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Printer Cloud Technology

Bambu's 3D Printers Started Printing While Owners Were Asleep (theverge.com) 56

Bambu's X1C and P1P 3D printers started printing unattended, overnight, and without any additional user input, according to user reports from r/BambuLab and X. The Verge reports: Some woke up to failed prints. Some found a second copy of a previous print. And at least a few found their Bambu X1C or P1P had started smacking itself apart -- damaging components -- while trying to print a second copy atop the object they'd actually asked for. What happened? In an official blog post, Bambu says it's still investigating but suspects that a cloud outage is to blame. The company says its servers had two brief outages on Tuesday morning where the servers couldn't confirm that the printers had actually printed -- but instead of failing gracefully, they wound up sending the same print job again and again until it went through, Bambu's staff believes. "Simply explained, the print job sent to the printer before was trapped on the cloud and had a delayed start," writes Bambu.

When contacted by The Verge, Bambu would not go quite so far as to promise free repairs and replacements for all affected customers but says anyone who's suffered any damage should reach out to Bambu support ASAP. "For damage caused by this incident, we will offer the necessary solutions to our customers impacted by the Cloud Outage, in the form of part replacements or a printer replacement if the situation demands it," spokesperson Taylor Liu tells me.

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Bambu's 3D Printers Started Printing While Owners Were Asleep

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  • Looking for a price drop or a bunch of refurbs. They reportedly make fantastic printers other than this issue.

  • by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @06:24PM (#63773344)

    they does an LOCAL PRINTER need cloud?

    • for a solid platform with well-defined edges, duh.

    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      That's what you get when not reading the fine print.

      Everything you print will be signed away to some undisclosed manufacturer of parts in an undisclosed country and suddenly your one of a kind design appears in droves in thrift shops.

    • by indytx ( 825419 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @05:48AM (#63774036)

      I was coming to say this. Why DOES a local printer need to be connected to the cloud? Can you just plug it into a USB port and use the software on your computer? Maybe it will stop working if it detects the wrong filament? I just don't understand why everything has to connect to the cloud.

      • Why DOES a local printer need to be connected to the cloud?

        The official reason that the manufacturer would probably give:
        (Not that I think it's a good reason, quite to the countrary)
        Is that the cloud does the "job queue" management, completely hasslefree (supposedly), without needing to setup anything beyond a wifi connection and then allowing the user to sent jobs to print from any of their laptop, tablet, etc. even if they are on holiday they can check the printer and/or send jobs to be ready by the time they are back...
        (My god my bullshit-o-meter almost broke).

        Can you just plug it into a USB port and use the software on your computer?

        O

    • Didn't you mean "Why does..."? Not that I disagree, it's completely f'ing absurd.

      Are they owned by HP or something?

  • by NoWayNoShapeNoForm ( 7060585 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @06:27PM (#63773348)

    "For damage caused by this incident, we will offer the necessary solutions to our customers impacted by the Cloud Outage, in the form of part replacements or a printer replacement if the situation demands it," spokesperson Taylor Liu tells me.

    Cloud outage? More like Cloud Outrage

    Aren't these cloud-enabled apps & services simply MA-VA-LOUS ! /sarcasm

  • by Revek ( 133289 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @06:30PM (#63773356)
    And they didn't even bother to call it rain.
    • It's OK thought, the printing was overnight when any real geek wouldn't be asleep, contrary to the claims in TFA, so they just could reach over the top of the dozen half-empty coffee cups and shut it down.
  • ... a real shame [memedroid.com].

  • It begins.

  • It was all part of the AI revolution.
  • by macmurph ( 622189 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @07:14PM (#63773426)

    People should not put up with this. When you buy into the cloud, you don't own the off switch... and in this case, the on switch.

    • People will definitely put up with this. There is no top down push for a cloud, there was a bottom up request for it. This isn't like your HP inkjet that shits out several pages a minute on demand. Many 3D prints can take upwards of days to make and don't have the ability to be locally supervised.

      Cloud services for this reason are starting to be baked in to many printers.

      • I don't see how the time to print justifies a cloud-only print server. Though to be fair, I don't know for sure that it is cloud-only, it could be that the users had a choice and picked that one. That would be perfectly fine.
        • I don't see how the time to print justifies a cloud-only print server.

