For example, I’m sure the average joe doesn’t know just how expensive calligraphy pens can be, or how deep the rabbit hole goes on video game speedruns.
3D printing! You can start out cheap but you can get STUPID expensive, and it’s the biggest most meandering rabbit hole I know of
It’s expensive, but it’s also expensive in lots of different avenues. It’s not like you can just go “well I’ll never buy a big pre-built proprietary printer then I’ll just make it myself! Open source forever!” Because that’s the road to leads to sourcing and building your own voron from scratch and spending a thousand dollars on parts
And getting consistent prints at a decent speed can be challenging! (Slow and good vs fast and unreliable is a common choice.)
3D printing really isn’t expensive, especially since you can create a lot of stuff for cents. I’m considering a new extruder for my Ender 3 (Looking at the LDO orbiter v2) and that’s €70, which sounds expensive for the printer, but compared to any other hobby that’s peanuts
It can get expensive - especially if you start looking into high-end / commercial quality printers.
…or if you burn through 3 reels of TPU just to get one goddamn wrist rest to print. 😩
A bambu x1 Carbon is like €1000 right? That sounds expensive, but with the amount of money spent on my car, I could have had multiple of those
