Do you routinely find uses for it? Or was it cool at first and now just sits there?

Several times in the past few months I have needed brackets, cases, and mounts - many of which are already on Thingiverse.

I usually need them yesterday, can't wait for shipping, and end up making do with hot glue, epoxy, aluminum stock, rivets, etc.

It is getting hard to resist scratching that itch!

I use it quite often for small parts for around the house, but i tried to put a glass bed on my ender 5 but I cant get it calibrated right so i haven't used it in about 2 weeks.  Its not that difficult to use once you get everything set up right, most of if not all what you print will have been created by someone else, you just download the files then put in your filament and click go (somewhat oversimplified).

I am actually pretty handy with 3D CAD, but yeah, almost everything I need exists.

Stuff like this:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4375190

Zortrax M200, Longer Orange 30 and Qidi S-Box.

Zortrax is FFF and I use it about once a month. The belts and steppers need servicing soon. It’s starting to lose its precision. Much more pronounced “wave” in layers. So I’ll strip it down and tighten everything back up.

The Longer I haven’t used since the test print. Resin cleanup sucks and I don’t really have anything modeled yet that needs its level of precision.

Haven’t used the Qidi yet for that same reason. It’s huge and uses a lot of resin. I’m in the process of modeling stuff to print with it however.

Has anyone here printed any bullets?  How's they shoot?  Load and Velocity?

I'm thinking like a home brew ultra light ARX type bullet.

I use it multiple days a week. Have had it for 7-8 months. Always find something I need to print or wife wants things done that I realize can be done cheaper/easier with the printer than buying.

Just in the last couple weeks:
New curtain rod holders
Kitchen towel hangers
Kitchen cutlery organizer
Baby monitor camera wall mount
Keurig K-Cup holder
Oven mitt hooks to hang on oven door
Bathroom soap dish
Decorations for the nursery
High resolution moon light fixture
Sugar packet tray
Chip/Bag clips
Wall hooks for keys/coats/dog leash

Thing has endless uses. Made multiple lithopane lamps for Christmas gifts. Make your own board games. If you do any tabletop gaming, endless figures. The little household items are fucking endless as you can see from my list.

Curious about this also.

I could use it all the time for the damn boats I have to fix.

Like yesterday, I could have printed some nice spacers for the windshield that had a shoulder to them, but instead I had to use rubber grommets. Which don't look as good and flex more than I would like.

A mill would also come in real handy too.

It's like $300 all in, just buy one.

In my opinion, a 3d Printer without CAD and/or Modelling skills is just a waste of money.

If all you plan to do is print crap from Thingiverse, don't buy a 3D Printer. At that point its just an expensive toy to make shitty looking thrinkets.


If you have CAD skills, that turns a 3D Printer from a toy into a tool, and tools are always a good investment.

With that being said, I have a Prusa MK3 and I use it sometimes monthly, but sometimes weekly, really depends what's going on with my hobbies or around the house at the time.

It was fun to make trinkets and shit to put on my desk when I first got it.  Now I use it mostly for functional stuff.  For example; I just put a new sliding barn door in for the bathroom.  They provide a floor bracket to keep the door from swinging out at the bottom.  I just put brand new flooring in and didn't want to drill holes in it because we may move the door when we do a bathroom reno in the future.  I designed one up in fusion 360, printed it out and attached it to the wall and floor using some heavy duty double sided tape (it also has screw holes if I need to screw it to the trim).  Having two contact points made it more stable and it works great.  I also used it make some new handles for the PVC plumbing valves for my FILs pool.  They wanted to sell him the whole valve which would have involved a ton of work (cut/extend/glue/etc).  So I took one of the non-broken ones, designed a new one and voila.

i used mine quite a bit when i first got it. printed a few magpul mlok type angled grips, mlok covers, ubolt lower.(but really dont trust it, i will only use it on my .22 stuff)
last week i printed a 45 degree picatinny offset mount, and a .8" round picatinny  flash light mount, which allowed me to run a IR flashlight on my .22 buckmark for night shenanigans.
need to print up something to run a Tor mini IR laser.

I've had mine running non-stop the past two weeks.

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It's a great tool if you are skilled enough to create what you need.

I bought mine as a toy to just fuck around with learning 3d cad type drawing.
Lately I've used the hell out of it on my truck project to make small brake line and wire harness mounts, and replacement cushion bumpers for the door latches using TPU filament.

Mine basically has been running non stop since I got it.
It can’t out pace my new ideas.
I just did a Lithophane of our family last night.

There is an at lower coming out now.

Agreed, that is where a 3D printer becomes a more functional tool. There's a bunch of interesting and useful stuff on Thingiverse to print, but if you can do a bit of modeling for personal projects the utility value increases so much.

Just little things like making replacement parts, specialized tools and custom items is a big plus. Or even taking an existing part and doing some small customizations to it.

There is a learning curve to printing and getting the best results, so printing stuff you download is a good first step. But then it's good to go beyond printing Groot and Baby Yoda figures.

I use mine a lot. I think for work more than personal. I do enjoy doing stuff for work since no one else has one there.

