Earlier this year, I bought a Bambu Lab A1 because I needed to print something really bad that was too big for what was then my only 3d Printer. It was nice and everything, and admittedly, I relied heavily on their cloud service for a time for 3d Prints. I knew that I wouldn’t allow that to last. At the time, I was performing a network upgrade to incorporate VLANs on it. Now that network upgrade is nearly complete, and one of my WiFi networks is a 2.4Ghz IoT network. My firewall rules are set to reject traffic from going out the WAN on this VLAN, and other firewall rules makes devices on this network accessible where needed. However, I have noticed that Bambu’s software seems pretty shitty in this regard, and it doesn’t allow their software products (namely Bambu Studio) to connect to the printer unless my computer is on that subnet: 172.16.15.0/24. Is this just me? To be clear, firewall rules are allowing my computer to connect to, for instance, some of the Pis that are running on this network without any issue whatsoever.
It is a known issue with the way Bambu’s Studio talks to the Printers. Basically they have to be on the same subnet for “security reasons”. The real reason is they do not want you using the printers without their servers. They are a shady company and have been called out a bunch for this recently. I’m not sure of anyone has bother to make any cfw to work around this or not. For now I just have mine in the “allow internet” IoT vlan and make sure to print a dick at least once a week so they have something to look at on their end.
The deeper end of it is they don’t allow or have mDNS for the printers and don’t use IPs to connect on the LAN side. This is how they get around making LAN only mode pretty useless. It also makes sure that you can’t remote print without their app and servers, which is also lame.
(more seriously, Bambu is formed from ex-DJI employees and they use a lot of philosophy and strategy from their time at DJI - hence they will always behave like that)
Like, honestly, I knew of some of Bambu’s shitty things like the fiasco with their firmware, but had I known that they’ve made the LAN-only mode so useless, I wouldn’t have bought this printer. I really truthfully figured that I could fix it by just connecting it once and then blocking its VLAN from sending packets out the WAN. I tried to to that actually, at one point, and it failed.
Truthfully though, I bought this printer from a local shop that sold these things, so it was great not having to wait ages for it in shipping and stuff. That’s honestly the only reason I got it after hearing about their firmware EULA updates.
If I remember correctly it is in fact an mDNS issue. As in they don’t use it. They purposefully have not implemented it so that you have to be on the same subnet for LAN only mode. The only way around that I’ve found is to spin up a VM with Bambu Studio on it and throw it in the same VLAN. Since I’m not printing anything proprietary (not even the dicks!) I don’t care enough to trash it and go buy a Prusa.
I do have a bunch of other devices on the network that do use mDNS are are on seperate VLANS from the server that controls them. I did mess with settings for a bit and decided to pick my battles. If I ever start prototyping a new product etc though, that Bambu goes out the door for cheap and I get a Prusa or two.
Nice. Orca was the original that Bambu ported. I can’t remember offhand what doesn’t work besides the AMS settings and I think just the general tuned Bambu profiles for their filaments. If you use other brand’s filaments you should be fine. Keep us posted if there’s any weird stuff with it as it may be a good solution for some folks.
edit: check out Cura slicer as well if you’re looking at alternatives. You can also run Prusa Slicer if you want (though it’s just a port of Orca as well)
Do y’all know of any mobile apps for 3D Printing? Most of what I print is community-made because I haven’t yet really taken the time to get good with CAD. AutoDesk gives a Fusion360 freeware license to individuals that I use, but I have to learn it a lot more.