this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
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Can you share which electronics don't have firmware? I'm using a BambuLabs machine that certainly does. Any machine that's supposed to work right out of the box would.
I understand you to be saying it's possible to 3D print with an open source stack, which is good it's at least possible vs most 2d printing. But that's a very different thing than imagining a scenario where most 3d printers come from a store with this sort of fingerprinting enabled.
Just search for 3d printer board. As just one example the SKR range of boards from Bigtreetech com without firmware.
Most consumer printers these days come with open source firmware on them. For example the Ender series, or all creality printers, all Prusa printers, etc.
Bambulabs is just one of the very few examples that run a closed source firmware.
I see what you're saying, thanks. They come with firmware, but it's open source. What I'm saying is it's not hard to imagine a scenario where governments say "for public safety, we now require every manufacturer to modify their firmware to include this fingerprinting" And even in that scenario individuals could still probably manage to install clean versions. But it becomes much more of a nuisance and the most common arrangement would be people deciding it's not worth the hassle.