I’ve been noticing an unsettling trend in the 3D printing world: more and more printer manufacturers are locking down their devices with proprietary firmware, cloud-based software, and other anti-consumer restrictions. Despite this, they still receive glowing reviews, even from tech-savvy communities.
Back in the day, 3D printing was all about open-source hardware, modding, and user control. Now, it feels like we’re heading towards the same path as smartphones and other consumer tech—walled gardens, forced online accounts, and limited third-party compatibility. Some companies even prevent users from using alternative slicers or modifying firmware without jumping through hoops.
My question is: Has 3D printing gone too mainstream? Are newer users simply unaware (or uninterested) in the dangers of locked-down ecosystems? Have we lost the awareness of FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software) and user freedom that once defined this space?
I’d love to hear thoughts from the community. Do you think this is just a phase, or are we stuck on this trajectory? What can we do to push back against enshitification before it’s too late?
(Transparency Note: I wrote this text myself, but since English is not my first language, I used LLM to refine some formulations. The core content and ideas are entirely my own.)
Just wondering, is this “trend” you’re talking about just the Bambulab situation, or are other manufacturers doing the same? I’m not super up to date on 3d printing news, so not sure if i missed more such changes.
If it’s the bambulab situation, it’s not entirely unexpected. When they started people were already worried about exactly this seeing how closed their ecosystem is. Then again, they did make a printer that just works better than the competition, and that’s in the end what attracts users.
Personally i have diy 3d printers that i built myself, really happy with them, but for people who just want to print things, many other filament printers are just too annoying to work with. Not everyone is into diy, and many people just want to make cool stuff and not care about the printer, and bambulab really made the next step towards achieving that.
So if the open source community wants to compete with that, they must make printers that are as user friendly. My diy 3d printers are like running linux. Really great and customizable if you like to work on 3d printers, and really reliable now i as an expert built & tuned them. But most people just want to buy a machine that works, and that’s not these open source printers. And as long as we just focus on making 3d printers for expert diy’ers, we’ll end up in the same place as linux is for OS’es: used by experts and for specific advanced usecases, but beyond reach for the common user that’s then stuck on systems like apple/windows that are more locked down, but actually just work without having to understand how the entire thing works.
Anycubic for example does similar things. The Kobra 3 & Kobra S1 support Network printing(via Cloud) only through there “Anycubic Slicer Next” which is a Orca Slicer Fork only available for MacOS and Windows(Windows seems to be the only up-to-date Version, Mac is broken as far as i know).
Firmware is, as far as i know the so called KobraOS, a Klipper-go fork without a Webfrontend or any way to connect to it through Orca, Cura, Prusa or else.
Haven’t heard much about that yet, indeed also sounds bad. But it’s anycubic so who cares :p.
But yeah, it’s indeed not the best trend. But it also up to open source to actually compete with this, and not just chase shiny features, but also usability…
Besides the others that were mentioned, Prusa is moving away from open source.
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/20/with-core-one-prusas-open-source-hardware-dream-quietly-dies/
I think there’s some semantic confusion with that article. That’s not what I see. There are literally kits for sale on the Prusa Site to convert your old prusa into a new Core. imho, What the ‘RepRap Open Source folks’ mean is literally every part is sourced from already available parts or can be printed. And I think this is where the article is going. The other Open Source -is Open Ecosystem. Where there may be proprietary pieces (the steel cage), but nothing about it is purposefully closed. Prusa published the full electronic and hardware schematics before the machine was shipping. https://www.prusa3d.com/page/open-source-at-prusa-research_236812/ This is also ‘Open’. Both are good. Both have valid rationale. But neither is anything like closed source, closed box, only we can touch it companies models.
Hard disagree. Prusas used to be completely open source. Now they merely have open source components. It isn’t accurate to call them open source.
Would you call Windows or MacOS open source? Both Microsoft and Apple have made parts of their OS’s open source, but that doesn’t mean the entire product is open source.
The link was to the engineering diagrams for their hardware. Literally open.
This would be Microsoft selling ‘Teams’ and including a dvd with the source.