Bambu Lab pushes a “control system” for 3D printers, and boy, did it not go well

Security measure? Boxing out third-party tools? Or something more complex?

See full article...

 

[Windhaven]

I'll be honest, I wouldn't be against some sort of standardized RFID system for 3D printers. Every version of every brand has it's own special behavior that can be tweaked, and when you try out a new filament, it takes some time to get it "just right". Having some system that would automatically pre-load settings for the filament you have loaded would be great. But... it would have to feed back into the slicer, because you're running your own slicer and not leaving that up to the machine/cloud, right?

Agreed. At work, we use Ultimakers with multi material stations for printing parts for experiments, and if you use Ultimaker's own filament you'll get stuff like type and color loaded automatically from RFID tags, so it's annoying when using third party filaments to have to manually select it - it just working across manufacturers would be nice.
With how it works with the slicer, we just use Ultimaker CURA, so it's integrated through that and a network connection to the printer.

I also find the security claims... interesting. Where I work, there's reasonable info-sec concerns that shape things (all computers have to run a standard build of Windows/macOS/Linux, nothing goes on the cloud, etc). Despite that, the printers are allowed on the network and just work - no cloud connection, nothing like that.
And if Ultimaker can make it work well enough (it's damn near just plug them in, do some basic setup, and start printing) and secure enough without cloud connected nonsense, than Bambu can too.