alt Hacker NewsI am an outsider on the details of the Bambu software requiring users to go through their servers in China and the closing of their software.
Still I suspect it is about spying in wartime, Bambu printers are at the core of the Ukrainian war effort, the main reason even Ukraine is winning since januari 2026.
First China prevented Ukraine from using any of the drones that they sold in millions to Russia while exercising the built in kill switches in Chinese drones used in by Ukrainians.
Suddenly Bambu, another Chinese company started listening in on the 3D printing on a massive scale in secret factories all over Ukraine that make the drones to replace the Chinese drones. Very suspicious.
Whatever is the reason Bambu locks down software or firmware on their 3D printers, now is the time for programmers to change the situation. We need to put up money like Louis Rossmann did [1], not to fight legal battles but for a assembly language programmer to reverse engineer the Bambu firmware and make a free and open source version.
This firmware replacement will cost a couple of months to write so we all should send that programmer a little money so he/she can release it for free.
A free Bambu firmware will allow the Ukranians to continue producing another few million drones and save over a hundred thousands lives by ending the war.
Now is the chance for us outsiders to help Ukraine, by freeing Bambu firmware.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLLVn6XT7v0
P.S. I would be willing to do the reverse engineering but I would need at least 35 euro per day (to eat) to build a new firmware for all Bambu models from scratch. I would need a few different models of printers on loan for a few weeks to test the new firmware. I estimate it would take 5-9 months to rebuild firmware for all models from zero and release it. Maybe Rossmann and Geerling could use their influence and coördinate this freeing of the firmware?
I just emailed Rosmann and Geering to see if we together can free the Bambu firmware. Anyone who wants to help, please contact me trough my HN profile.
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In practice Ukrainians have long moved to custom built drones for pretty much everything.
Picking up 3D printers that don't spy on you, modding them or even building custom ones is much easier than designing and building millions of custom drones, so I am sure they solved this long ago.
Like, really - a FDM printer is just a MCU board with a bunch of stepper drivers, a power supply, some frame, motors, thermistors & heating elements.
Lot of conspiracy theory and misinformation in this comment.
I'm not up to date with their latest printers, but the Bambu printers used during this timeframe have easy ways to enable LAN only mode. You can leave it disconnected from the network entirely and use an SD card, too.
The app lets you enable root access and install firmware mods. There are multiple efforts to reverse engineer the firmware.
> This firmware replacement will cost a couple of months to write so we all should send that programmer a little money so he/she can release it for free.
> A free Bambu firmware will allow the Ukranians to continue producing another few million drones and save over a hundred thousands lives by ending the war.
If that were true, it seems to me, that Ukraine would have already done it if it was somehow standing in their way.
Or just put your file on an sd card and plug it physically into the printer?
Makes fleet management a bit harder but I don’t believe that requires internet access unless I missed some update.
Bambu had its requirement to go through their servers since before the Ukraine war, though it has gotten progressively harder to work around.