Simply rent one. Most major shoptools are best used by experts and the capital cost + maintenance is just way too high for occasional use. This goes for Lathes, mills, bandsaws (the metal variety), sheetmetal gear and so on. 3D printers are no exception to this rule (even though having all that gear certainly is a wonderful feeling you don't actually need it and gaining all the required expertise is a matter of (many) months or years, not weeks).
Until you reach the stage where you are making stuff a substantial portion of your time renting is by far the better option (especialy in fields where there is still a lot of development).
If you want to get one to play with the technology on a daily basis buy one that is as open and flexible as possible so you can move up as new developments become available.
Also, consider your local hackerspaces, co-op workshops, and community centers. Often a reasonable membership will get you access to some equipment that you'd never be able to afford (or at least justify buying) on your own.
I've been a member of the Austin Hackerspace (http://atxhs.org) for a while, and it's paid dividends in saved expense on tools. Plus the community of experts it has attracted has allowed me to quickly finish projects that would take months of research on my own.
I learned the same lesson long ago with printed circuit boards.
Renting has the additional advantage that you're not stuck with the particular technology that you bought. If two jobs benefit from 2 printing technologies, you can have both.
On the other hand, a benefit of having your own proto shop is that if you're skilled, you can prototype and modify quicker than you can specify. And don't overlook ancient methods. You can still do a lot with woodworking tools.
When I was prototyping a bunch of CNC gear we'd routinely use wood to test with. It makes a terrible mess but an accident due to a misplaced comma will not result in missiles being shot through the room at high speed and the material is much cheaper. Also, your sintered toolbits will last just about forever.
When you work wood with metal tools you're going to have do a very thorough cleaning job afterwards because the acids in wood will wreck equipment quickly.
> When you work wood with metal tools you're going to have do a very thorough cleaning job afterwards because the acids in wood will wreck equipment quickly.
Thanks for the warning. I hadn't realized this problem exists.
I'd also like to add: make sure you actually need a 3D print. Most of the stuff I see people printing could be made faster and more reliably with more traditional manufacturing methods. For example: a 3D printed case for just about anything is a terrible idea. It's very hard to get square, true prints of specific dimensions. I've seen many a warped Raspberry Pi case.
What if I'm optimizing for cost, not speed and reliability? My printer works just fine while I'm away, so I don't really care about a print taking an hour or two, and plastic is bendy and forgiving enough that a bit of accuracy sacrificed is fine.
I'd argue that additive manufacturing via hobbyist FDM printing is a lot cheaper for one off designs than subtractive manufacturing of any form, because the consumable cost is limited to utilized filament and a tiny amount of printer maintenance rather than huge amounts of waste combined with expensive, finicky tool bits and the same kinds of maintenance.
I do agree that for items like a Raspberry Pi case which could be mass-produced via molding to much better tolerance at a low cost, 3D printing might be silly, but for truly one-off, low accuracy consumer parts I don't think 3D printing can be beat.
I personally have also not had much problem getting square, true, dimensionally accurate prints with a crappy printer (Solidoodle 2). The most deflection I've ever seen is about .8mm across the 150x150mm build area. That isn't perfect and obviously won't work for precision equipment, but combined with ABS's flexibility and forgiving nature it's certainly good enough to make one-off enclosures, fasteners, buttons and knobs, adapters, and other "glue" parts, which is most of my use for 3D printing.
I will say that 3D printers are hard to set up, and that's probably the source of a lot of the warped cases you've seen. CNC mills and lathes are just as hard to set up, though - you've just generally paid the vendor tons of money to do it for you.
Well, I was mostly referring to hand tools and wood. And if you need parts cut to very specific dimensions, I've found laser cut acrylic, send out to a local shop, to be very easy, fast, inexpensive, and reliable.
If you just need occasional printing done locally (so you can pick it up, inspect it, or ask questions in person), you can use this site to find a shop doing 3D printing with this website:
http://www.3dhubs.com/
Might be less hassle than renting an actual machine.
Until you reach the stage where you are making stuff a substantial portion of your time renting is by far the better option (especialy in fields where there is still a lot of development).
If you want to get one to play with the technology on a daily basis buy one that is as open and flexible as possible so you can move up as new developments become available.
This is a pretty good option:
http://www.emachineshop.com/machine-shop/Rapid-Prototyping-S...