Sometimes Companies Surprise You: Bambu's 1 Year In Review

in the end of June in 2022 bamboo lab first started shipping printers to Kickstarter backers a year later June 2023 we have our first year in review let's talk about it hey guys welcome back to the channel if you're new here and you like hearing about some of the new stories that matter to you make sure to leave a like and get subscribed if you think we've earned it and if you don't think we've earned it let me know why in those comments we're gonna be talking all about bamboo Labs one year in review and really some of the things that came out of it because there's a lot of cool news and no this is still 3D Musketeers see remember when I said that I will also give companies credit where it's due one of those let's get into it we can see that in the end of June of 2022 bamboo Labs started pushing their first printers to customers that's pretty cool bamboo came out of nowhere for a lot of people including manufacturers while they didn't necessarily innovate on anything what they did do specifically well is take other things that work really well on their own and package them really really well the X1 Carbon has taken the industry by storm selling over 5 000 units in its Kickstarter alone and selling is a very broad term when it comes to Kickstarter as a lot of you guys know but they delivered I don't know if it was on time but they did deliver and since then they've kind of been one of the top companies to look at in this industry they're the new hotness where other companies have kind of just made small incremental changes they came out with something the industry has never seen before especially in a non-kit product but there were some naysayers myself being one of them talking about potential issues with support talking about potential issues with the closed source and what that looks like for your user serviceability and yeah I was right about both of those we'll get to that in a bit when you look at a small business that first year is kind of pivotal for you to understand what the rest of the future of the business will look like and don't get me wrong you could get really really lucky and it's just a fluke but with the p1p and the X1 Carbon doing as well as they have I have a feeling that bamboo might be here to stay whether you like that or not now to be clear bamboo had three printers the X1 Carbon the p1p and the now deprecated X1 I'm guessing that's because they didn't sell very well consider the X1 Carbon was not that much more money and offered all the upgrades someone would do to the printer anyways so grain of salt that one obviously but we can see that they've been plagued with a myriad of issues including supply chain shortages accidents epidemics reworks malfunctions bug bugs quality issues PR crises just to name a few if you've looked at bamboo printers over their life cycle you'll know that we're now on revision three of the build plate which is not compatible with revision two you actually need a whole new daughter board for that build plate the newest V8 and v9 releases of the extruder are not compatible with the original releases of the extruder and therefore need to be completely replaced the entire tool headboard itself needs to be replaced the daughter boards there's a few different boards in the tool head itself all of which need to be replaced this is normally something where I would say you should do this on the back end before it gets to Consumers but there's a lot of testing that you just can't do until it gets into the hands of consumers now being that bamboo is comprised of xdji Engineers I would think that maybe they would get some of this stuff right the first time but hey this is their first 4A into 3D printing and therefore there's gonna be some bumps in the road we can see that they felt like there were eggs being thrown at their faces when social media platforms became flooded with images of broken glass due to our packaging which despite passing its strict industry standard tests we're gonna get to that proved to be insufficient in real world Logistics conditions bamboo you've been working with people all over the globe well before you started shipping printers you should have packed some up and shipped them overseas and saw what happened industry standard tests is to me a BS excuse for we thought it would be okay and it wasn't and 2 Bamboo's credit they have done an amazing job of updating their packaging and honestly it's some of the best tightly packed packaging that I've ever seen it's very minimalistic and if that machine does take some sort of a shock on the side let's say a forklift happens to hit it that glass panel is going to get destroyed but we see a lot fewer of those issues so credit where it's due while I'm not necessarily believing this whole industry standard thing I certainly believe that you guys have done a phenomenal job in building shipping that works for those of you that have bought an X1 Carbon with the AMS you'll know the AMS is inside of the damn printer that is actually why it's not compatible with every spool on the market they had to get it to fit inside of the printer for those that do deal with shipping often you know that even a small increase in the XYZ dimensions of the Box can be a much higher dim weight or dimensional weight so a lot of this is done to make sure this thing can be packed as efficiently and easily as possible and we can see some real hard honesty here offering a quality product is just the first step in launching a business but it's far from sufficient for establishing a sustainable company running a company was a new challenge for most of us myself included like many entrepreneurs before me I can attest the past year has felt like a roller coaster ride for me we Face issues we could have never expected that one I can't disagree with being an owner of a business or even someone involved in a startup it is a roller coaster of emotions of Blood Sweat tears often More Tears than you want but hey that's just the way it goes sometimes and realistically it comes out and you wonder what the hell has just happened so I'm liking this level of transparency it's very personal especially someone that owns a small business that has been