Bambu. It works and it does its job of supporting my other projects.
I agree 100% i also use mine to print mainly tools, I started using 3D printing last century, that's over 1/4 century of 3D printing experience. I was the first 3D printing company in my province, and I paid over $50K for my first 3D printer. FDM has been one of the least viable 3D printing processes until I bought a Bambu printer. It is a game changer.
Yeah if you have to ‘fix’ it for every job, it gets old real quick
Exactly. 3d printers are an appliance, not a hobby. Imagine someone said tink g and printing with a 2d printer was a hobby
I've built printers, maintained printers, been from the robo3d to qidi, to creality, to Anker to prusa to bambu, I CAN do everything manually, but why the hell would I want to when trying to make functional parts that just Work, and don't have to spend half my time leveling, and maintaining and drying filament and so on and so forth when I can model my part up, send it to my printer and walk in in the morning and know it's just going to be there and right as I expected it to be
Agreed. I have an old ender 3 that I upgraded so it prints with relatively the same quality as my X1C, but it still requires fiddling. Dont get me wrong, I like to tinker, but sometimes I just want to hammer out a 3D printing project without all the mucking about. Being able to print in 1 day what would have taken me a few on my ender is a game changer. Prototyping a new design on my ender would take days, now I can get that done in an afternoon.
"ever since iphones, kids stopped needing to remember how to use a phone book!"
Ever since the lightbulb, kids stopped needing to remember how to use kerosene lamps!
These guys are gate keeping 3D printing. That is freaking weird.
Technology evolves. That's how the world works! Everyone benefits when the market is opened up for everyone, at every skill and knowledge level.
Dumb analogy
this is a good analogy but for a bad reason - both Bambu printers and iPhones are full of proprietary hardware and difficult to repair
Just wait a few years until the market is more established, they will start introducing locks to the filament you can use and rack up the price. Or even forcing you to their 3D assset market.
"Not to sound gatekeepey .... but I'm gonna be gatekeepey."... it's not a "Loss" of expertise... but it's a thinning of the expertise because more people are getting into it who DON'T want to have to know how to slice... we're perfectly happy printing other people's projects.
3d printing community has turned from nerds with no money to entitled snobs that run print farms. Nobody needs to know the exact same things they do in order to produce good prints. People just need to practice a skill until they figure it out. There is no set way to learn anything besides practice. I use all the helpful software and methods that I want to get the exact results I want, I don't need some random loser to "gatekeep" me out of their little community because I never built my own printer from scratch or some nonsense.
@@shamancredible8632 "entitled snobs that run print farms" Ironically Im seeing a lot of bamboo 3D print farms recently.
@@shamancredible8632 And even with practice, everyone's journey and experience is still gonna be different and unique to them. Just because you had to learn a skill to solve something for yourself does not make you more "superior" to someone who just never had a need to cross that bridge. You are only more superior to the version of you before you learnt that skill.
My first 'personal computer' had an 8080 processor, floppy disks, 32Kb of RAM and an LS-3 clone for a display. I could dial in to the company and occasionally send mail or read a USENET group. It required constant tweaking of the BIOS, lots of cleaning the drives. My current laptop does my taxes, CAD drawings, finances, correspondence, and lets me wander down rabbit holes and chase shiny objects at will. And after 4 years, I've never opened the cover.
I've been thru 7(8?) different printers and modded the heck out of each one to get it 'more functional'. My Bambu is the same as my laptop - it just works.
my first computer was a zx spectrum with tape cassette for storage and tv for a monitor, but the games were cool! lol
floppy disks were so much better.
yapping about innability to slice while not knowing how to cad profesionaly is just absurd in my opinion. Not everything can be scanned and printed, the whole point of having a fdm, cnc machine is MAKING ur stuff
Don’t hate the player hate the game. Bambu changed the game.
Exactly! Massive competition between companies will always benefit the consumer and society the most.
we are missing experts cause bambu, 2min later , I cant use cad???? are you kidding me????
Came here to say this.
"back in my day, slicers only supported stl!" meanwhile now I can go direct from step file of my design while in the cad software to gcode... oh how fast tech changes.
This is honestly the same as boomer talk "back in my day we had to go to the library to learn things" type of argument
It totally is. They're gatekeepers of 3d printing. So freaking weird and pretentious!
Not really. Instead what they're trying to say is that as more people convert to Bambu printers and they work so well with default settings people aren't learning how to change all the slicing settings as much and therefore the quality is going down. For example way too many people use grid infill for situations where adaptive cubic or triangles would be better. Overall Bambu is amazing and I love mine but the experience of using printers where you have to learn more about slicing is invaluable.
@@cameralife8 Maybe couple months later, Bambu slicer will have automatic adaptive infill type according to your model. Things will only get easier, sky is not the limit.
@@seanzhouz3478 that would be amazing, but I really hope it would work well. I want them to implement the print in thin air supports that went invented a couple years back. That would be amazing!
Yeah it is but people still use it for a reason. A lot of my co-workers have 3d printers. As bad as it sounds you can tell who got into it in the prusa era, the ender era, and the current bambu era. There's a pretty big discrepancy between the first group and the last.
sell printers that are better than the bambu for under 8k and we can talk.
