3D Printers Are Now Turning On And Printing When No One Is Around
Could one of the coolest inventions in recent decades be coming alive to take over mankind? Probably not, but in an event that is straight out of a science fiction horror movie, 3D printers did turn on by themselves and started printing things when no one was around. According to a recent post from X user @3dpNero, a bunch of Bambu Lab 3D printers turned on and printed things due to a disruption in their cloud service on August 15.
In what is now being referred to as the “Cloud Outage,” many 3D printers turned on in the middle of the night while their owners were sleeping. The machines attempted to print projects on their own, but some ended up running out of printing putty, damaging their parts, or creating Frankenstein-like monstrosities (often called spaghetti) in the process. Sometimes that’s what happens when a 3D printer is left alone, much like an unsupervised toddler with a marker.
In what is now being referred to as the “Cloud Outage,” many 3D printers turned on in the middle of the night while their owners were sleeping.
Many owners of the 3D printers (specifically Bambu’s X1C and P1P models) were confused and frustrated by the event. Some people thought their printers were broken or malfunctioning, some had to second-guess themselves to ensure they didn’t start a print job before bed, and others probably thought they were creating prints while sleepwalking.
The reason for the chaos is actually quite simple: it was caused by an outage in Bambu Lab’s cloud service. When the company’s cloud went down unexpectedly, 3D printers were not able to print any jobs that were sent through the cloud. Naturally, some users kept pinging the cloud to try and start the new print job, but without any luck, they went to bed.
3D printers are amazing devices, but as with most technology today, from toasters to bidets, reliance on the cloud can lead to problems.
Once the cloud service came back online, the 3D printers received all the jobs that were assigned while the cloud was down. In some cases, this was only one job, but for others there were multiple print jobs built on top of one another. This caused some printers to break since there was no one there to remove the finished print jobs.
Bambu Lab was quick to apologize for the fiasco, and they took responsibility for the cloud outage. Still, some users are upset that they have to repair broken parts on their printers and that they wasted printer putty on the botched creations. Other users were able to just shrug the mess off, understanding that technical difficulties happen to everyone.
Despite being a lot of work, a 3D printer can do amazing things, from creating prosthetic limbs to dresses for the red carpet.
Those who use a 3D printer may want to stick to the LAN-only mode from now on so that they don’t run into another cloud service issue. At the very least, users can turn the power off on their printers so that they don’t wake up to another spaghetti mess in the future.
Despite the issues that occasionally arise with 3D printers, they are an incredible invention. Users have been able to 3D print all sorts of things, including jewelry, toys, prosthetic limbs, and pretty much anything you can think of. Believe it or not, Columbia University has even used 3D printers and lasers to make edible food, though we’re not sure how their cheesecake compares to a New York slice.
