Restrictive tech never works when you apply it from the start. You need to capture the market first before you can start to apply that. And that is the road Bamboo labs looks to be heading down. It is the classic playbook:
have some true disruptive innovation in some product that people will actually want to use your products for ✅
mass market your product and get loads of people singing parse about how innovate it is ✅
slowly start to lock down your product, typically behind the guise of safety and security ✅
start to squeeze your customers for as much money as you can with DRM or subscriptions
You wont succeed if you skip straight to step 4. But Bamboo have been slowly working their way up to it. It might take a few more years but I can see them eventually wanting DRM filament.
DRM filament spools has already been a thing, XYZprinting tried it but luckily it didn’t catch on and they went bankrupt a few years ago.
Restrictive tech never works when you apply it from the start. You need to capture the market first before you can start to apply that. And that is the road Bamboo labs looks to be heading down. It is the classic playbook:
Stratasys uPrint, the filament is 10x the normal price, and you can’t refill the spools. 260 USD for 42ci (I guess it’s a kg) https://store.goengineer.com/products/p430xl-model-spool-uprint-se-ivory?pr_prod_strat=e5_desc&pr_rec_id=cbc1c0b23&pr_rec_pid=7204500635830&pr_ref_pid=2409166831721&pr_seq=uniform