          It's not. Having cloud capabilities doesn't make something cloud only.

      • Webcams or IP Surveillance Cameras, VPN, Home Assistant, OctoRemote, etc... all locally managed.

  • They were originally called prototypers. I'm sure even better names could be invented.

    Calling them a printer is just dumb. Printers print a colour change onto or into a base material for the purpose of humans to read as a picture or writing.

    Calling them printers is even dumber as calling everything movable "mobile".

    • > Printers print a colour change

      No, they deposit ink or toner on the paper.

      A color change is our perception of what occurred.

    • Printers create (multiple*) physical instances of a (single) digital design.

      This definition holds true for anything from the first printing presses through large offset printers, technicolor film printers and our desktop ink- and laserjets. The limitation to the materials used ("putting ink on paper") is not part of the definition of printing, but just a technical limitation.

      If you define "printer" by what it does instead of how it does it, you probably end up with a wider definition.

  • We have to start doing something about stopping totally unnecessary (for the consumer) 'cloud' connections just to enslave us to the vendors.

    If it's not necessary, it should be prohibited by law.

  • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @07:44PM (#63773460) Homepage Journal

    The Bambu printers cloud dependence is one of a few reasons I am not interested in owning one. There's no good technical reason they couldn't be full featured with local only access. Bambu just didn't want that apparently. File them away with the failed Dremel printer that used DRM to force you to use their filament.

    I am for reasons that should be obvious to everyone in retrospect opposed to cloud controlled devices that can take actions without local authorization.

    • by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @12:26AM (#63773786)

      I have thought of a Bambu printer because it has a good way of handling different filaments, the AMS. It looks like it will be a lot smoother than a Prusa MMU. However, I have gone for years not needing anything cloud related that I'm depending on. The two cloud services I use are AstroPrint (for monitoring), and Obico (for detection of print failures.) I can perfectly print without them.

      Having the Bambu cloud gives a nice experience, but I prefer doing it the open source way, and an OctoPrint server can provide a lot of nice add-ons to help with printing... and none of my data, ever leaves my physical location, so STL files are kept secure.

      I'm probably going to go for a Prusa XL once they get the bugs ironed out (probably early next year) and are able to get those out in quantity, especially the two and five head models. There are some very cool things one can do with IDEX, such as Cura's material interlocking [ultimaker.com], which can only be done effectively with two printer heads. Plus, the XL brings with it almost all the features of the Bambu line, with the exception of being completely enclosed, and is open source.

      Nothing wrong with the Bambu printers, but it is similar to choosing Windows versus Linux, and no one choice is explicitly better.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        The AMS seems to work well, even though a few people have had to completely rebuild it to make it able to hold more types of spools.

        So far, I have gotten by with doing manual filament swaps and creatively arranging gcode so I only have to do one or two such swaps in a print. That does limit the multi-color, but it also means not having a waste block that weighs more than the print. In particular, color inlays work well with manual swapping.

      • Nothing wrong with the Bambu printers, but it is similar to choosing Windows versus Linux, and no one choice is explicitly better.

        Linux is explicitly better in a vacuum. And not depending on cloudshit is explicitly better all the time.

    • I am for reasons that should be obvious to everyone in retrospect opposed to cloud controlled devices that can take actions without local authorization.

      The whole point of the cloud connected printer is that there was demand for the ability to remote control and supervise prints. 3D prints take somewhere between many hours to several days to complete. The demand was bottom up for cloud connectivity to aid in printing, not a top down push. This isn't a shitty HP inkjet that you supervise locally for 30 seconds while regretting your purchasing decisions.

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        I'm well aware of 3D print times. I have one connected to octoprint. If I want to start a print remotely, I can connect to the octopi directly and command it to start. The Pi is connected over USB serial. If it can't talk to the printer, the command fails rather than hanging out there waiting to start when I least expect it.

        But no, there really isn't a lot of demand out there for cloud printing and there is more than a little skepticism. I'm guessing more now. There is more demand for remote monitoring of a

    • Someone I know has a 3D printing business, and have recently bought a raft of Bambu printers - why? Because they make life easier. Having all the gubbins in the cloud means that the owner need not worry about it - just post your design and then tell a handful of printers to print it. Yes, you can do that by running your own Octoprint or whatever, but having someone else run it for you makes your life easier. Especially if you're not really a techie.

