I built my second printer from scratch, but I have no idea how you would build a 3D printer without a 3D printer. There end up being a lot of parts you have to

I built my second printer from scratch, but I have no idea how you would build a 3D printer without a 3D printer. There end up being a lot of parts you have to prototype, and you can't do that unless you have a printer already. You always need 2 printers anyway, so you can print parts for your other printer when they break. I broke my Prusa mk3 and had to duct tape it together enough to print the broken part. Very scary ;) You do have to be a masochist. I remember tuning my bed leveling routine, and then the printer just decided to break the tip off. It's really amazing what kind of problems you can cause yourself with an extra 0 in some gcode somewhere.