This is the emails between the YouTuber YGK3D and Anycubic, it seems like they won’t send 3D printers to reviewers who mention their GPL3 license violations.
tl;dr Anycubic uses open-source software for their firmware, but doesn’t make it public as per license agreement, and they don’t seem to be friendly to anyone who calls this out.
More info: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxIMpZTkXqFo0H6pDwhZpdYqMYvLhPvWA5?lc=UgxA-4LYvwrnonXuXsZ4AaABAg
Chinese manufactures have been great for the hobby in the short term, but their absolute disregard for the movement’s values will be devastating in the long term.
I don’t buy 3d printers as I enjoy building and modding them, but if I ever bought one it would be a Prusa, nevermind performance or convenience.Prusa’s are damn nice and as Open-Source as can be.
I just wish they weren’t 3/4x the price
Prusa are Zionists. They recently partnered with Israeli company Fillament2. Also their printers no longer offer value over Bambu.
the movement’s values
WTF are you on about? Bearded men in sheds printing Magic the Gathering characters?
No, the 3d printing community is built upon the RepRap movement, which pushed open source and wide collaboration between individuals and companies. That’s what gave us e3d, Prusa, Bondtech… But yeah don’t take anything seriously, it’s a great approach.
Sovol is reasonaby decent
Any company that first breaks the law and then threatens those that want to mention it should just be dismantled, toss the owner in jail to cool down. A while
There will be other companies willing to fill the gap it leaves
But we live in the times where this behaviour is not only tolerated, its encouraged
This is pretty much true of most reviews where manufacturers send stuff to reviewers to review.
Manufacturers think they are getting free paid content. Get upset when their trash products are reviewed objectively.
Bambu labs entire business plan was YouTube marketing. YouTube is infomercials.
If I see something advertised on YouTube I avoid it like the plague. Nearly every one of them is a scam, garbage product, or has some sort of scandal they are tied to
To be fair their printers (P1S and H2D) are reliable workhorses, I cant remember if I ever had a failed print and they are basically in 24/7 operation since a year. Never had to do any maintenance.
All my friends who have one rave about the reliability. I can’t get one on principle. They’re all at the mercy of Bambu’s closed source firmware which means you’re always only one automatic update away from a required subscription.
Keep mine offline for that reason and I dont really need a firmware update (as long as they are not software locking replacement parts in the future, but in that case I am happy to trash the printer and never look back, its already payed itself of 100x)
Never had to do any maintenance.
You should maybe do
At least grease the z axis and clean the dust of the x and y axes
Yes I do this of course, with maintenance I meant deep cleaning stuff, unscrewing panels, tightening belts, replacing gears etc.
Oh yeah,
You should maybe tighten the belts every 3-6 months or so (depending on your usage) and the extruder gears will wear out at some point
They generate a lot of waste plastic on multicolor.
I exclusively print functional engineering stuff so single colour and whatever colour is the cheapest lol
Have you noticed how many YouTube videos are suddenly now including their own ad soundbites? Not even an ad from YouTube, but sponsor messages read by the creator themselves in the video. These are becoming increasingly common.
SponsorBlock has been a huge help for me for the past 3+ years. Lets you skip all of these, as well as other things.
How does it detect the right parts of a video to skip, if it’s a soundbite from the video creator themselves? Live monitoring of the video with a detection model?
User submitted
I mean this is generally a sign of growth by the content creator, shifting from whatever “personalized” ads the ad network decides to show, to having their own relationships with advertisers and doing their own ads. Honestly its a good thing because it means that the people making the content also have full control over who they sell ad space to and how that ad space is used, and if viable platforms other than Youtube existed, they would be able to to run their videos profitably without excessive user tracking
And good products*
A lawyer should call this out, usually they care about that. I guess if they couldn’t sold their products in the US it would hurt them, I see they are Chinese, and it’s not unheard of if a Chinese company just ignores western IP and copyright laws.
It would be great if the EU and US blocked the sale of products that violate Open-Source liscences.
Should solve the problem fairly quickly
Consumer protection? In America?
Pull the other one!
Just need to phrase it as “China is stealing our open-source software and profiting from it” and they might be onboard with blocking them.
Wouldn’t even be lying.
deleted by creator
I had no idea. Gonna avoid them in the future.
Apparently many manufacturers do this, Creality, Soval etc.
It’s also an issue in the eReader market, notably Onyx Boox.
I would totally expect this of Boox, but am curious to know the examples. Do you have any you could share?
There is also Prusa, which doesn’t lock down their printers for meme sake.
They did (do?) have the tab you have to break to flash new firmware to your printer though.
It’s a warranty & legal thing. Prusa had users flash unsupported firmwares, break their electronics with bad configs and then claim warranty on them, and there are also ones available that have safety features tweaked or disabled that could end up with a fire.
You are still free to do it, the tab just a permanent way of clicking “I understand doing this voids the warranty and I’m going it on my own risk” - which you’ve basically always been agreeing to modifying the firmware anyway.
I have Prusa Mini+ and it still lets you flash unsigned firmware, you just need to enable it. Also PrusaSlicer is the best imo.
Which order are these emails supposed to be read in? Is the manufacturer replying to the reviewer or vice-versa?
Link to article?
