[woodingboys]

Thanks for your answers, it sounds good.

To broaden things out a bit, I wonder if any of you 3d printers would be willing to give us a sketch outline of roughly where we are with current, affordable technology?

Hi Jason,
A newbie to 3d Printing. My family all chipped in and bought me a Bambu P1S for christmas/birthday/retirement (lovely family :-)

Since then I have progressed from Kevan's Group 1 to Group 2 quite quickly, albeit in a modest way.

I see a lot of horror stories on the Bambu thread about failing print jobs, but touch wood, I have had a faultless run so far.

I popped into WH Smith yesterday looking for latest slot car mag and failing to find it, I thought I would browse the 3d Printing section... to my amazement there were none to be found (this was a big WH Smith btw), which implies this is a very online type of thing. Grab a file and print it or Tinkercad your own files or adapt someone elses.
Imagination seems to be the only limit.

With regards cost and complexity. The Bambu is pretty much WYSIWYG and very easy. I added an AMS (allows printing of multi-colours) to specifically print my red and white Goodwood chicane, which as a collaboration and education from one of my son's on how to use Tinkercad (another free resource).
BTW once you have a printer you can print your own AMS holder to do multi-colour :-)

It strikes me where it can all go wrong is when you start experimenting with print setups and different filament types. 
I went in search of a smooth surface and found the Cool plate, which is amazing and delivers baby smooth surfaces when combined with slower outside surface speeds.

I also looked at the Silk filament and again a bit of patience on slower settings paid off.

I have even found my way into producing components for a classic caravan, which is now helping to keep said caravan level. 
That required internal threads to be created, which in Tinkercad was far easier than I expected. 

All in all, I would say with the right printer and RTFM any average hobbyist on this forum would be able to get great results from 3DP....

Love Brazzers comment. Get out what you put in :-)

Come on in, the water is lovely :-)