>FDMs are good toys that require love. A lot of it (which can be good and bad). Eh, that's not really the case any more. If you spend a sensible amount of mone

>FDMs are good toys that require love. A lot of it (which can be good and bad). Eh, that's not really the case any more. If you spend a sensible amount of money on a properly built machine, it's pretty close to fire-and-forget. Features like automatic bed levelling, PEI build plates, runout sensors, reliable direct-drive extruders and spaghetti detection have removed most of the annoyances in FDM printing. I was a long-time FDM sceptic, but the technology has reached a level of maturity where it fills a useful niche. FDM machines are an increasingly common sight in machine shops, tool rooms and MRO facilities; in an environment that's staffed by people who are familiar with CAD/CAM, they can produce a useful subset of parts with an almost trivial level of cost and effort. Unless your employer is extremely generous, you probably don't have an MJF or SLS machine that's just sitting idle in case you need a widget in a hurry. FDM thrives in the niche traditionally occupied by hand tools and that sloppy old Bridgeport - workholding one-offs, kludgy parts to keep a machine running until the field tech arrives, parts you only need in order to make other parts. An FDM printer is the mechanical embodiment of the phrase "close enough for government work".