I started 3d Printing in January of 2022. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting in to. I knew it would be a good outlet for my Modeling and Design work. 

The general concept of and procedure to be used in 3D-printing was first described by Murray Leinster in his 1945 short story THINGS PASS BY - Passage from Book ---->"But this constructor is both efficient and flexible. I feed magnetronic plastics — the stuff they make houses and ships of nowadays — into this moving arm. It makes drawings in the air following drawings it scans with photo-cells. But plastic comes out of the end of the drawing arm and hardens as it comes ... following drawings only"  

Today -  process is simple at it's base level. Heat plastic , move nozzle , that's it ! The process is very inexpensive due to the Open Source nature of the software and mechanical simplicity. The trade off is time. A single print can take 10 or more hours ! I try to keep my prints to no more than 2 hours.

To Model the objects I make I use CAD software. I use BRICS CAD and love it. I then export the model as an STL file. I then import the STL file into "Slicing" software. This software takes the model and slices it in to .2 MM layers. The 3D Printer then prints the layers , one at a time. A one inch tall object will have 127 layers !

I print 3D Models in Parts. This reduces the print time considerably. It took a few tries to find the best glue and procedure. Learning where to adjust the CAD models so the real models fit together was difficult but fun.