They have just widened the range of expertise or interest needed to get into 3d printing. I got a P1S as my first printer and then immediately learned CAD and parametric design and how to diagnose bad prints and what the slicer settings do. The ease of use didn't discourage me from going deep. But if I was the type of person who just wanted to print things, I could have. It's all upside. More people in printing means more investment in lowering filament prices, and more features like auto bed leveling.
Yes, you are gatekeeping brother, but that's ok. This is a human reaction to technology becoming more accessible. It's great that you are self-aware though, most people never get out of their bubble. This happens in every industry.
That "just going to work" thing is exactly what 3D printing needs to be. Being nostalgic for when things were hard and shitty isn't the way. 3D printing was stuck in hard and unreliable for far too long.
Yet an Ender 3 can produce parts with the same quality as a X1C 🤷🏻♂️
@@zerotweaks With significantly more frustration and much higher barrier to entry. That's the point. Feeling superior because you have a machine that doesn't work as well without significantly more frustration and startingly less efficiency is one of the strangest quirks of the gatekeepers in this community.
@@KCInherent frustration only if you don't know what you are doing 🤷🏻♂️
@@zerotweaks that is exactly the point. There need to be printers that allow both noobs and pros to get great results. Gatekeeping won’t help anyone. It’s so dumb. It’s like saying everyone should be able to operate a letter press because pressing ctrl-p in your word processing software is too easy.
@@hectobit I'm just saying facts tho, and it is not gatekeeping, everyone can reproduce the ellis guide for example
I see the Bambu Effect as me being able to iterate faster, see the effect of changes in slicer settings faster, and the industry forced to make using a tool easier.
I hope you are ready to shell lots of money in the near future for brand locked filament cartridges. Just as happens with ink and paper printers.
@ I’m using whatever filament I want. Aren’t you?
@@JuanAdam12 Sure at this moment, but is highly likely that will change.
I think the bambu effect has actually had a beneficial effect on design. Previously, a lot of people wanted to design thing, but spent so much time "tweaking" their printer to actually print something successful. This constant failure to print caused a lot of people to not even get into the field because they were turned off of the geekiness of it all. Now, with Bambu's, people are willing to take the time to learn a CAD, design some seriously amazing products and items, and then can print those items effectively. This is why I sold my previous 3dPrinter and got a Bambu. I didnt want to spend the majority of my time "tweaking" my prints to get it perfect, I wanted to spend my time tweaking the design in CAD and learning new design skills. Dont get me wrong, I built a 3d printer from scratch, but I'd rather have spent that year learning design. I think there is room for all types.
That's it, I bought an Ender 3 years ago but only made 10 prints with it and then nothing for 3 years. Because the tinkering with the 3D printer took me so much time to make the print usable at all. I would have put the time I put into it much more into designing the object. Now, with a Bambu A1, I print almost every day and improve the parts in CAD. That's what I enjoy.
That’s exactly it for me. I’m not a 3d printer enthusiast. I’m a design and prototyping enthusiast of parts for other systems. I knew all the previous 3d printers would make you pull your hair out with the chronic failures. That’s why I never got one until last November. The X1 Carbon. Cope and seethe boomer scum!
This was my situation. I got the Little Monster when it first came out. At the time, it was the biggest and fastest printer on the market (until Creality dethroned it literally a month later with another mammoth bed slinger lol).
My background is mechanical engineering and I have tipped my toes into comp sci (which makes my head hurt 😂) so I'm no stranger to computational or manual drafting. I jumped on FDM printing with ambitions to mod my car and help my team mod our race cars. That idea quickly wanned when I had to consistently fiddle with settings, chasing my tail and making one thing better but worsening another aspect. Failed prints and let's not even mention the woefully inaccurate dimensions.
It went from 'lets make functional parts!' to 'well... I can print this cute statue to display on my desk...' and the printer eventually went into obscurity. Then Duet came along so I snagged a Duet2, converted my printer and finally the thing was more reliable but also had SO much more potential than before. It was still a hassle but it was much better and I didn't have to babysit it when printing.
Fast forward to now, my BL touch finally quit and I'm getting strange behaviour from the motor drivers somehow reversing themselves and crashing the head. So I was going to get an X1C but it was too small for my typical projects; figured I'd wait but politics for 2025 made me panic-buy a K2+ instead.
This K2+ is the tool I was hoping to be near, potential wise, when I got the Little Monster way back in 2018. Now I can focus on problem solving for life and mods rather than problem solving a tool that just doesn't want to behave 👍
Heck, I might even do another conversion on the Little Monster to turn it into a lite-duty CNC.
This is hilarious. Back in 2011 I was working in the contract R&D world on making PLA blends for a filament manufacturer. We didn’t have a slicer at the time, we used excel to assemble the gcode and then walked that over to the machine. It was a giant pain. I don’t miss that era of 3D printing. The machine was Mendel Huxley Frankenstein that would occasion fall apart because we shoddily made it in 8 hours.
I
Oh God I do not miss the early reprap days
That's the thing, no one misses that era of the tech. Nobody would want to go back to that, its awesome how the tech advances, but then videos like come along, lamenting the advancement of the tech because it allows average people to engage with it. Huh? It makes no sense.
It's having an extremely low floor, but an extremely high ceiling. Those are the best things that have longevity. We see it in video games, coding, car care, van life, construction (soon to incorporate more 3D printing in the future for the structure), etc. That's a GOOD thing.
So, no. It didn't ruin 3D printing. Not at all.
