Love to see you getting into 3d printing, and that's a great choice!
My first experience of 3d printing was 2010 and I met up with a guy in Calgary off a WordPress forum who offered to show me around Calgary. He was a Solidworks expert and he got given an early 3d printer in exchange for feedback to the manufacturer. Weirdly instead of spools of filament it used sheets of thin plastic and each layer went down at once.
I think I first saw one at a makerspace. Then someone who was making them locally did a talk at the tech meetup I used to go to. It was pretty DIY back then. Looking at this list](https://all3dp.com/1/best-3d-printer-reviews-top-3d-printers-home-3-d-printer-3d/) they start pretty cheap and that includes ones which solidify liquid plastic. At work they have industrial ones that can build with metal. It must make prototyping so much easier.
Yeah the home ones have gone from fishing wire and plywood to super high tech, we are finally almost at the point where they are an appliance rather than an automated disappointment machine ;)
This was my first (crowdfunded) and it was awful
I then bought a Printrbot and that got me actually printing
Mine has been consistently good so far. Today I made this ocarina. The design of that can't have been easy as it's all curves.