> on the understanding it was reasonably hackable and open

While this lock down doesn't seem right it is far from unexpected, I question the amount of research done prior to your Black Friday purchase (BF and well-thought-out-decisions often do not go hang-in-hand!)…

I bought one (an A1 with the multi-material add-on) some months before that in full knowledge that the company would prefer to funnel people into a walled garden because if you look anywhere you'll find proponents of other makes warning that exactly this is possible & likely, with the "must take many steps to print without talking to their servers" being the key evidence in those warnings.

Good reasons to buy a BBL machine (at least my reasoning when I did):

* They work out of the box more so than many of the competition (many will say "X is better or better value, if you spend Y amount of time tuning" which while often correct, I wasn't looking to spend that time tuning), certainly more so than others at similar prices.

* QoL features (good auto leveling, dynamic flow control) that weren't exactly ubiquitous on similarly priced or cheaper machines.

* Certainly in the case of the newest A1/A1-Mini line: a working MMU option cheaper than you find in other ranges (some manufacturers have started addressing this and the out-of-box experience, in their product lines, 2025 could be an interesting year), and very easy nozzle changes (useful if you want to both do detailed minis (without going resin) and mostly larger items).

* For me, the handling of the A1 issues early last year (quickly acknowledging a potential safety issue and publishing mitigation guidelines, full recall or fix-at-home options when it became clear the issue was more significant) was a point in their favour wrt after-sales giving-a-shit. Obviously not a point against others as we don't know how they'd react until it happens, of course. There are regular complaints of slow support response more generally, but there are for other printer manufacturers too and, well, pretty much all consumer facing industry these days.

* The official documentation & videos, maintenance & troubleshooting guides etc, seemed to me to be more coherent than some other offerings (though searching for "<my problem> reddit" is still a thing!).

Absolutely terrible reasons to buy into BBL, long before this storm:

* Openness (software). From the get go their offering has the trappings of a more controlled garden than the 3D printing community were used to.

* Openness (hardware). While there are some compatible 3rd party after-market parts, there isn't the able-to-build-your-own feel you see elsewhere with people using different extruder nozzles, cooling options, and so on.

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This isn't a great analogy, but: BBL is an Apple (though not quite on price) to the rest of the 3D printing industry's Linux and it only takes a small amount of information to see that before buying.

If I upgrade (or have to replace, or just decide to get a second) then maybe I'll go elsewhere. I'm more confident I could get other others working well, manufacturers are addressing the points that have allowed BBL to take so much of the market & mindshare in a short time, but the key thing against BBL (not being open like much of the rest of 3D printing) is something I was well aware of when buying (it did make me think twice) so I can't be too mad about it.

Now if they try stop people using 3rd party filament, like the traditional printing industry with ink & toner, which is far from impossible, then I'll feel they've conned me.