alt Hacker NewsI think you're overestimate the value of these prototypes. The print itself is either a plastic render of the final product without any value, or it's a shell without any actual useful parts/machinery. If we imagine we're talking about the 1% of 1% of 1% which could end up as useful IP stuff, but which might be very hard/impossible to find/understand/do anything with it, for which cases don't use bambu.
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Chinese have made it part of their economy to steal the IP of US and Europe. It’s not unfathomable.
You’re severely underestimating the value of prototypes.
Not to mention, 3D scanners exist. It's well within Chinese capabilities to simply scan parts and recreate them in CAD.
The only case where they might not be able to do that is if they literally can't buy the part (e.g. the military). But the military does not use Bambu printers.
You’re making the assumption that customer product prototypes are the only prototypes produced by 3D printers.
There’s plenty of other more valuable things that are prototyped using 3D printers, such as high end commercial machines, or components that go into those machines.
I suspect that getting hold of STLs from US defence manufacturers would be extremely valuable. Why bother trying to capture a copy of your enemies technology, when they’ll happy just send you all the prototype STLs. Even if it’s not defence, don’t you think access to prototype components from EUV machines from ASML would be crazy valuable to Chinese companies trying to close the gap between Chinese and Western chip fabrication technologies?