3D printing hobbiests, What got you started down the path?

[Jebjeb]

I came through the Wargaming/RPG community wanting cheaper miniatures and terrain that I could 3D print and throw on the table. How did others find this amazing hobby? Did you come in through tooling and printing for mechanical parts, from crafty hobbies or from somewhere else? Very curious what the breakdown is of gamers to designers to technicians.

[curious aardvark]

An advert for makibox 3d printers popped up on - facebook I think.
back then 3dprinters were kind of in the news, but cost an arm and a leg and a spare kidney.

This thing was £200.
I love gagets, I love making things, as a kid I was always inventing stuff.

So an affordable 3d printer !

Alas, makibox went under before I received my machine and what with postage and filaments - that I had already paid for. I lost £300 - but while I was waiting for the makibox to arrive, I'd read just about everything you could on 3d printers and I had the bug.
That was 7 years ago and affordable 3d printer options were few and far between.
It's absolutely incredible how the industry has progressed since then

Ended up with a flashforge creator - the original plywood model. Brilliant machine.
And it's kind of snowballed from there.

I've now got: 2 replicator clones: (flashforge and klicnprint), 2 deltas: (he3d k200 and monoprice mini delta), a prusa spec I3 (ctc i3 pro-b) and a corexy: (twotrees sapphire pro 2).

The ctc I3 is currently on a high shelf awaiting the day i have the time and inclination to give it a new brain and display.
The flashforge - after about 5 years of sterling service - is mothballed and will probably be used for parts at some juncture, should anything on the klic-n-print fail. An original mightyboard is worth it's weight in gold !
The other 4 are all fully working and setup.

There are bits of a giant delta (man sized) also scattered around my workshop.
I'm in two minds about what to do with it.
I need a few bits of ready threaded 30x30 extrusion to finish it.
But, I could also use the existing parts and a bunch of others to make a huge corexy.
But the delta would take up minimal floorspace for build volume while I have nowwhere for a giant corexy to go.
But I have all the bits to finish the delta, but a giant corexy.......
And that's where we shall leave our conflicted termite muncher

My entire 3d printing journey is detailed on this forum - you have to shop around, but it's all there :-)

I sell the occasional thing, design several unique things every week and short of making actual money from it, couldn't be enjoying the whole field of additive manufacturing more :-)

The sheer wonder of imagining a thing that has never before existed in the world and then holding the physical reality of it in your hand, a few hours later, is something I will never grow tired of.

[Jebjeb]

There are bits of a giant delta (man sized) also scattered around my workshop.
I'm in two minds about what to do with it.
I need a few bits of ready threaded 30x30 extrusion to finish it.
But, I could also use the existing parts and a bunch of others to make a huge corexy.
But the delta would take up minimal floorspace for build volume while I have nowwhere for a giant corexy to go.
But I have all the bits to finish the delta, but a giant corexy.......

Cripes, how big is the build volume on a man sized printer!