Oh yes the gaming industry is so good! all the preorders, "DLCs", loot boxes, pay to win, and half-assed new releases that need about 150Gb of disk space and that look barely better than games of 10 years ago.
Back in my day, we had to pick our own cotton, weave our own cloth, and sew our own clothes. Because of mass-produced clothes I've seen a drastic drop in the ability to make your own clothes from scratch!
Back in my day ads were annoying but relegated to web browsing, now even my OS has ads on the file explorer windows.
I'm in the automotive business. Nowadays every service shop for certain brands has a 3D printer for a bunch of different parts.
Bambu is the best thing that ever happened to 3d printing.
You misspelled prusa and open source.
@@LilApe I also misspelled over priced and outdated.
@@LilApe Here we can observe a Prusa fanboy on the wild, spewing their nonsense not realizing Prusa just copied the RepRap created a cult and sold overpriced DIY kits.
@@beebop5536 So you admit that the bambu is overpriced and outdated.
@StupidGuy1125 That sucks for you, it works for the millions of other people that have them.
You can say the same thing about cell phones. I miss the days when we have the used smoke signals to contact our teenage friends across town 🤣
The teenagers still have smoke but it likely to be the MJ.
I can't think of a single person who has ever said "I wish my inkjet printer wasn't so reliable. Nobody knows how to print now, because they just work". Why is it any different with a 3D printer?
I wish I could give thorough maintenance to my inkjet printer, buy printing heads and ink so I don't have to overpay for a few ml of ink.
The one thing I noticed with the rise of Bambu is that less and less objects are being shared freely. It got even worse after Makerworld started their exclusive program.
I know I am showing my age, but I am seeing echos of how the software industry started. First, people made models to share freely, usually on Thingiverse, but as time goes on, it seems that is going away, either locked behind licensing, or commercial subscriptions, or one had to go to an exclusive site for that model. I think part of it is the people who will grab someone's STL and start cranking out loads and loads of stuff, like articulated dragons, but it is sad to see that start to go.
Do you work for free? Ask your boss to stop paying you. Then you can complain about people charging money for their work. 😂
@@ryanlandry8214 No one's saying you can't monetize your 3D models. Everyone is just going to either make open source alternatives to the paid ones or pirate them lol.
@@ryanlandry8214 That's an interesting topic we can talk about if you've never downloaded a model for free or at least paid every designer that asked for a tip. You might also want to pay the developers of the slicers and/or firmware you are using and the ones that developed those for free in the past. Heck, you should also pay subscriptions to the sites you download these from.
This whole hobby only exists, because people pushed it in their spare times. Every hotend you use, every motion system is based on free work of others.
Exactly! This is how appealing to the lowest common denominator drives enshitification.
Lowering the skill floor of any "hobby" is great for the hobby. Dont let this become ham radios.
Is great but only to a point. Do you want the kind of people that use tiktok, do challenges and injure themselves in the most fantastic ways steer the 3D printing industry? Because that's what might happen. Later you will be only able to print certain registered things because "certain prints might be dangerous or obscene" and you will have to pay a lot for brand locked filament.
@@teresashinkansen9402 What? That's like saying "because kids can use a computer, computer technology has gotten worse." Such a myopic take on technology growth.
@@KCInherent Exactly! they are easily manipulated and used because they don't have enough brain development to realize, haven't you noticed how the videogame industry has become quite bad and predatory? You own no games, not even a copy, DRM and anticheat that are borderline rootkits, lootboxes, pay to win, gacha genre and all that. As I said dont be surprised if in the future, 3D printers are like apple products.
@@KCInherent Yes, haven't you seem how crap is the gaming industry? haven't you noticed how people complain about video games being too expensive, badly optimized, etc. In fact even youtube is an excellent example, you cannot say anything or else your comment gets censored. This is the second time I restructure this comment because it keeps getting censored by youtube.
I for one, since I'm the person my whole family calls for help, love it when new wifi routers just work for those with zero networking experience...or their 3d printer just works without having to know how everything works.
When things just work, life is actually easier for those who understand how they work because they don't have to help everyone with the same exact question or problem.
Exactly why I'm the only one in my family with an Android and why I'm happy everyone else has an iPhone. It just works. If anyone asks me what 3D printer to buy, 97% of the time it's going to be a bambu because they just work. I've been printing for 10+ years now, starting from a homemade replicator, my first ANET A8 fire hazard, several crealitys, various resin printers, and when my Ender 5 Pro finally broke enough I bit the bullet and bought a bambu. It's been nearly a year and I haven't done any work to it besides swapping nozzles and upgrading the feeder gears for filled materials. Literally I just select a material and a profile, hit slice and print and I love it.
I work in industrial additive and it hurts going back to these massive machines and clunky slicers that take hours to get to do exactly what you want. Maybe they're upset that sales are down because a $700 printer requires less work and training to get great engineering level parts and people don't want to buy $15k+ 'engineering' and 'industrial' printers are just worse? The vast majority of people just want to print PLA trinkets, and fix some stuff at home and will us ASA or some nylon/carbon blends. If you wanna print PEEK/ULTEM, the industrial world still exists but I really see a downward trend.
