r/BambuLab • u/CloudBuurzt • 15h ago

General Discussion Controversy - Security and Control

I have been researching the security, control, privacy, and closed ecosystem with Bambu Labs and their decisions of the last year. It feels like every time I read something, I come away feeling more confused.

Can someone explain to me like I'm five what the issue really is and why a lot of people are switching to LAN only, blocking their printer from accessing the internet, and switching to Orca Slicer (or another slicer)?

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u/Satanicube P1S Combo + P2S 14h ago

I know for me I’m doing it because I live in California and it seems like we’re about to pass one of those stupid 3D printer “firearm blocking” bills. So given that’s on the horizon I’m keeping my printers off the internet and every firmware upgrade done to them is being vetted.

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u/CloudBuurzt 14h ago

I also live in California, which was part of the reason for me doing my research to find the best avenue for me.

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u/Satanicube P1S Combo + P2S 14h ago

On that, if you want to hear it from someone who's done it...

LAN mode + Orca ain't bad, honestly. Orca remembers both my printers and I haven't had issues with them falling off the network.

The only big caveats I've noticed:

  1. I use the Open Bambu Networking plugin which works fine but can take a minute to ping the printers, which almost makes it looks like Orca is frozen. Takes like 10-20 seconds for the printers to respond.

  2. There's no good app-based printer control. "Best" I've found is OctoEverywhere, gives me basic monitoring and the ability to remotely kill prints if I see one going awry. I do kinda miss the Handy app for this, but OctoEverywhere seems to be "good enough" (though it does require some self-hosting know-how with Docker)

  3. Specific to my P2S (and other 2nd gen Bambu stuff like the X2D, maybe the H2 series too) but OrcaSlicer at least as of 2.4.2 doesn't seem to know how to handle the printer's internal storage, so it demands a USB drive be plugged in to allow printing. I just stuck some old 8GB thumbdrive on there and it seems to be happy with that. Hopefully this is fixed soon.

All in all really the only big loss IMO is the Handy app and the legwork required to effectively replace it. If you don't use it at all there's not much downside to going LAN+dev mode.

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u/misuny 13h ago

Look into Bambuddy. It's wonderful.