Hehehe firearm parts! That's so government like the J6 committee still pushing so the Cheeto can never ever ever make anything (great or otherwise) again. Meanwhile, 3d printers selling like Glocks. Better buy up them bullets, the gummint cornerin the marquet. Filling up the chest for WWW
Seriously though, my youngest son bought an ender 3 pro rebadge around 2 years ago. It's been used A LOT. We started out making preprogrammed stuff with it. Sun visor clips, plastic chains, spacers, adapters, etc. Two tons of "things" out there in the Web. No fancy PC needed. I have downloaded "things" with my phone, put them on a memory card and printed them that way. It's like checking out at the gas station pump, tiny screen and all.
It eliminates the need for a whole section of the garage. All those cribs full of plastic drawers of plastic parts, gone. Shims, spacers, doorstop/wedge things, washers, drywall anchors, etc. Those little cam lock inserts that economical furniture is assembled with and impossible to find locally: print off a dozen in a half hour. Small things are what they are best at making.
That being said, if you're creative, they're like any other robust shop tool. You can accessorize and automate, make them stronger, upgrade your heart out. I put Autodesk fusion 360 and cura slicer on my home theater PC to whip up crazy stuff with. Anything that will play full HD video is good enough. The old turtle PC on the fixit bench wouldn't do it because it wouldn't support openGL new enough. I think it came with windows XP or ME loaded ... I had to put windows 10 in the htpc so it would play Dolby digital on Netflix and such.
Any more, I print everything out of ABS filament. Glues together with solvent cement, scrap can be recycled into "ABS juice" and painted onto "things" like shellac. Main reason is because it's more heat resistant than the other common filaments and not as prone to go stale. Spray paint sticks well, too. Downside is you have to have still air around it while printing. I treat the print bed with a coat of wood glue and water every few prints to help keep the objects anchored firmly, even after building a shroud for the printer. ABS, nylon, polypropylene, etcetera don't like drafts or temperature swings.
It all depends how much tinkering and/or fabricating you do. If only occasionally, find someone who has one sitting around doing nothing. They're everywhere, kinda like drill presses.
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