[omnibrain]

> but I think one should just embrace it and say “my hobby is collecting guitar gear

That's something I noticed with a lot of people in my circle and 3d printers. They don't 3d print for their hobby. Most of them have 3d printing or even 3d printers as their hobby.

[drewzero1]

For a long time I was baffled by the seemingly unnecessary gizmos that are popular 3d print subjects, because to me 3d printing was just a means to an end. Eventually I realized that the printing itself is a hobby for a lot of printer people.

Personally I like to use my printer to enable my other hobbies, but along the way I've picked up 3d design and printing as secondary hobbies.

[drivers99]

I designed a custom shape for something I needed for another hobby (holding a first-surface mirror at 45 degrees so I could try to learn to paint by copying) and that was really satisfying to learn 3d modeling and making a real object. I should probably do more things like that, such as making a robot or something.

[bluGill]

I have realized I already have more hobbies than i have time for. I do need parts to repair my other hobbies, I might get a 3d printer for that, but i'm thinking about using some printing service to make parts for me instead

[marcosdumay]

A good 3D printer isn't a very large time-sink.

But it's only worth it if you have a reasonable number of those parts, or if lead-time is important. For most people designing stuff, led-time is essential, but not everybody that want some specific part designs it.

[prmoustache]

It is not cost effective to buy a 3d printer if you 3d print only when you actually need a 3d printed part. That is the main reason. You buy/build a 3d printer only if you want to tinker with them. Otherwise you just commission someone to do it or use the local fablab.

[LanceH]

I don't know. I spent a couple years printing some parts at our library's maker space. The feedback loop is very, very slow.

Having a 3d printer now, I can get a half dozen iterations on something done in a day and compared to a single iteration per day from the library. So if you're designing your own parts and can't draw them perfectly first go, having the printer is huge.

Replacement battery covers for remote controls. If I value those at $200 each, I've broken even.

[randomdata]

> It is not cost effective to buy a 3d printer [...] just commission someone to do it

If you are lucky enough to have a neighbour to do the commissioning, maybe, but otherwise shipping has gotten so expensive (at least in these parts), and 3D printers so cheap, that a getting few design iterations in your hands will practically buy you the printer.

[benj111]

My journey into Linux was like this.

I decided to install arch once. Didn't have any issues per se, but spent far too much time going through all the window manager options, file browser options etc etc etc.

I eventually decided that I needed an os to do stuff, not be the stuff to do.

[epiccoleman]

This mirrors my experience with emacs. I enjoyed tinkering with it but found I'd lose 30 minutes every time I thought "I bet I can make it do..."

Nowadays I'm using Code with the Vim plugin and I haven't tinkered with my config for quite some time.

Emacs is infinitely more powerful - but with Code I was able to set it up once and be done, and there's value in that too.

[omnibrain]

That (and the at the time, in my personal opinion, superior to anything else Office 2010 with the improved tabbed interface) was the reason I went back to Windows. Nowadays most of the time I don't even bother to change the color scheme an set a background image.

I just recently started to customise my Powershell profile. Let's see where this leads...

[benj111]

I'm still on Linux.

I just use a premade Debian rather that selecting every single tiny piece.

If I need to change things I can, I just don't feel I have to change everything.

[crashmat]

I think it depends on whether you can do stuff in the os even if it is not yet set up exactly perfectly. If so, then you can do stuff when you need to, and play with the os when you want to. But obviously some will be too distracted from doing anything such that that's still a bad idea.

[LanceH]

I just bought my first 3d printer a couple weeks ago. It was so tempting to pull up the benchmark and see what I could do. Instead I sat down, drafted something I wanted to make, and made. So my first print is something that sees daily use.

My woodworking setup for my garage, however. Someday it will see use other than for organizing my woodworking setup in my garage. I just need that one more tool. And to build a place to put it.