If you're building anything more than toys or tinkering; if you're actually trying to design a product or something functional you want to use, a 3d printer. I

If you're building anything more than toys or tinkering; if you're actually trying to design a product or something functional you want to use, a 3d printer. I resisted getting a 3d printer for a long long time. This is coming from a man with a fully kitted-out woodworking shop, 2 CNC machines, welding equipment and a lot more. I didn't see the 3d printer as being for anything besides miniature figurines and cheap tat, because that's 99 percent of what you see people printing. But it's SO useful. Adapters, enclosures, brackets, 3d printers take care of solving all those little niggly bits that are really hard to fabricate by traditional methods. I recently upgraded to a Bambu X1 Carbon and highly recommend it. I also have a cheap flashforge resin printer which is great. Two things I've used my printers to make, that have ended up as actual products; a guitar pedal enclosure FDM printed box with an open top, I used aluminium PCB panels from jlcpcb.com as the front panels. The result is a very professional and sleek looking design that's tough as hell. The other one is transparent push buttons for a Eurorack synth module I'm working on. I used my resin printer for this, and it allows me to make a custom button layout that sits on top of mini tact switches with backlights, and gives a user interface similar to custom-made carbon membrane buttons. - similar to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone_rubber_keypad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicone_rubber_keypad