X1Plus FW 3.1 Update Adds Polar Cloud Support, X1Plus Extender In Stock
The successfully crowdfunded X1Plus Extender board lands back in stock on CrowdSupply, and heralds the arrival of X1Plus 3.1, custom Bambu Lab X1C firmware that now supports Polar Cloud print management integration.
Accelerated Tech, the team behind the landmark X1Plus custom firmware for Bambu Lab X1/X1C 3D printers, is back with a tantalizing update.
For starters, the X1Plus Expander board, a hardware companion to the X1Plus firmware that adds I/O to the X1/X1C 3D printers, is available to buy and shipping right away from Crowd Supply, where the board was successfully crowdfunded at the end of 2024. This sleek, black silk-screened slab of tech gives expanded physical functionality, such as external camera shutter control, LED status lighting, and myriad other GPIO-enabled customizability. It expanded the extra control X1Plus affords from virtual on the printer into the physical.
Backers received their boards in June but general availability is now here, meaning any user of the X1Plus custom firmware can toy more with their machine.
The announcement also brings X1Plus 3.1, which should show up as an over-the-air update for users of 2.0 (everyone else will have to flash 3.1 manually.) Although it’s a minor release that squashes some bugs and adds the ability to view connected sensors’ data on the printer’s display, the update builds further on something many will see as one of X1Plus’ major advantages over the mainline Bambu Lab firmware – deeper networking flexibility.
X1Plus 3.1 expands on this networking freedom with a collab of sorts with US-based Polar3D, a web-based platform for managing and controlling fleets of 3D printers. It’s an option that’s popular in educational and enterprise settings, where powerful computing hardware isn’t a given and network management is more likely to be controlled.
Polar3D does already offer an official Bambu Lab hardware integration, though this requires separate software running 24/7 to serve as a bridge of sorts between Polar Cloud and control over the Bambu Lab hardware, a necessity since Bambu Lab tightened up third party software access to its machines. This new development with X1Plus, sponsored by Polar3D, allows X1/X1C machines with the custom firmware to be natively bound to a Polar Cloud instance, which effectively means cloud-based farm printing with the Bambu Lab X1/X1C without the machines “phoning home” nor dependency on an intermediary software.
The initial development of the X1Plus – and its unprecedented look behind the curtain at Bambu Lab’s firmware – found no untoward activity, but the point remains that some organizations are uncomfortable with or unable to have devices like the X1C networked and communicating externally. The point also remains that the X1C is one of the best printers going. It’s oil and water, one’s Polar, the other non-polar, though it appears that X1Plus 3.1 and its Polar Cloud integration may be the thing to emulsify them. (Chemistry jokes! High five? Anyone?)
As things stand the integration is flagged as experimental only, though after checking, we can confirm this is more a formality rather than any indication of unpredictability from the code. Accelerated Tech do not anticipate any changes between now and a “stable” Polar Cloud integration.
It’s worth noting that even though Polar3D is a for-profit company with subscription access required to run more than one machine a month, as with anything X1Plus, the integration is completely open source.
Correction – August 28: The original version of this article detailed a 25-print limitation on the free tier of Polar Cloud. Such a limitation is no longer there. Edited for clarity.
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