The joy of making stuff with a 3D printer

Gina Trapani I’ve always been curious about 3D printers, so last fall when there was a Black Friday deal on a great model, I picked one up. I wondered if it would be one of these gadgets my family would play with for a couple months then forget about, but it turns out: we haven’t stopped printing since. Whenever I tell anyone about it, the first question is, “What do you do with it?” At first it was making lots of silly fidget toys and figurines for my kid. Then it became about a lot more than toys. A month or so in, during a dark and depressing winter, the printer gave me unexpected purpose. I joined a community of people 3D printing community ICE alert whistles. Over the course of a few months I personally printed and shipped several thousand whistles across the country. I was just one tiny node in a giant decentralized network of likeminded people trying to protect our communities, but it made me feel so connected and hopeful. When I wasn’t printing whistles and fidgets, the thing…