I would argue that bottom of the barrel printers had more of a negative effect over the past few years. Consumer printer tech really stagnated for a long time, because so many brands were racing to the bottom with printers that were too cheap to be true and under-engineered. How many people bought the cheapest printers possible and then threw bolt-on parts after them, like they were trying to tune up a 4th-owner Civic? The forums were just inundated with folks who honestly believed that a $99 printer (with $200-$300 of "upgrades") was all you needed. Most of the problems they were attempting to solve had already been solved a decade earlier. The higher-end printers just had to be more competent than a used Ender 3, which wasn't really a high bar. I'm happy that it's possible to buy a printer now where the only troubleshooting steps are drying your filament and cleaning the print bed.
Agreed, apart from space limitations... one of the primary reasons I hadn't even considered buying a printer before bambu arrived in the scene was due to it practically being a hobby in and of itself maintaining it / upgrading it / leveling the print beds / all of the troubleshooting before you could benefit from owning a device that can print 3d objects reliably.
So many comments totally missing what you are saying. Printers are tools. Printers have become so easy that folks don’t HAVE to learn how to diagnose issues. I constantly get asked how to improve print quality or fix issues, and folks don’t know the basic terms or slicer settings I’m pointing them to. It’s making helping people more difficult. Printing becoming “democratized” is excellent, and you said that, but it does mean understanding of the core concepts is headed downward.
People with Enders and Elegoos are going to have the EXACT SAME QUESTIONS. They don't automatically download all that knowledge when they buy a hard to use printer. Everybody has to learn those things at some point. These questions weren't caused by Bambu, but an influx of new people to ask them was.
This is a ridiculous gate keeping point of view.
Gatekeeping is important
@@jokypoky whats the benifit here?
it’s important when you have NO OTHER TALENT whatsoever
When the masses get on the wagon things get ruined, is what drives enshitification.
@@ERA93 A more complex and open ecosystem, ironically that any one can use. Instead 3D printing might go the way of paper printers, in the future you will have to pay $$$$ for brand locked filament.
Gutenberg really did a number on the general population's calligraphy
It's great 3D printers slowly evolve to an appliance. We need that and want that.
Just make sure it doesn't turn into sucky strategies like with 2D printers.
Bambu is pushing to that with their newest software update.
the fact that 3d printers are such a hassle is why they will never take off bambu is the only hope for 3d printing
On the Bambu Reddit all you see is people who are clueless as to why their print didn’t come out perfectly and asking others why. Confused by the situation because they bought a Bambu labs machine and that’s not what they were sold. (By many influencers). But like with a car there is still the need to understand why something doesn’t work if you expect to fix the issue yourself. I think it’s true that if you were there in the old days when 3d printing was a struggle then you have a better understanding how to print a complex object with challenging features. Otherwise you’re reliant on those defaults which let’s face it were setup for speed primarily in this case.
"It's so sad that no one knows how to hand-crank a car and use a manual choke and timing advance lever to get their car going..." said no one ever. It's similar to lamenting the loss of unproductive troubleshooting and bodging that used to be required when 3d printing gear was less evolved.
waaaaaaahhh im a big baby my hobby has become efficient and affordable and people don't have to experience the teething we went through. 🤣
I'll give you a little jab at your (self-admitted) gatekeeping over "lost skills", and then admitting that yeah, you need to learn CAD so you can better design new and unique components, instead of just copying what exists.
But also, now I really want a 3D scanner and want to go through my home, take apart everything I can, scan every component, and index them so I have a whole-home archive of replacement parts, and would be able to readily reproduce them at any time, without ever worrying.
The real thing I personally want to do, is build a full computer isolation pod, entirely to my own spec. Living in an apartment, I don't have a lot of room for working with things like wood, so I can't really fab something up that way. But if I can bolt a few structural bars together, print up all the panels and surfacing for the pod, and be able to print upgrades any time I think of it? Heck yeah. Many major material fabricators build their own workstations to their personal spec, whether out of wood or metal, why shouldn't it be the same when the workstation is your computer desk and your material is pre-ducted, hand-sculpted, 3D printed plastic panels? It's all Tab A into Slot B, in the end. You just have to know how to model the tabs and slots to fit properly.
Outliers drive civilizations, the common denominator are just resource intensive cash cows.
It's fun watching you call yourself old. I'm 58 and I remember my girlfriend's dad hating the Mac because (I felt) he had spent so much time "figuring out" MS-DOS, and now these kids were coming along with there 'mouse' and 'graphical user interface' and no one really understood how to navigate a filesystem anymore. :-) It happens to us all.
Perfected may be a better word than ruined. When I print, I need it to just work and that’s why we’ve always used Stratasys. It’s nuts expensive, but it just worked. Now Bambu can give amazing results on protos for a fraction of the cost without the hassle and that’s exactly what a tool should do.
"not to sound gatekeepe" is exactly tge sort of phrase a gatekeeper would say
Today I got my A1 as my first 3D printer and the first thing I printed was a replacement part that went missing for our dishwasher. It is a relatively complex design that consist of two half rings with flanges that then form a whole ring that slides in, rotates and locks to hold one of the spray arms. No luck finding it anywhere on the market.
So I reversed engineered it in FreeCAD using measurements and a similar part that only had different dimensions. Since it should be durable in the machine (water, chemicals and heat) I used PP, which people said is not especially beginner friendly, but I wanted to give it a shot, even if it is just to gain experience. I just used the Generic PP filament profile. For adhesion I used double sided tape. And what can I say, 18 minutes after hitting print I got the part first try. It was only a small part but still. It is mindblowing to me how good this was working right out of the box.
