Can someone explain to me like I'm 5, why you would need to communicate with a cloud service to use a 3D printer?
But realistically, because if they control how you use your machine, they can start skimming profit off of those digital services every time you print something. That's only works if they have control over how you use the machine in your house.
To outward appearances, they seem to be trying to recreate the printer ink/razor blade business model on 3d printers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor-and-blades_model#Printer...
To reiterate the GP's question: why would I want to do that? In practice whenever I want to monitor anything from anywhere, I just VNC or RDP to my PC.
If it's just about ease-of-use, as the other replies suggest, and not actually gating the functionality of the hardware, I'm having trouble understanding the outrage. It sounds as if they are trying to be the Apple of 3D printing, while also still supporting "sideloading." If the hardware itself isn't locked down, why does anyone care what they do with their cloud service?
OTOH, if the hardware is locked down, then that's what people should be complaining about, not an optional cloud service.
Prusa supports the same thing, though they don’t force you to use it and are VERY clear it’s fully optional.
You can go to their model site (Makerworld vs Printables) and if you’re logged in your can slice and start the print right in your browser. It’s a fantastic convenience for someone printing a lot of pre-made models.
So it's a nice to have thing, but it could have very easily been optional. Instead they made it so that every print, even ones sent from Bambu Studio, has to go through their servers(unless you enable Lan mode)
It was always stated by our devs that it should never be connected to anything but a local network. Why? Because you are supposed to be there running the printer...it is a fire hazard otherwise. People do run unattended, myself included, but it should not be advised or hyped as a "good idea".
The possibility of a hack was always there too. What could a malicious actor do with access to your machine?
The advice was not only ignored...but used as an advertising point to show how innovative they are.
Amazing how fast everyone forgot the time Bambu forced a firmware update which caused a large number of printers to begin printing uncommanded which in some cases caused damage due to completed prints still sitting on the bed. [1]
V2 Smoothieware has the ability to auto update firmware via network...but it is a command that requires the user to send.
At any rate...this matters to me little anymore. My printer is a decade old and going strong still. I have no desire to "purchase" any printer. I would just build another if needed.
The biggest lie sold by the marketers is that working on your printer is "lost time". Personally...I am glad I had the 2011 RepRap struggles. I would never give up my opensource hardware for a "cheaper" machine.
[1] I searched for old webpages on this...can't seem to find them anymore using google. It was a very well known issue in the 3d printing community at the time though.
Bambu Labs however, has chosen to market their printers with an app that provides a "one-stop shop" for all things 3D-printer. You can browse their version of Thingiverse (or Printables or Cults 3D) and send jobs directly to your printer. You can also access your printer remotely (read outside your home network without tunnelling/port-forwarding/VPNs) to monitor prints, get notified when a print is done, get notified you've run out of filament, watch the printer work if it's equipped with a camera, etc. etc.
Bambu has been attempting to remove features that enable easy local (not-internet-connected) use cases and force everyone to use the cloud, etc. Or at least make it as painful as possible to skip the cloud.
Relevant context: X1C owner who did not update the firmware that forced bambu's "secure printing" workflow on users that previously used their local network "plugin".
I stopped using Handy, blocked the printer's access to the internet, and ultimately, did not miss a thing. The printer continued to work fine with my slicer of choice (softfever's fork of Bambu Lab studio's fork of Prusa Slicer's fork of slic3r, now known as OrcaSlicer).
Like most things these days, they make a decent printer, but are part of tech's steadfast march to control everything. The twist is that they're in a space defined very much by breaking control.
Using a cloud service means all your designs are submitted to Bambu and that means that they have the ability resell this intelligence information to the CCP and friendly entities, subsidizing the cost of their products and allowing Bambu to achieve unprecedented price/performance.
Not defending Bambu. The UX is quite straightforward and easy, however.
With an Internet connection to their clown, a Bambu Labs printer doesn't require a person to deal with computers in the traditional sense. Like, at all.
The printer can be over there on the table, and a person can use it while sitting on their sofa with the cell phone that's in their hand. There's nothing else required for this to happen. They can browse models, customize them some, and print them all from their phone.
In this way, a person doesn't even need to know how to use a PC in order to casually print some widgets at home.
They don't need to know how networks or VPNs or open Internet-facing ports work, either. They can monitor then print job from anywhere without doing that stuff at all.
They don't need to plug a USB cable in. They don't need to know what an SD card even is.
Head outside, away from wifi? No worries: The printer still works the same whether the user's pocket supercomputer is inside, outside, at the grocery store, or anywhere else.
And for a lot of folks, that's pretty nice. My nephew, for instance, consistently prints amazingly-clean parts with his Bambu Labs machine and he puts zero effort into doing so. For him, at least, It Just Works.
---
I can see why some folks in this particular audience may have some trouble appreciating the utility of this kind of apparent simplicity. After all, if there's anything that typifies someone on HN, it is that we're all avid computer users.
But we're weird in this way. Most people are not like this at all.
And to be clear: I myself have zero interest in cloud-oriented 3D printing. But I'm of the weirdest subset: I build my own 3D printers because I enjoy the process of solving the problems that are involved in doing so. If I want to control a printer from my phone from 3 states away, then I'll get that done on my own.
A person may appreciate the utility of this apparent simplicity just fine and still need a different solution for any of a variety of reasons. That doesn't make them weird.
You specifically highlight printing from a phone. Did you notice that the phone doesn't remove the ability to communicate over the cellular radio or the bluetooth radio just because a user might find the wifi radio convenient? It would be weird if it did.
Historically, lots of relatively popular printers have had pretty iffy support for that -- with a USB B port that ties directly into the 5v bus inside the printer alongside the printer's own power supply and this arrangement causing weird stuff to happen.
The Creality CR-10 is afflicted in this way, for example: It seems like a no-brainer to use a USB cable to drive it with Octoprint or Klipper using a Pi or something, or use it with a nearby PC, but things can turn stupid. There's a generalized note about this in Klipper's FAQ: https://www.klipper3d.org/FAQ.html
Now, that said: I'd rather have a USB device-mode port that works properly; barring that, it'd be better to have one that can be made to work well-enough than to have none at all. I'd also like to have serial data (both at RS-232 big-boy volts and TTL), and a real Ethernet port. I want an EPO input so a person can smash a big button when things go wrong, and an EPO output so the printer can shut stuff off on its own when it decides that things have gone wrong.
My connectivity desires don't align very well with what most people want out of their 3D-printing appliance, but they're real desires just the same...and I don't expect them to be fulfilled.
Anyway, it seems that Bambu Labs printers work fine, locally, over wifi. That's apparently a built-in function that can work with things like Orcaslicer. When it simply acts as a printer on a LAN, then I don't really need USB unless I'm just being pedantic today.
And as previously-discussed, Bambu Labs printers also have a clown-based mode that does clown-based stuff.
They don't do both modes simultaneously, but meh. So what? How many brains should one lowly 3D printer have to listen to concurrently?
---
Anyway, the plugin under contention here seems to use the company's clown services to manage the printer instead of directly controlling it over the LAN.
And while I certainly cherish all efforts to enforce and enhance our ability to use the hardware we own in any way that we choose, this mentality doesn't extend to use of services that are provided by others.