You can produce a lot of useful things with 3D printers: mounting brackets, housings for small Raspi handicrafts, pretty little standing frames, sorting boxes or otherwise unavailable – or very expensivec – spare parts for devices of all kinds. Admittedly, printing in 3D is not a no- Brainer like printing on paper. But you’ve long been able to get useful 3D prints without months of tinkering if you’re willing to invest a few hours to learn the peculiarities.
By the way, you don’t have to own a 3D printer to benefit from the technology. There have long been companies that produce individually 3D-printed one-offs at reasonable prices.
In this article, we provide an overview of which manufacturing processes are available on the market under the umbrella term “3D printing”, when you should use which technology and where you can get the parts. In our market overview, we focus on the cheapest and best-known process, fused deposition modeling (FDM), with clear recommendations as to which type of 3D printer you should buy for which requirements. Using the example of the popular Ender-3 v2 from Creality, we explain how to convert a cheap printer into a good printer – a hobby in itself: you can do it, but you don’t have to.