Only problem with Bambu is the lack of open source and the proprietary parts. It ruins the 'old spirit' of 3d printing, apart from that they did wonders dragging every other manufacture up to scratch.
You can run open source firmware, and their parts are very reasonable and get to your door quickly.
Nobody is stopping you from continuing to do it the hard way.
Some of us just want a printer to augment an existing hobby, not a whole other hobby in and of itself.
Only reason I don't like bambu is their printer is not open source. I have had so many old electronics that became useless because of proprietary software that's either broken or unavailable. An open source bambu printer would be nice and might change my mind on buying one in the future, but until then they're basically the Apple of 3d printers, which is a good or bad thing depending on what type of person you are.
@@shamancredible8632 You can run open source firmware on the Bambu and all of the various popular open source slicers support it as well.
Go look for info about X1Plus (the open source firmware) then finally order one already. lol.
And like that the ecosystem will become just like smartphones. You will have to pay a rental fee to use your 3D printer and all will be garden walled, I wouldn't be surprised if the printer also will make you watch ads before printing or even printing ad objects.
I've seen that same problem overall in all fields: at work, we have switched our logistics infrastructure to an entirely different system, so rather than using two independent software packages and "marrying" them together rather gracelessly (and expensively), the company now uses a fully-integrated software solution that offers applications across all devices, top-to-bottom.
While all that sounds good on paper, the company has had no seminars whatsoever to properly train employees in its use; at the same time, most people working in the company are either too old or too young for this shit - "looking under the hood" of software that is at times nebulous is not exactly their forte, nor something they are obsessive enough to do anything about.
Being born in 1984 and doing all that since I was a teen, have ended up becoming the unofficial local troubleshooter.
It’s like when people who rode horses complained about them newfangled honk’n wheeled carriages.
I started in 2009. I had to hand wind my own hot-ends out of nichrome wire and whatever parts I could find. My first printer was made out of plumbing parts. I had to use Skeinforge to slice my first prints. There were no kits available then. Today, sure I still have a printer I built but I also have a Bambu X1C and Creality printers. Every time I use them I marvel at how far we've come and wonder at how far we might go. I don't lament the progress because I recognize how much it has widened 3D printing and how it has opened it to so many new people.
I think we are close to reaching the apex, maybe there is a small plateau, but I think things might not go that great. Im afraid if 3D printing really reaches the masses it will become another victim of enshittfication. On one side there will be tremendous "innovation" but everything will become so simple and garden walled due profit maximization and market control that you will be locked to only printing reviewed models from brand locked 3D asset stores as well as filament.
I'm a CNC technician and I can tell you from my experience that CNC guys are not checking the G Code before running their cycles. They generate their code in Solidworks or Fusion or whatever, send it to their machine, load the necessary tools and in some cases offsets, and hit go. The only checking of code is making sure the whole file was received, and some don't even do that.
Worked for years with Germans, they ALWAYS checked the code on the machine and in software, checking tool passes, then rode the speed dial watching it make the first program pass sloooowwww. But we were making some pretty wild stuff that needed very high precision (optical stuff).
actual boomer discussion
Jeez what is this, boomer talk? How can you gatekeep something that is finally making 3d printing accessible to millions instead of thousands?
Is better that way, else things become shitty because they have to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator while also paradoxically going for unsustainable "innovation".
I started with a Wanhao i3 and CR10...was great for tinkering, I learned CAD and 3D Modelling for tabletop gaming terrain. I'm old school, back in the days...no compiler for machine coding, binary to hexadecimals...printing on paper...we had to put command for spacing between paragraphs to print. Today with the 3D printers, Bambu's have changed my productivity and my workflow in an amazing time saving ways like back in the days when paper printers didn't need command codes throughout a page to print. I think this is great, the new 3D printers are appliances now. So people can buy my models and then print them without having to tinker. Making them that easy to use, you need things around the house, you just buy or design and print. Saves on everything, transportation, manufacturing, reducing pollution child labour from 3rd world countries. More of that other wasted energies can shift into a healthier consumer society.
Welcome the newest generation of literally any hobby or skill known to man.
You two are not old ...and mass-produced automobiles haven't ruined cars for car enthusiasts, the old ones are still loved and used. BTW My Bambu is now an appliance like my coffee maker, only it's more functional. toi put that in perspective, I was using 3D printing before Windows 3.1 was an OS.
"Bambu effect" also called "envy".
Bambu effect really means “ wish we would of did this”
No the skill dilution is real, I know of a person who bought a $1000 printer and then proceeded to break it from not knowing how to do basic maintenance, and struggling to do something as simple as clear a jam... Went from bragging about his new "business" to calling it a waste of time hobby in 24 hours after a hot end failure. He just didn't know how to fix it, and threw a fit when he had to pay to have it returned, and they refused to refund due to "user error". Would not be surprised if he broke something and just didn't want to admit it. And from the amount of other printers on ebay, and other resale site listed as "for parts" its a common thing. But hey at least cheap parts for me.
I call it "being overly defensive of _your_ brand". :-)
@@Awrethien that has nothing to do with skills. We live in a time when people are desperate to break free from the 9-5 job and this is how desperate people act. They give up without any effort because they expect everything to just happen like the social media influencers suggest. People fail to realize that influencers don't post all of their struggles and failures, so we have this delusion that everything should just work smoothly 24/7 with 0 mistakes. I've seen this all around me and it's not just related to 3D printing, it's with everything and anything to become an entrepreneur and quit your job.
