[Ace_Archer]

I think there's really a modern disconnect for a lot of people (myself included, a lot of the time) between needing/wanting "a thing" and the idea that you don't always need to buy that thing as a product from someone else. That creating, modifying, or even repairing something yourself to serve whatever purpose is really not that far out of an idea. My partner and I have been infected by the same desire and have been starting to acquire various tools and machines over the years, and even now I find myself still defaulting to searching for something on amazon when I run into a problem/"a thing" that I want without even considering if I could DIY it myself. Obviously its not always better or even cheaper to DIY something, especially considering tool and material accessibility and cost, but I think at large a lot of folks don't even consider it an option. It is one of those things that when you first realize you don't _have_ to buy the thing off of amazon, it feels incredibly obvious and that you should've known that from the start, but I really thing it is a somewhat uncommon idea nowadays. (There's probably a conversation you could have about the millions of reasons why that's the case re: modern consumerism, less emphasis on "blue collar" skills and the general perspective that they're "lesser" skills/pathways than their "white collar" counterparts, etc. But that's a whole nother topic :) )

I do think there's some resurgence here with a lot of the modern "maker" movement, which is awesome! But at least in the content bubble I live in, it seems there's still _a bit_ of a disconnect between the newer, more digital "3D Printing, Code, Electronics etc." spaces and the more analog "Wood, Metal, Paint, Clay, etc." spaces. (I think this gap is slowly closing, though!)

Re: Injection molding, you might be interested in a few videos from Evan Monsma's youtube channel [1] where he makes an incredibly cheap injection molding machine out of a drill press[2], and explores super inexpensive mold making materials like steel epoxy putty[3] (also highly recommend checking his channel out in general, it's recently been becoming one of my favorite smaller channels!) [1] https://www.youtube.com/c/EvanMonsma [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kovD-FPOVlo [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwbxNOAg3Pc

Happy Making!