through the first year and then a global human malware that effectively set all of our businesses on restart where we had to start all over from the beginning again life is a little bit different in the post malware for instance they still blame themselves for not devoting enough attention and effort to network security initially it was found that bamboo had a pretty serious hole in its Wi-Fi network where it left a port open that made it really easy to get in and attack the printer and then gain access into a network this is obviously a problem and bamboo rolled out a hotfix to fix it now unfortunately if you're like me and you do love network security you realize the machine that forcibly makes you be connected to a network to update it is a little bit convoluted especially when they say that they're going to take network security as a top priority for all software development something doesn't line up here because last I heard from bamboo they have no intention in the foreseeable future of allowing users to update their machines via SD card and before you go in the comments and start complaining to me that oh why don't you just connect it to a cell phone that's not how itarrant cmmc works and unless you know what those two acronyms are I recommend that you don't go down that path it is a much deeper hole than you might think and one that'll make you question how vulnerable your network actually is we identified the bamboo as a potential security threat because of its encrypted logs that we cannot see after multiple attempts to reach out to Bamboo lab to get either a decrypted version of it or some sort of key so that I can see it on my end my request was denied on multiple occasions and because of that this threat is non-confirmable for us now they have a privacy policy which we're just supposed to have a trust me bro relationship with which doesn't work for me and anyone that's in network security it doesn't work for you either who knows bamboo might be taking some of the words that I'm putting out there to heart and looking at allowing these printers to update via micro SD card because if that was the case I'd be buying some more bamboos right now while I am still having some issues with my machine it is much better than it was why you ask well go take a look at last week's print fix Friday we'll car to it so you guys can take a look and then there are some things that I just don't agree with some aspects have proven to be far more challenging than anticipated from the very beginning we aspire to provide a world-class customer experience so we assembled a team of 3D printing experts worldwide to support our customers however it's easier said than done even today the number of customer support tickets remains unpredictable and Peak periods exert high pressure on the entire team and while that is true I have not experienced a 3D printing expert in any of my dealings with bamboo support in fact I've dealt with people that are a little pedantic rude and blaming the customer for things that didn't occur and blaming small third-party upgrades like a build plate on extruder issues even I know a build plate does not have any effect on the extruder period and yes customer support is a learning curve in fact we talked about it just recently on our podcast we'll card to that video so you guys can take a look at it as well where I spent over an hour talking about some of the specifics of customer support walking to some of my experiences with good and bad customer support and I presented a business case that I would love your comments on so go over take a listen and let me know what you think I love some of the transparency that we have here that is not to say that our printers are near perfect in any way judged against the standards of 21st century consumer electronics I would rate Bamboo's first generation printers a 55 out of 100 above average but still a long way to go to reach our Ambitions the X1 C and p1p models are relatively refined compared to previous generation desktop fdm 3D printers but they are still light years away from delivering an iphone-like user experience which is our ultimate goal so there's a few things to unpack here what is the standard of 21st century consumer electronics if we look at other printers on the market and we compare to the 30 printing industry as a whole I would rate bamboo actually a little higher than 55. I might go to 65 on that there are still some things that are missing for me and maybe that's just me personally but one of the big things is allowing it to update offline looking at all consumer electronics yeah if you compare it against an iPhone or maybe like a Samsung Android phone the experience is from those portable electronic devices is more streamlined it's because those companies have spent Millions if not billions of dollars making certain that all of this is that way and while I believe that bamboo has spent a lot of money to make sure that these machines are as close to plug and play as they can be I do agree they have some room to grow I would agree that they are relatively refined compared to previous generation desktop fdm 3D printers and I guess we have to look at what is a previous generation fdm 3D printer is that a wooden MakerBot replicator there might be one on its way to me so we can make it function again or is that something like a voron where do we cut the line of previous generations because if we're comparing it to something like a wooden 3D printer yeah even the 8-Bit prusas behind me are light years ahead of a previous generation but if we look at comparing it to something like a prusa from a hardware standpoint what it's got on paper it is a pretty well refined machine but in practice I find that it's not as refined as you might think especially when it comes to doing repairs but I do like that their goal is an iphone-like user experience while I'm not an iPhone user I believe that iPhones have a phenomenal place and with some of the security things that iPhone is implementing what Apple are implementing should really start to set industry standards for other companies and yeah I'm looking at some of the other major manufacturers especially you Samsung and again a very personal statement we can only