Look at all the crappy AI videos on TH-cam and social media. These involve little to no skill, but people make money, some make millions. So people jump into it thinking they can get rich too, only to give up when they don't have the same results. This shows it has nothing to do with the "Bambu Effect". This video itself was made for views (money), because Bambu videos are popular and complaining about things is viral these days.
This is the best ad for Bambu Lab that I have ever seen.
The editor must have seen the hypocrisy because in five minuets you guy go from saying the hobby is losing skill because people buying off the self products that do everything for them, right to talking about buying off the shelf scanners because of how easy they are to use instead of CAD.
I just ordered my first printer. I’m a 90’s kid and I still to this day tinker with absolutely everything. Being that I am a huge believer in right to repair, open source, strong community, no cloud nonsense, and I didn’t want to give more of my money to China. I ordered a Prusa MK4S kit at an amazing price. It’s gonna be a new hobby so I’m going to build it and actually learn to create/slice and upgrade everything. That’s most of the appeal for me. I won’t deny the industry needed something like Bamboo. It lit a fire under every other company and there is no better motivator to ramp up innovation.
Photo/astro industry: Holders, adapters, cases, covers, adjusters, stands, mounts, clips, panels, rigs, focusers, dials, buttons...😮
You could also apply this to the sciences. I'm not a physicist, but I know a good deal for not being one. I run into knowledge (or skill) blocks all the time. Is the answer for me to go back to school and become a physicist, or is it OK if I just ask an actual physicist to clarify things? 3D Printing is the same. There will be every spot in the spectrum of expertise, and to say that most people should be able to do the stuff that the experts can do is 100% gatekeeping. I was there a decade ago, struggling with everyone else to get these things running and printing quality prints. My expertise in this field is valuable to those who don't need to or have no business going as deep as I did. The Bambu didn't ruin 3D printing for anyone. It's not meant for the tinkerers/experts (even though you can still use them if you want). It's meant to open 3D printing up to people who would normally not even try. Again, there will always be those of us who go the extra measure and develop expertise. We're just entering a period where that doesn't have to be 99% of the users, which is a good thing.
It's like debating that inkjet or laser printers are too easy to use
Indeed also I must raise the issue of how people is ripped of their money with proprietary ink cartridges. Seems 3D printing will head that way.
I'm the person who likes playing with the printer hardware more than actually printing. I love learning how exactly everything works from the stepper to the innerworkings of Klipper. I still like what Bambu has done because it pushed the industry forward instead of a race to the bottom.
It's rare I put a dislike on a video, but clinging to old tools and resisting new technology reflects a stagnant technological conservatism-a fear-driven mindset that not only stifles progress but also limits the potential for innovation, creativity, and broader participation in the field. You guys have gone from embracing technologies cutting edge to being boring show stoppers.
He’s mostly right. The tech class only creates things to protect their jobs. Every new “advancement” is just a way to push the average persons skill level one step further away from the tech nerds. They’ll push people further and further away from the source until an outsider comes along and “disrupts.” Then the cycle starts all over again.
The Bambu effect is great for insulating Bambu from the open source-ness of 3d printing only until someone uses their X1 to prototype something better.
losing the ability to slice is akin to losing the ability to fix your car engine. it's great to have the skill, but if I need the printer to do rapid prototyping, I would want the slicer to figure out what needs to be done to print it; same way most people buy a car to get them from A to B but have no desire to tinker with it or even understand how it works under the hood.
I think in the world of 3D printing just like in cars, DIY or creating a custom PC it's good to have both things that just work and some stuff that require you to learn some fundamentals. For a business or small hobby I can understand why people just want things to work as at the end of the day time is money. The problem comes when something inevitable happens like something breaks or you need to do something slightly different, ONLY people who understand the ins and outs will be be able to solve that problem, others are faced with an expensive repair done by someone else or completely replacing the device (so wasteful). I personally repair my 3d printer, phone, pc etc myself, I just don't trust anyone to do it. Knowledge as power!
This is literally the best thing ever for people who enjoy the deep technical depths of 3D printing because it creates future jobs for them. I’m not a car mechanic, I don’t have time or interest in being one, I want my Honda civic to drive and if it stops, I take it to a car mechanic and give them money to make it drive.
Same goes for RC model airplanes.... I remember my colleagues from the RC club:
BACK THEN you first had to buy some woodworking machines and tools and learn how to use them (craftmanship)
BACK THEN you had to spend many hours to build your plane from wood, you even had to build your own receiver and transmitter
BACK THEN when your plane crashed you had to spent hours and hours to repair it and try again
BACK THEN you always had to fix different problems with your engine or RC system
BACK THEN only the ones that really, really wanted to do this and dedicated almost all of your free time to this hobby succeeded.
Yeah, the entry hurdle for that hobby was intensivly high BACK THEN.
And in the 2010s ... the foam planes and drones started to emerge and suddenly almost everyone was able to give it a shot!
Same story with 3D printers.
for some like me, I love tinkering and modding. but I sure do want a bambu.
For me the "bambu effect" had a positive impact - with so many printers amongst people, it was so much easier for me to convince higher management to let me upgrade our 3D print lab equipment ... so now Im happily printing on HT 90 :) I understand there are much more expensive machines - but its always satisfying to complete the task with cheaper machine (before HT90 we only had MK3 and MK4s - and yet we managed to create all prototypes needed).
