The Bambu X1C 3D printer is a machine known for its speed, and it has a number of useful features like automatic build platform recognition. Factory build platforms are marked with an identifier code, and thanks to [elumspe] it’s now possible to make your own identifiers to stick onto third-party platforms and have the printer recognize them as though they were factory offerings. There’s even a super handy 3D-printable alignment tool that ensures the identifier goes in the correct spot, which is a nice touch.
The identifier codes aren’t DRM so much as they are a way for the printer to verify that the installed build platform matches the slicer settings before a print begins, and throw up a warning if it doesn’t. The printer is perfectly happy to use third-party build surfaces, but since they lack an identifier, the printer will throw a warning each time. One solution is to simply disable checking the build platform before a print, but for those who would prefer to have the printer see what it expects to see, printing a small 2D barcode to stick on is an easy way to do it.
We see these sometimes called QR codes, but they look more like AprilTags. Both are types of 2D barcode, but while QR codes can encode a variety of information types, AprilTags are simpler and usually represent identifiers. In this case, they’re an appropriate way to let a camera-enabled printer know what kind of build plate is installed.
AprilTags are common in computer vision applications, and even relatively modest hardware can detect and decode them almost in real time. AprilTags are convenient and easy to use, as this gate access system demonstrates.
Why would we need that? This is silly for me, I prefere to control the machine from the computer, remotely.
Good for you. That said I fail to see what that has to do with the article. It’s a QoL upgrade and one less step when in front of the printer, prepping to print.
That’s exactly why it’s useful, as a sanity check.
If we imagine the situation you are in another room at your computer. You slice your model with the settings for the textured bed and then send it to the printer. The printer can recognize “Hey this isn’t the textured bed are you sure?”. You can still print and ignore the warning. But it stops you accidentally ruining a bed if you just forgot to swap them beforehand.
As said, it serves to avoid errors and the warning.
Awesome if you are only running a single printer. But is can be an important feature if you run several of them 24/7. I have a couple of employees that are relatively new at this and it helps avoiding simple mistakes during a shift.
I only have the stock build plate. On my Ender 3.
I had a print fail 2 times, then I printed something else and failed too. Took me a while to realise I left the slicer with the engineering build plate and I was using the textured PEI instead. This would have been useful, but my printer does not have a camera on the nozzle :D
matrix are better
and no licencs
Useless “feature”. You are slicing anyways.
Nice. And the fact that the company allows this and seems to have it planned to be an open feature, makes it even more nice.
Zack Friedman said in a recent video that while Bamboo’s tags on their filaments are currently kinda useful and not being used for DRM right now, they are also not open-source (so you can’t make tags for your other filament) and they do leave a tempting route to DRM for any future owners of the company.
The security in the RFID tags they use is way overkill for no good reason.
This sort of thing just makes me nervous of their intentions long-term, and what might arrive in future firmware updates to my expensive Bamboo printer.
I run 6 of the X1C printers 24/7. Dozens of print jobs a week. A little help making sure you are using
Could just not use the machine that sends all your data including phone and camera data to China, buy an open source printer
It can be used fully locally, both networked or non-networked. No need to use it with the cloud if you don’t.
I’m glad the Bambu printers exist, it’s nice to finally have a printer that “just works” at a reasonable price point. Hopefully it lights a fire under Prusa and similar to finally meaningfully innovate and price appropriately.