Day 1: the box, the foam and the smell of new plastic
It arrives on a Tuesday. The box is bigger than you expected and heavier than you remember ordering. Inside: a frame, a bag of screws, a little spanner, and a sample of filament so short it feels like a dare.
You tell yourself this is a sensible purchase. A tool. You will print the odd bracket and a phone stand, and that will be that. It will not be that.
Week 1: it prints!
Your first print is a little boat or a cube. It takes hours, and you watch most of them. You sit on the floor next to the machine like it is a pet at the vet.
Then it finishes, and you are holding a thing that did not exist this morning. It is warm and slightly stringy. It is also the best object you have ever owned. You show everyone. Your partner nods politely. Your mum asks what it is for.
Week 2: spaghetti, and how to level a 3D printer bed
Then comes the first proper failure. You start a long print, go to bed happy, and wake up to a nest of plastic noodles where your model should be, with the nozzle sitting in the middle like a bird. Makers call this spaghetti. Everyone has a photo of theirs.
Very often the cause is the very first layer. The plastic has to grip the bed, and it only does that if the nozzle sits just the right distance above it, about a sheet of paper's thickness. That is levelling the bed. Some printers do it for themselves, and some leave it to you and a piece of A4. Either way, you will learn to read a first layer like tea leaves.
Also, clean the bed. One fingerprint can ruin a print. Nobody warns you about that.
Week 3: PLA, PETG, ABS and a spool of every colour
Filament is the plastic that goes in, wound on a spool. PLA is where everyone starts: cheap, forgiving, made from plant starch, and available in every colour. It is great for models, gifts, desk toys and brackets that will never get hot. PETG is tougher and a little bendy, so it suits parts that get knocked about or live outdoors, though it is stringier to print. ABS is the plastic Lego is made from: strong, but it warps and gives off fumes, so it wants an enclosed printer and an open window. TPU is rubbery, for grippy feet and phone cases.
You only needed one spool. You now have eleven. There is a silk gold one and one that changes colour with the temperature of the room. A drawer has quietly become The Filament Drawer. Every sale is, you explain, an investment.
Then the nozzle, the little brass tip the plastic squeezes out of. A smaller one gives finer detail and takes longer. A bigger one is fast and chunky. Fancy filaments with carbon fibre or glitter wear brass away, so you buy a hardened nozzle. Of course you do.
Week 5: slicer settings and the great tuning spiral
The printer never reads your model directly. A program called a slicer chops it into thin layers and writes the instructions: how fast, how hot, where the supports go, how solid the inside is. Free ones like Cura and PrusaSlicer are where most people begin, and each has more settings than a cockpit.
At first you leave everything on default, which is exactly right. Then one print has a small flaw, and you read a forum thread at 1am. Now you know what retraction (the nozzle pulling plastic back to stop stringing) means. You are printing the same test boat again, at different temperatures, to see which is best. You have a profile called "the good one".
Tuning is a trap with real rewards. The first time a print comes out clean on the first go, it feels like passing your driving test.
Week 8: you start printing upgrades for the printer
This is where the hobby eats itself. Plenty of a printer's accessories are plastic, so you print better ones. A fan duct. A spool holder. A tool tray, a cable clip, a bracket for the camera that watches the printer. The machine is now partly made of itself.
It is also the moment you stop being a person with a printer and become a person with a project. And it turns genuinely useful: spare parts, and a replacement knob for something that stopped being sold years ago.
Month 3: designing your own models in Blender and CAD
Downloaded models run out. Soon you want something nobody has made: a holder for exactly this drill, a case for exactly this circuit board. So you open CAD software. CAD is for exact, measured parts that must fit together: a hole here, a wall this thick. Free and low-cost tools make it easy to start.
For anything curved, sculpted or characterful, you want Blender, which is free. Our 3D and animation work at Software Bosh is done in Blender, so the same skills that make a character move on screen can make one stand on your desk.
Then comes resin. Resin printers cure liquid under light, and they capture fine detail that filament cannot: tiny faces, miniatures, figurines and patterns for jewellery. They are also messier, with gloves, washing, curing and careful disposal. Filament is the friendly workhorse. Resin is the detail specialist. A lot of makers end up with both, which tells you something about this hobby.
Month 6: the shelf of failed experiments
Somewhere in the house there is a shelf. On it: a vase that collapsed, a hinge that snapped, a gear that almost worked, a phone stand that stood for a day. Nobody throws these out. Each one taught something: this angle needs support, this plastic is too brittle.
Our new hardware and robotics division is built around making and testing physical things, and a printer is the cheapest way to start. It lets you hold an idea by the evening, find out what is wrong with it, and print version two before bed. Plenty of robot prototypes start life as printed brackets and housings.
Cheap, fast mistakes beat slow, perfect plans. Make it, break it, learn, make it again. The shelf is not a graveyard. It is the research department.
Should you get a 3D printer? An honest answer
Yes, if you like making and fixing things. Modern printers are far easier than the early ones, and the community will help you at any hour of the night.
No, if you want a button that makes perfect things every time. It takes space, it is not silent, some plastics smell, and it will eat your weekends. Keep it somewhere ventilated, and do not leave a long print running with nobody home. Hot parts deserve respect.
You will end up with too many spools. Print a shelf for them first.