Every person who chooses to purchase a computer numerical control (CNC) machine (which 3D printers are) must accept that these are not plug and play devices which can be operated without having knowledge of the technology and how to maintain the equipment. I've been working with CNC machines since the early 80s. Early on I found it necessary to learn all things necessary to fully utilize the capabilities of the machine tools, including metallurgy, tooling, fixturing, and maintenance and/or repair of the firmware, mechanical, electrical, electronic, hydraulic, and pneumatic systems.
CNC equipment is complex and will not simply produce high quality output over weeks, months, or years without a significant investment of time by the owner or his key employees. The failed expectations of people who were misled into believing 3D printers were like desktop laser printers was foreseeable.
Shitting on people for not looking at their toolpaths before hitting print then admitting that you don't know how to do CAD is insane dawg. Hope that glass house never springs a crack, you'd be shit outta luck.
Back in my days, we'd have to use a massive roll of masking tape to print stuff!! 😂
that's fair. Since switching to a Bambu, I've spent way less time tinkering with temps and speed and general slicer configurations. I instead started to learn cad, since I know I'll be able to print most things I come up with
You cant comment about people who are new to 3d printing not slicing to your standards if you cant cad… sorry.
I've been printing since 2018 and from what I've seen you've got two groups. Those who like the printer itself and those who like what the printer makes. While I do enjoy tinkering with stuff and fixed my old Ender many times, I got tired of the inconsistency and swapped over to a Bambu. I love the consistency and it allows me to focus much more on making good quality prints and not just getting it to print in the first place. I do acknowledge though that I fall within the group who loves the prints more than the printer.
This same argument can be made about cars with manuals. Though I can enjoy a good manual, I don't think I could realistically drive one to and from work on a daily basis. Though it is feasible, it takes way more effort than I can to put in. Now this isn't to say I don't love my automatic or don't care for it. I love my car and really enjoy weekend drives in it, but I think it comes down to personal preference AND how prone the person is to tinker with stuff
TLDR some butthurt losers
fear that the bambu replaces their "expertise"
and their very expensive professional 3d printers
basically they say f the consumers what about us . this gatekeeping is ruining a lot of things in this world
If the 'Bambu Effect' means getting more people interested without the hassle, I'd say keep it coming. I've been wanting to get into 3D-printing from the get-go. But never did so due to - mostly - the price, the poor printing quality and the limited resources back in the day. Not so much the fact that you had to assemble everything yourself, I would have loved doing that. Like 6 months ago, somehow, my interest was re-kindled and I went searching on YT to see the state of things. And Bambu printers were all over the place. So I ordered an A1 Mini and I loved it. I printed all kinds of stuff I downloaded from all the known sites and it just worked. BTW, I now also have an A1 and an X1C that all serve their different purposes.
My main interest however, is printing models, miniatures and so on but didn't want to get into Resin printing due to not having a proper place to deal with all the downsides of resin (fumes, toxicity, ...). My point being, after the honeymoon period, I realised that everything is a lot more involved. Especially when you start printing stuff like miniatures. You DO need to get into the nitty-gritty of the slicer. I've had a lot of prints that simply ended up in the bin due to simply bad slicer parameters. So yeah, if you 'grew up' with it, I can imagine the 'Bambu Effect' is real to you. But - to be honest - once you try to do some more 'sophisticated' (and I don't mean printing engineering materials) things like e.g. miniatures - not only do you need to know what a slicer can or can't do but you also need to get into CAD, Blender, ... to manipulate STL-, STEP-files and so on.
Once you get deeper into the matter, and I mean printing other things than simple stands and boxes, you need to get into your slicer in and outs. I think it just depends on what you want to do. If you want to p**p out prints to sell on Etsy, the 'Bambu Effect' is a blessing. If you want to go deeper into things, the 'Bambu Effect' goes away more and more.
Bambu bringing 3d printing to the average human is magnificent. It allows people to create on a whim, maybe take up CAD and learn to model. However, the downside is it has given people a false sense of overconfidence when they just click slice and run it. There is a pro and con, the pro is they work, the con is when they don't the average consumer has 0 idea how to troubleshoot the issue and make the proper repair/adjustment. Thus resulting in the massive influx of people in online communities with simple issues and absolutely 0 idea what their next step should be. Or a machine they bricked because they just started messing with things they didn't need to and broke something non-servicable. A proper working machine is great but having a proper knowledge base behind how to operate and maintain the machine should be emphasized by manufacturers. At the end of the day a 3d printer is not a user friendly machine, it is still a machine made to manufacture something.
Ive waited over a decade for something like the Bambu simply because I didnt want my hobby to be building and fiddling with a 3d printer. I want my hobby to be 3d printing.
When I joined the community I started with an Ender 3. Why? It was fun. I learnt, but I wouldn't force anyone else to do so. The people who want to learn more will and those who just want a functional printer will have exactly that,
Great video, I love this little podcast style discussion, good hosts too!
As a 3d printing technician for over 10 years, I understand where youre coming from about the 'simplicity of automation' from bambu machines, but I completely disagree that it ruins 3D printing. Having worked with and repaired machines from Creality, 3D Systems, Luzbot, Prusa, Makerbot, Bits from Bytes and Elegoo, the one month of work I've had with my A1 Mini blows them all out of the water. The simplicity of being able to hit "Print" and know that the machine will create flawless parts makes printing fun again. As much as I love tinkering on my creality and ender machines, I absolutely *HATED* coming back from a 10 hour print job only to see the machine gave up in the final hour. Bambu has been consistently reliable and I can always 3D print using additional slicers if I so choose.
