Exacly! I have an FDM printer (~$300) and it's great to have it at home. When I design something, I can do a partial print at low quality to check for clearances within an hour. Then I can modify the design and print an optimized version. It makes for a really short feedback loop and if I mess something up, I don't need to pay the base fee again. And I'm a true hobbyist, I don't do anything hardware or CAD related professionally.

Also, it's just lots of fun to work with the printer.

That is still, as you say, a hobby though. The future of hardware design is decreasing the difference between prototype and production. Similar to what containers have done for software.

3d printed parts and PCBs can be done in as little as 12 hours. You can then without any modification do small production runs anywhere from ten to a thousand pieces (which isn't unrealistic outside consumer hardware). You could even 3d print moulds and do injection moulding.

I think partly why people say that hardware isn't iterative enough is that they are doing it the wrong way. They spend too much time on prototyping, which means they then have to make everything perfect for a large production runs to average out the costs.

I think you may he missing the parent's point, which is he's using the printer to speed up his design loop. This has heen one of the biggest driving forces I've seen in the commercial use of 3d printers. Sure you can outsource your 3d printing to get much better and higher volume printing, but when you're designing you don't need volume, and often don't need quality either. Quick turn around often is key in design work, and having an in house printer can really reduce total turnaround time.

I am disagreeing with the parents point (or not really because they were talking about doing it as a hobby, which is great).

Yes, you can do design prototype revision A, B and C, then do production prototype A, B and C, and finally production version A, B and C. But then you have spent a significant amount of time and money refining prototypes and adding features. That forces you to large production runs with huge risk, because you have already made the investment. What I am saying is that you should just make the production prototype with less features and ship that. Because that is how you go to market quickly, which is usually the larger point of such development.

This is also why Shenzhen wins over hackerspaces (which are also great btw) but that is another story.

Extremely agreed. I wanted to make a SCARA arm and it would basically be impossible without a printer. Basically, you can't make something efficiently if you don't know how the fabrication technique works and what its strengths and weaknesses are.

For another example, I made this case:

https://www.makerfol.io/project/8ycrZ9t-case-for-the-dp30v5a...

This would also have not been possible without the printer next to me. I constantly had to print segments to see how parts fit. With a week-long turnaround time instead of ten minutes, I wouldn't even have bothered.

Sure, if I already know how to design and print, maybe I could have designed something without owning a printer, but even that is not very likely (I generally have to make alterations a lot). For $300 (and a bunch of time spent), it's a no-brainer if you want to get into the hobby.