Hell hath frozen over. I'm looking at 3D printers.

In my defense, my goal is not "cheez whiz" it's "cheez whiz that can be burned out with molten bronze or sterling silver." Adam Savage argues that when first exploring a new hobby, you should buy the cheapest X you can find. When you've settled into it, you should buy the best X you can afford. SLA printers allow you to print with castable resin - this means you can take your print, drop it in plaster, throw it in a kiln, burn out the print, and then pour molten metal into the hole. The end goal is not the print, but the shape of the print. I was laboring under the impression that decent SLA printers begin and end at the Form 2/Form 3 which are $3500 or so. Looks like an indecent, open-source resin printer can be had for around $250 which, considering the resin is like $150 a bottle (so that you can pour $15/lb bronze in it), is an expense that might as well be considered consumable.

The other nice thing is that the economics of casting are pretty flat. The decent vacuum bell jar and centrifugal caster are pretty much the exact same price as the shitty vacuum bell jar and centrifugal caster so aside from space considerations, I could conceivably be casting up watch bands and cases next year. Which is a nice bit of insight because I'm making really shitty progress trying to convince myself that I'll be decent at Illustrator some day.