Has anyone gotten into 3D printing? My younger high school-aged son has a birthday towards the end of the summer and seems really interested in learning more about it. I'm willing to spend for something good, rather than ending up with junk.

I've toyed (ha!) with the idea but most of the things I can think of that I'd like to print are toys that 10-year old me (and now me) would want but don't really have a use for. I follow along in the /r/3Dprinting subreddit. Seems like a healthy amount of setup effort (levelling, base layer configuration, slicing, etc.) but also seems super cool. AFAICT the lower end printers (~$200-$300) are still very viable.

I have a friend who has three. Why? He likes to play with things. He makes some rpg stuff and little things for around the house. I think it is something that can get addictive to do.

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I got a printer for my son 5 years ago (just before he left for college). It worked for a short while and broke. We were on the phone with support for an hour. Finally returned it.

I'm sure they've gotten better since but was a major disappointment then.

My wife got me one for Christmas, I played around with it for maybe a month and its been sitting since.
Unless you have something specific you want to make the "try something new" factor disappears pretty quickly. At least for me it did.

If I had more people to play with, I would have made BattleMechs and the like for Battletech.