Unproprietarifying the Bambu Lab X1C

Bambu Lab makes good 3D printers — very good 3D printers. There is a reason that they now dominate the market, after all. But “just working” comes at a cost and the price is a mostly proprietary ecosystem. There have been many software and firmware projects over the years that opened things up a bit, but Bambu Lab tends to issue updates that, intentionally or not, make those projects less useful or altogether useless. The problem is that the hardware is still proprietary, which is why Jón Schone of Proper Printing completely unproprietarified his Bambu Lab X1C.

Before we go further, I want to say that this kind of thing is mostly for just for kicks. Most Bambu Lab owners don’t care about the proprietary nature of the printers and those we do care would be better off simply purchasing a Prusa or something. That said, this is still impressive, because Schone managed to replace everything proprietary in the X1C with an open source alternative.

To test the waters, Schone started with a simple mod: converting the X1C’s hot end to accept E3D V6-style nozzles. That is genuinely useful, because it means that users can replace a nozzle without replacing the entire hot end. Doing so requires the modification of a knockoff Bambu hot end block, drilled out and tapped for the V6 nozzle threads. A ring heater replaces the typical cartridge type. That even made it possible to use a massive 1.8mm Volcano nozzle, which is absurd in the best way.

After that, the project got a lot more complicated. To condense a long video into something quickly digestible, the basic gist is this: Schone replaced almost all of the electronic components with open alternatives. For example, he switched the Bambu Lab control board and touchscreen out for a BigTreeTech SKR3 and TFT50.

Schone really only kept the mechanical parts, like the frame and motion system, and the electrical/electronic components that weren’t proprietary, like the stepper motors and power supply.

But one tricky exception was the extruder, which has its own control board that communicates with the primary control board via a CAN (Controller Area Network) bus. It might have been possible to reverse-engineer that communication, but it simply wasn’t worth the trouble. Instead, Schone replaced the entire extruder assembly with an Orbiter v2.0. That’s compact, dead simple, and fits nicely in the original extruder’s location.

With RepRap firmware installed on the BTT SKR3 and configured to match the hardware, Schone was able to start testing. There were some minor hiccups, such as accidentally connecting the extruder motor to the Z axis output, but eventually Schone achieved success.

The open Bambu Lab X1C prints well and even makes use of features like the nozzle wiper. And if you’re one of the few people in the world that wants to convert your own X1C, Schone’s files are available on his website for the nozzle upgrade, the controller mod, and the extruder mod.