tell ourselves that these distressing problems that arise daily are part of the growth process perhaps they are a necessary path we have to follow to achieve a score of 90. I like they're not pushing for a 100 and I believe that is important for a business you cannot and never will be at a perfect 100 because if you hit a perfect 100 that's it you make nothing else because your product can get no better if you always say that there is an ability to get better then you create a product that while gen 1 might be good Gen 2 is gonna be a whole lot better obviously I'm not privy to what's going on inside a bamboo lab something tells me they're not a big fan of me and I'm okay with that I'm here to present problems and issues as I see it and if that upsets the fan boys so be it if that upsets the manufacturers so be it we don't have a lot of Channel sponsors here and it's why I do ask for people if you do want to support the channel you can do so by going to patreon YouTube channel members or a PayPal option and have a 10 tier and higher you can access to our private company Discord where you get to hang out with myself all the other Musketeers and a nice little corner of our fans where we do a lot of awesome projects that are only shared with a Discord a lot of our videos aren't sponsored and it's not cheap to run a YouTube channel for those that don't know while I believe we always have room to grow I like seeing this as a public decree from a company it bodes well for my faith in them moving forward because to be clear I've lost a lot of faith in bamboo this helps out a lot I like that they're thanking it not just the people that have helped them but also the Cyber Security Experts who promptly alerted us to our security vulnerabilities pushing us to make our systems more secure while I'm not a cyber security expert hi bamboo I would love for you to make it so these printers can run completely offline and still be able to be updated there are some of us that want to use these machines in a more secure environment including those in itar and cmmc and while there's probably no chance your printers ever make it into government because China there are those of us that do work especially for people that require non-disclosures that would like the ability to make certain that our printers aren't communicating back with a server no matter matter where it's located while I understand that the slicer itself can and does share log files I have the ability to not only view them but view them in plain text and I can turn that off if I want especially when we're looking at going over to Orca slicer which video coming soon on that by the way I'm gonna be trying that out in the next couple of weeks so stay tuned and get subscribed that's your kind of thing over the year bamboo has grown to over 300 individuals across multiple continents obviously multiple time zones that's huge a company to grow effectively one person every single day for a year is astounding levels of growth I don't know if that's going to be consistent as you know these printers tend to have a huge Spike and then they'll level off what we're about to see is I think bamboo is about to have another Spike there is a saying that says what doesn't kill you makes you stronger I think the last few years have taught us that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger or terribly terribly sick and while I don't believe that bamboo is terribly sick I I believe that their kind of self-vision here is in line with what I would like to see from other 3D printer manufacturers to be clear this is a level of transparency and personality That You Don't See from many companies really the only other notable one is prusa they are known for their absolute transparency in fact they did an entire sustainability report which we covered in two separate videos with my favorite being when we interviewed the author card to that video so you guys can take a look and we'll Link in the description to the Channel video that we did on it I am proud of bamboo for this it proves and shows that they are aware that they're not perfect and that they are aware that their product has flaws and that they are thankful for the community help they could have easily brushed us off and said middle fingers to all of you we're perfect get lost Scrub but they didn't that is crazy important when we look at building relationships moving forward in this industry it is very difficult to be a new player in this industry and bamboo hasn't met with a lot of opposition apparently most of it's been through me or at least publicly I know I'm not the only one dealing with some of the problems that I have there are other people that have similar issues but I'm one of the few that actually has a following and I'm glad that I can be the voice for those that might not necessarily be able to speak up that much or not want to for those of you that are out there that are dealing with problems no I will do my best to help you that's what we're here for and to those of you that are having a phenomenal time with your printers I'm so happy for you I hope that soon I can be in that crew as well and learn from what we've done to make this machine function better potentially much better in the future it's not all about bamboo it's actually about bamboo also giving back this is not something that I expected and something that's pretty amazing a plus bamboo for all Kickstarter backers who made this journey possible they have prepared a gift pack worth 165 dollars containing four rolls of carbon fiber reinforced filaments for the grand total of 1.99 why when 1.99 I think I have a reason most payment processors under a certain amount charge an insane percentage on that transaction and I think that's what they did they had to make it above their minimum so they're not getting hit with a massive amount of credit card processing fees so I tip my hat to that because that's a very business thing and for all customers who ordered at least one of their printers after the kickstarter through the official store before June 26th of 2023 they have prepared a gift pack containing two rolls of carbon fiber reinforced filament for 1.99 and yeah I'm subscribed to their newsletter so I'm hoping to get