More information about the Bambu Lab recall has been revealed, and it’s quite astonishing what happened.
Bambu Lab Business Development Director Cedric Mallet wrote a long post on LinkedIn, explaining the situation in some detail, and revealed that Bambu Lab faced an incredibly challenging situation.
Readers may recall what happened: the A1 desktop 3D printer was announced early this year, and began shipping. The device is fantastic, as I concluded in my detailed review of the A1 3D printer.
However, it turned out there was a problem. If operators somehow tilted the A1 on its back the cable to the heat bed would bend in ways it wasn’t really designed to handle. This could (and apparently did) damage the cable, and in some cases the damage was sufficient to cause an electrical short.
Bambu Lab was very responsive on this situation. They issued a full recall and a plan to either replace the machines or ship out replacement heat beds for those comfortable swapping them. I opted for the latter, and found it was pretty easy to do.
Bambu Lab’s new heat bed design was incorporated into the product and the company began reshipping new, safe devices shortly thereafter. Bambu Lab could not have done a better job on this difficult situation. All good!
Then I read Mallet’s report and was a bit shocked as to what happened. He said:
“Just when I thought this chapter was closed, and that I could breath again, something new happened. On June 13, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) published a bulletin about this recall. Luckily, we didn’t wait for their advice to start our recall because five months with a defective product is quite long. However, the CPSC didn’t specify that the recall only applied to 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗹 𝗝𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝟯𝟬, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰.
To support our content creators on TikTok, we opened a TikTok shop and sold many printers there. Last Thursday, their team saw the CPSC bulletin and, 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝘄𝗮𝘆, decided to refund 𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗬 A1 printers bought from this shop, even advising customers to keep or destroy the printers (so much for resource conservation!).
Now, we’ve shipped thousands of printers but won’t receive any revenue (plus, content creators are demanding their commissions as TikTok canceled them too).”
This could be a significant financial hit to the company. The price of the A1 combo was US$559 during this period, suggesting that Bambu Lab could have lost an enormous amount of money because of the faulty bulletin. For example, if they sold 10,000 units over the period, that would total US$5.6M. For smaller 3D printer manufacturers, that might have been enough to put them out of business.
Fortunately, Bambu Lab is proceeding. Mallet continues:
“No one is at risk. We won’t block the printers; our customers shouldn’t bear the cost of these recklessness. We’ll count on our customers’ goodwill as we reach out to them individually to request payment for the printers they’ve acquired. And hopefully, we will be able to recover.”
This is an extraordinary situation that should not have happened. I would not at all be surprised if Bambu Lab launched a lawsuit against the CPSC.
Via LinkedIn
