Should the hobby continue to be about both the act of printing and tinkering with printers, or is there a reasonable place for people who want “3D printing” as a hobby but not “3D printers” as a hobby. As part of this, is it okay for a company to lock down its firmware and prevent people from using their printer over a network without going through their software first?
Bambu Lab has made remarkable progress in “mainstreaming” 3D printing but they’ve done so at the expense of a lot of the “soul” of the space. Unlike many of their consumer-facing predecessors and competitors, they are closed-source and proprietary. They make a good product, but you don’t get to have control over it the same way you do with other brands. And that just means other brands are likely to follow suit, now that Bambu Lab has shown it to be an effective strategy.
I mourn the loss of common purpose the hobby once had, but at the same time I do think it’s a natural progression for something new and complex to eventually become consumer-grade. Look at how computers have evolved into rectangles we keep in our pockets.
Same exact reaction.
“At least I don’t wear a hat.”
Except for that blue cadet-style cap you got in Colorado that you liked because it, combined with your beard, made you look vaguely like a train conductor or a maybe a Union soldier and also expressed your love of mountains which you wear almost every morning when walking your dog to hide your bed-head.
“Fuck.”