I have a CR10 with a Pi for Octoprint and have done a lot of upgrades. ABL, dual Z motors, direct extruder, etc. I get some first layer porn. Lol

Upgrades and getting them to work are fun too.

I use Sketchup and Fusion 360 for CAD. I get a lot of stuff off Thingiverse but most things I remix to fit my own.

I now have a dual extruder D3 Hero that I have been messing with but my CR10 does most of the heavy lifting.

Thinking about getting one to do custom parts for model cars. Things like wheels and such. Maybe engine parts, etc. Haven't pulled the trigger yet though.

I use mine once a month now

If you're good with CAD it's a no brainer. Get one! You'll love it.

There's a learning curve, so get it before you need it and play with it - that way you aren't fighting with it when you just want to click a few times and press GO.

I went in for one because I fully expect something to happen regulation wise where you'll only be able to buy new ones that will only print "approved" files.  Like how drones went from being all open, to GPS/flight blocking/remotely restrictable.

3D printing has been a fun hobby.  More than a few times I've used it to design and prototype things.  I've built things that you cannot buy because nobody makes them.  I've built things that you can buy, but are very overpriced.
I have been printing and selling things on etsy, and my $900 printer has paid for itself 3x in actual dollars.  Not counting the value I got from it by making stuff for myself.

I will say that often times I see people trying to use 3D printers to try and solve the wrong problems.  Problems you could solve in 1/10 the time and effort using other techniques.  Many times, power tools and subtractive manufacturing like table saw, drill press, mill, lathe, and sanders can make the time items that you can 3D print, but made out of wood, aluminum, steel, even delrin plastic which are all many times strong and more durable than layers of plastic melted together.  3D printing is good for some things.  It is not a solution to everything.

Often times it feels like people have gotten themselves a printer and are going out of their way trying to figure out a way to use it.  They get their little 3D printer blinders on and they cant see anything else but printing even though there are a lot better ways to solve the problem.

Depends, I'll dick around with a design in Fusion for an hour here or there for weeks or months, print three or four prototypes, then print a final 200g object from it. Or I'll see something cool on Gunnitrust and burn 2kg in a week printing it.

Kharn

Is the plastic media sufficient for production of mags?

It would need to be ridged and resistant to heat from the action.

Barely good enough for range mags.

There are different types of plastic used to produce commonly available things.  One big distinction is thermoset and thermoplastic.  By the very nature of how 3D printing works, the filament is the type of plastic you can melt and reshape and it'll harden and cool down.  You can repeatedly heat it and let it cool to harden.

Now go pick up any rugged quality plastic AR accessory and try to heat it to the point of melting.  It will burn and turn into a smelly smoke but it will not soften up.  This thermoset plastic is what you'd want to print your magazines out of, but you can't due to 3D printers using thermoplastic.

On top of that, many rugged plastic items like protective cases, shells, housings, magazines, AR grips, and other things which require strength are reinforced with fiberglass.  A certain percent of fiberglass is added to the plastic while it is still gooey.  When it cools and dries, the fiberglass makes the plastic stronger.  this sort of fiberglass reinforcement is not available for 3D printer filament.

And then theres the part where 3D printing inherently creates weak sections.  All those thousands of points where the layers are stuck together are weaker than solid plastic.  Think of them like wood grain.  When you break a board, it wants to break along the grain.  When you print a part, it will be easier to break at the layers.  I'm not saying you cannot design and print a magazine that will function.  I'm saying that it would just be a "look what i did" project.  Your printed magazine would not be 1/10 as sturdy as the cheapest and shittiest promag ever made.

To take a different perspective, the vast majority of builders stick with PLA and PETG, two low temperature, unreinforced thermoplastics that will deform if left in a hot car in Arizona.

Upgrade the printer with a dehydrator for filament conditioning ($10-100), an enclosure to contain heat ($0 contractor trash bag to $400 custom made whiz bang stuff), new coated high speed nozzle ($20), flash or replace the main board for updated temperature ranges ($20-100) and pay $60/kg for glass (ePA-GF) or carbon fiber (ePA-CF) filled nylon (vs $20-35 for PLA) and you'll have prints that are significantly stronger, more wear resistant, and with a 250F deflection temperature.

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Glock frames are molded from glass filled nylon, as are many accessories. Yes, being molded  has significant advantages vs additive manufacturing, but your design can include reinforcements to make up for it.

Kharn

My printer out of the box is enclosed with a heated bed and the necessary firmware and hardware for printing ABS and nylon.  Thats what I print with 90% of the time.
One thing I do with my designs is destructive testing.  Spend 5hr waiting for something to print, then purposefully try to break it.  You don't have to do too many of them to catch on that 3D printed stuff is a great deal weaker than injection molded and fiberflass reinforced big boy plastic.

The strongest prints I've seen off what I'd consider a home gamer level 3D printer was nylon, shot peened to make the surface stronger and then dyed black.  They are still inferior to the type of plastic you get even in cheap korean mags that just about the entire gun community considers airsoft quality.