3d printing is something that piqued my interest several years ago. I looked into building the most common of the open-source printers, a RepRap. But in the end, the expense and the time involved kept me away from it. The cost, usually in the four digits range, and the fact that it’d be a hobby toy, kinda kept me from successfully justifying it.

However, it was always something in the back of my mind as an interesting idea. What could I do with such a thing? Hmmm.

The other day, while idly wandering the interwebs, I was reminded of that interest. It dawned on me almost immediately, while watching a print video, that there’s a very real usefulness (sort of) that I could apply immediately. I mentioned a while back the difficulty in sourcing some of the costume bits for the pub crawl room. This wouldn’t solve that (Erin’s been doing the sewing for it anyway, and a good job, so this wouldn’t replace her efforts), but it would add an interesting new dimension or two to our plan (get it, 3d printing, new dimension, lol). And, in fact, add a neat layer of flexibility to future such events. 

Hot diggity!

Still haven’t dropped the cash on any such thing… it’s still rather pricey… but I did at least find a properly assembled kit I could use with a good reputation and a decent price, so that alleviates most of the time concerns. I also find that many more of them print at a higher quality these days, compared to some of the outright ugly looking prints I’d seen when I was first interested. 

So that’s on my mind. We’ll see. If I do get one I’ll photograph/video its build for this site, and will probably spam a load of posts about it as I play with it.