my code kind of nice to have some and remember the bamboo rolls are chipped that means if you do want to re-spool them make sure it's the same material that you put on it we have a lot of fiber reinforced materials here and it is a very common material that we print with here at 3D Musketeers so it'd be nice to have a few more spools from bamboo that think they're carbon fiber pla or car carbon fiber nylon when they're really something else or from another brand and for all past buyers except those that have already bought an X1 Carbon combo they prepared a 50 AMS discount voucher that's pretty great I would like another Ams for 50 bucks less I get it trying to get more products into the hands of your consumers I got no shame there this though is something that came out of left field for me a price adjustment and no not in the way that you might be expecting bamboo is lowering the cost of the p1p to 600 US dollars if you get a good machine that's a great deal if you don't care about your data security that's a great deal if you don't care about customer support currently that's a great deal and if you already have a farm of bamboos that's a great deal this is likely somewhat due to pressure from creality with the K1 the p1p is very much a stripped down X1 Carbon where they removed a lot of stuff that isn't immediately necessary you know like the side panels and the door and the lid and they made it considerably less money half the price less than half the price technically of their X1 Carbon without the AMS I am impressed by this this is economies of scale to be clear I don't think they needed to do this I don't think bamboo is struggling to sell printers in fact I think they're struggling to make them as fast as they can sell them I think this is really going to bring more people into the industry of these high-speed 3D printers now I've never used p1p and if we could have these issues addressed issues with reliability the issues with right to repair the issues with data security and the issues with leaving your machines offline indefinitely I would be looking at getting another one and at this price the p1p is a hard machine to look past there's not much out there that provides at that level speed and quality when my machine works makes beautiful parts so you've been looking and save yourself 100 bucks and get one now something that they don't talk about in here they're now Distributing through Micro Center so if you're a Micro Center near you you can get bamboo products there that's a big move for a company to look at full on retail distribution but we do have some issues right now regarding warranty support and who actually provides it we have some people stating that Micro Center is not going to be providing support but bamboo is not going to provide support because you bought it from a reseller Micro Center so where does that leave the consumer I don't know yet normally speaking it's expected that the reseller handles the actual customer support but maybe people have to read the fine print in their contracts so where does this leave bamboo I'm proud that bamboo released this I don't see any ill will here like I've seen in the past and this just kind of seems like this is an internal test that they did to themselves that they are just making public to everybody with a pretty serious thank you at the end so if you have bought a bamboo 3D printer keep an eye out for your email because they're gonna be sending you some coupons assuming you're signed up to the newsletter and if you're not get signed up to that newsletter because you might have already missed your chance I like this level of transparency and it's definitely a start I'd love to know your thoughts on this are you gonna get another p1p or your first p1p with these better prices I know I'm gonna take advantage of that filament sale because why wouldn't you well I haven't had a great experience with my bamboo I know a lot of other people have and while I can't personally recommend them at this time my reasons are pretty specific to my use cases things like data security privacy just the general lack of understanding for what information I'm providing to Bamboo when I send a log file I can't recommend them because I still can't update my machine but maybe that changes in the future in two weeks you guys are going to be hearing all about my first six months with a bamboo lab X1 Carbon you might like it you might not we'll see but until then stay safe out there don't forget to call your loved ones and as always keep making awesome have a good one you're such a good cat and the internet loves you and you're not fat you're not pregnant you're just a little tubby like your dad it's true hey thanks so much for watching this video a master thing goes out to all of our patreon PayPal and YouTube channel member supporters whose names are listed right next to me at the five dollar tier and higher remember if you want to support what we do here on this channel you can do so for as little as one dollar a month to help make videos like these possible I know a lot of you weren't exactly expecting a video like this would you like to see us talk about this more in a podcast if so let me know in those comments down below but before you go down there click the video right below me which would be my first month with the bamboo lab X1 Carbon and next to that will be the printfix Friday Series where at least in the later episodes since January of 2023 you can see some of my experiences with my bamboo I will see you all down to those comments and the next one don't forget to leave a like take care

Channel: 3D Musketeers

Views: 7,307

Keywords: 3d printing, crafter, maker, 3dprinting, 3dm, How to, creators, 3dmusketeers, 3d musketeers, create, diy, tech, technology, design, making, make, awesome, inventing, slicer, tutorials, 3dprint, 3d print, 3d printer, 3dprinter, bambu lab, x1 carbon, bambu lab x1 carbon, bambu lab p1p, fast 3d printer, bambu lab x1, bambu lab 3d printer, bambu lab x1 carbon kickstarter, year in review, bambu lab year in review, bambu lab ams, bambu labs, bambu labs p1p, bambu lab p1p 3d printer, multi material

Id: E-MbFuasfJo

Length: 23min 7sec (1387 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023