3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
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Bambu Lab printers to me are for the people who don't care about tinkering on their printer as a hobby, and just want to print things without fuss. Stay in their Apple-like ecosystem and their cloud environment and you'll be perfectly happy. If you want the printer itself to be the hobby, there are a number of similar spec devices that with some tinkering can work just as well.
What are my options if I don't want the printer itself to be the hobby, and I just want to print without fuss, but I also don't want to deal with all that vertical integration crap?
Well, the most open you can get is Prusa's machines. Repairable, upgradeable, with great customer service to boot.
Other companies are more open than Bambu but few support the open-source movement like Prusa. Qidi, Elegoo, etc. all have great printers that I can recommend (Q2 and Centauri Carbon are fantastic options based on feature set) but they don't use a very open firmware. They are compatible with OrcaSlicer and aren't as bad as Bambu though.
You're also giving money to a company that has completely screwed all the people who made 3d printing possible by a culture of open sharing.