You two should do this more often. Dare I say start a podcast.
If you cant cad how can you honestly say you can slice to the highest of standards and coin phrases like bambu effect. Gtfoh 🤡
I do think competition is a good thing that drives innovation. I do think most 3d printer manufacturers are just making copies of what Bambu Labs has done instead of asking, “Gee why did Bambu get so popular and how can we do something innovative in 3d printing?” Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad that 3d printing has become more accessible to more people but I do think more people should learn something about their machine and their software too in case something does go wrong
i had the idea that i wanted to print stuff not slice, slice is part of the process. Do you cook because you like cooking or because you have to in order to eat your food?
I’ve got 3 Bambus, and I use all 3 of them all them all the time just for things around the house /garage. Bambu helped me get in to hobby and quickly became another tool that now me, my wife and kids use as a tool not a toy, despite not having full (or any, frankly) knowledge how everything works. It also pushed me to get better at fusion, and about 75% of things we print were designed by me, and that wouldn’t have happened if I had to twinkle with printer all the time, instead printer does its printing stuff and I work on design. I’d argue 60-80% of hobbies don’t need more than this. Whenever Bambu releases their larger format, I’m sure I’ll be first inline. If I can afford it haha
The first questions from many new Bambu owners is who can make me this or where can i find a model for that... This is fine but they expect that all you need is a printer and you can make anything. Modeling is very important. Of course, I own a n X1C and love it.
I have printed a break caliper mount to my custom bicycle first from PLA than Nylon6 CF , then 3D printed the tool to make it out of forged carbon fiber. The PLA was limited by temp but it was enormously strong, the PA6 CF was a good balance just not quiet rigid enough, which made me learn how to make forged carbon fiber part manufacturing and how to print tools for it. And the adapter works great! And knowing how to slice was essential.
This happened with drones and TCN planes flight controllers… everything has plus and minus’s.
I am sure who is not just a hobbyist like I am and want to dive deeper into 3D printing g-code and so on , will still do that. As for people like me who wants to print for hobby and only use the 3d printer as an extension to their work , it’s an amazing time.
As someone who still uses a Ender3, designs objects on tinkercad, slices it in creality, and prints them up. I’m not sure I entirely understand the conversion.
What is the bamboo effect? Do you just download a file, load it on the bamboo and press print? No splicing? No analyzing of layers?
No adjusting the wall thickness so your AR lower doesn’t explode? LOL
Then that kinda contradicts the “Honda civic” analogy. It’s more like buying a Tesla, the car drives itself and ultimately makes society less critical thinking. Where there is no manual transmission, no manual windows, one air bag and no tachometer(2004 civic), just get in push a button and go.
Wait. You guys are "old" because you worked in Win 95 and didn't have Internet?
I grew up with my PCjr with DOS 2.1. What does that make me? A fossil? 🤣
I truly don't mind there being the ability for beginners to slice easily for their walled-garden printer. It's so cool to see so many more people getting into the hobby without having to go through a lot of the pains I had to. However, I hope I NEVER lose the ability to choose an advanced mode in my slicer, or to have a printer with an open ecosystem. I love being able to fix what is broken, to troubleshoot when something is somewhat off.
In the end, I wish everyone who 3D prints, regardless of their printer, slicer, or material of choice, a wonderful experience.
I have so many old tech skills that are useless or unneeded now. All Bambu did was push other manufacturers to automate more functions and they don't want to pay for that.
I started on a Stratasys Titan with their Insight software back in the early 2000s, and THAT software let you directly edit toolpath, like trim and extend individual lines in the toolpath, select individual lines and change their extrusion thickness . . . I've been annoyed ever since that nothing else gives me that level of control. But, even Stratasys has gotten away from it for most things. And to be fair, most of the time, it's good enough. Bambu is the same; most of the time, it's good enough. HOWEVER - every once in a while, something is a PIA, and the knowledge and the functionality would save the day. The more you know, the more you can do. It's that simple. But, Bambu is making the craft more accessible for people who don't know, and ultimately that's good for everyone. The 3D printer will become an appliance eventually if it keeps getting easier. VERY few people know or care how their microwave works either. For the rest of us, the knowledge is still available if you want it.
WORST. TAKE. EVER.
I just ordered the X1 carbon but I am so glad I started with the Ender 3 pro. It’s a lot easier to dive into fixing something yourself on a sub $200 printer than it is on a $1200 printer. Now that I have that knowledge of 3d printers I believe I can figure out any issues I have with the carbon
I think there are pros and cons to both, but personally I like being able to slice my own parts. It allows a different kind of control over the output.
It's a shame. I assume you heard a lot of that kind of thing from your parents: 'In my day, we didn’t need that washing machine; we had to figure it out ourselves.'
I’m super thankful to have my Bambu machines. That said, I’m equally thankful that I started out on other machines before Bambu existed.
Ok, I will agree with you on this. Going from my Ender 3 V2 to my A1 and my nephew getting his A1 mini, not having to slice is nice for my nephew but it annoys me that I am not looking to make sure every print is like I would want it instead of just printing.
A argument can be made that due to slicer advancements people forget how to write gcode for the cnc machines