I bought a 3D printer 3 years ago and it looks like its firmware has been out of date for almost as long now.

My printer is a Bambulab P1S that I really like. As my friend told me before buying, it’s pretty much like if Apple had made a 3D printer. I don’t know how much this statement holds true these days, considering the drop in software quality, but I must admit that I’ve had very little trouble with my printer ever since I plugged it in.

I don’t remember when I tried to update Bambu Studio (the app you use to talk to the printer) to version 2.x but I remember running into an issue when I tried to start a print, something about a nozzle issue. I didn’t really want to look into the issue immediately, so I’d just reverted back to the latest 1.x version and moved on with my life. Based on the release notes, I suspect that was around February 2025. Since then, I’ve kept printing with version 1 of the software, ignoring the occasional warning telling me that the 3D model I’d downloaded would work better with the latest version of the Bambu Studio app.

Today, as my lovely partner asked me to print some cute Octopus Chip Clips, I decided to download the latest version of Bambu Studio again. As expected, I ran into an issue about a nozzle.

🚨 Invalid nozzle information, please refresh or manually set nozzle information

I felt many emotions at once: confusion (What do you mean the information about the nozzle is invalid?), resentment (It’s not my fault! I haven’t changed anything!), and finally anger (it’s your hardware! I thought you were the Apple of 3D printers?!). Once I’d stopped crying and screaming under the rain (of which we’re currently getting plenty #vancouver), I decided to start looking around for solutions.

After a little while, I decided to make sure that the printer was running the latest version of the firmware. It would be a little emnbarassing for me to be running outdated somewhere, as someone who keeps writing unoriginal blogposts about keeping your dependencies up to date. I selected the “Device” section of Bambu Studio, clicked on “Update” to see that my printer was running the latest version of the firmware, 1.04.something. Cool.

Still somewhat unsatisfied by this answer, I went looking for a list of the firmware’s versions to double check where it said the latest version was 01.09.00.00 and that version 01.04.02.00 was released… in October 2023. My printer has been running a version of the firmware released 2 years ago. Embarassing. Fortunately, I took a quick peek at the release notes and didn’t see any release made to prevent the printer from catching on fire.

The question is, why did Bambu Studio think the printer was running the latest version of the firmware if it wasn’t? The answer is pretty frustating. You see, there are two ways you can run your printer. You can either connect to Bambu Labs’ cloud services or you can run your printer in LAN only mode. While I wasn’t super worried about seeing my printer going rogue after some kind of targeted attack against Bambulabs’ cloud services, I didn’t see the value of connecting to their cloud services either.

Bambu Studio is open source, so it was easy to locate this open issue. The short version is that if you’re running in LAN only mode, Bambu Studio will always think you’re running the latest version of the firmware. At least, that was the case until September 2025 but to be able to get local only updates, it looks like you need to connect your printer to the cloud at least once.

I did that and the printer immediately asked me if I wanted to update to the latest version of the firmware. I did the update, the nozzle issue went away like magic and I was able to print some very cute chip clips.