      Granted, every time Bambu goes wrong (like this), it dimini

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @07:53PM (#63773472)

    Unless the printers were left on overnight to complete a print and they started another one on top of the finished print, this wouldn't happen if people turned off stuff before leaving the office.

    Honestly, I keep fighting people in my company over this for years: I usually arrive first early in the morning and all fhe lights are on, all the soldering irons, all the scopes, the temperature chambers... the whole nine yards. When people clock out, they just drop whatever they do and leave. They would never do that in their own home where they pay the electricity bill...

    • by zeeky boogy doog ( 8381659 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @08:25PM (#63773520)
      Honestly, US and EPA efficiency regulations that kicked the unregulated N:1 stepdown ac-output wall wart to the curb and reduced standby power consumption to very low levels, while still allowing devices to run just enough in the background to provide a substantially faster power-on experience versus cold start.

      One doesn't notice it on consumer motherboards, but for example servers POST much faster energizing from the standby "off" than from true power-not-applied off.

      If you can have that for watt or sub-watt standby power, why not?
    • by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      Honestly, I keep fighting people in my company over this for years: I usually arrive first early in the morning and all fhe lights are on, all the soldering irons, all the scopes, the temperature chambers... the whole nine yards.

      Sounds like a great way to start a fire. I wonder what your insurance company thinks of this.

    • That's the name those deserve.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Prints can take many hours to complete. Doing them overnight isn't uncommon, especially since electricity tends to be cheaper at night. Decent size prints on slower printers can take in excess of a day.

    • Unless the printers were left on overnight to complete a print and they started another one on top of the finished print, this wouldn't happen if people turned off stuff before leaving the office.

      My (various) 3D printers consume 15W tops while idling. They also have powerful part cooling fans (12V Delta 40x28 with 32,500 max RPM) which start a full blast when powering the printer on, until the OS finishes loading up and sends a 0% PWM signal. This might take between 45 seconds and a couple minutes. You do NOT want to be in the workshop when those boot up.
      (yes, I know there are a couple ways to avoid that, but I managed to burn a motherboard that way, so, no, thanks).

      And what "office"? A lot of users

  • Before, printers were brainless so we hit and kicked them. Nowadays printers have brains and they destroy themselves.

  • Cloud connected devices are the absolute last thing I want to buy. I actively avoid anything which has a 'cloud based' access regime.

    For one, I'm cheap. They often have service charges, and I will want to use the device long past the intended lifecycle of the device.

    Two, I'm paranoid. I don't want anyone knowing what I'm doing with my devices - even if I'm just doing something benign and socially acceptable, like printing molds to cast life-like penises. Who knows when (not if) someone might divulge that in

    • by Anonymous Coward

      This. Why would I trust a Chinese printer on a Chinese cloud with my private STL files? Even if they were not secret, I'm giving people knowledge of what I am printing and when, and that stuff could be private.

  • Am I wrong or is this something that could be solved by simply introducing something like Print Job ID on both Cloud and Printer so it could recognize it's being sent the exact same job and ignore it?
  • ...turned out not to be as catastrophic & deadly for the human race as previously suspected.
  • Waiting for the Black Mirror version where people wake up to find their 3D printer has printed a handgun unrequested.
  • Everything does not need to be on the freaking cloud. 3D printers have very limited need to reach the outside world other than perhaps firmware updates. It is done to attempt to gather user data and be able to maintain control of HW after sell.
  • by kwelch007 ( 197081 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @12:58PM (#63775200) Homepage

    I've very recently been reading and watching reviews of 3D printers as I'd like to upgrade my existing one. At first glance, the Bambu X1 Carbon seemed the runaway best buy for the higher-end consumer market. But after a bit of research there are a number of problems with it as many have mentioned here. The deal breaker for me was their data policy...basically it's open ended and not at all specific, so you may as well just assume that they're going to take all of your data. It doesn't _have_ to run on the cloud, but you can't update it or print to it without a USB stick otherwise, so it may as well say it requires the cloud.

    I recently decided against this particular brand despite all it's positives. Then I read this article and now I'm convinced.

  • Didn't they send this off to Linus Tech Tips to be tested first?

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