[sgtnoodle]

It's a fun, satisfying hobby. You need to be willing to get your hands dirty with modeling, and be ready to engineer around the limitations of the technology, in order to unlock the potential as a tool for the home.

I print stuff for around the home all the time. It's great to be able to fix toys, closet doors, light fixtures, etc. My most recent print was a bunch of small stilts for a wooden playhouse we're building for our daughter. The playhouse will be on concrete in an uneven low spot, so I designed a piece that will take a 1/4" nut and bolt to allow the structure to be leveled, and keep the wood out of pooled water.

Over the years I've been working on a homemade force feedback steering wheel (for driving games). The gearbox is all 3D printed other than bearings, as well as a faux-wood dashboard. It's as performant as any commercially available force feedback wheel.

A 3D printer isn't going to evolve into some magical star trek replicator, though. It's a device for precisely making plastic objects within a bunch of constraints, or for precisely making resin into objects within other constraints.