[4world]

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Let us know what you choose! Cliff

This thread has been so informative and helpful due to everyone's inputs that it has changed my thinking completely. The email after yours is a person with machining experiences who vouches for 3D printer quality. So here's what my priorities look like today:

1. Try a 3D printing service online that produces parts not too much superior than what a home printer costing say $1000-1500 would. This would validate the quality 3D printers can produce (I hope). If parts look good for my "proof-of-concept" testing, then I'd buy a printer myself!

2. If this doesn't fly, then get the parts machined .... from individuals who own mills. Craigslist? This forum somewhere?!

3. Maybe a year down, I can restart my search to own a machine if it makes sense at that time!


Such help as this forum makes me wonder:
From my college days when we built 8085 systems and painfully connected to bulletin boards to just download some driver, to today's omnipresent, omniscient powerhouse of collective knowledge -- the Internet -- that solves nearly every problem! I would guess that we all are probably the luckiest generation ever to have lived or that will live on this planet to have seen warp-speed growth in the last 40 years and the coming perhaps 20 more!

Thank you to all.