This gift is the ultimate subtle “Fuck You” to the super sciency quasi-engineer in your life. They’ll thank you for it profusely and honestly with tearful glee, completely unaware that the downward spiral into an angrily ranting social outcast has begun.

The horrid experience of owning a 3D printer

They’ll get home and unpackage their insanely futuristic new toy, a fucking robot that builds things, and immediately begin to feel the pangs of frustration. The documentation is going to suck.

Even the companies that supply the very best documentation for 3d printing will agree that it sucks. These machines have so many variables, so many moving parts, so many possibilities for failure that good documentation ends up being a complicated tome full of jargon and hypothetical situations. You simply will not “plug and play” with a 3d printer, no matter how many times the marketing speak says those words.

Beginning with the first attempt at producing anything, the user will be greeted with the reality that melting plastic smells horrible. It sounds like it should be common sense, but it is almost always a surprise. Imagine taking a hand full of Lego and melting it in your oven. You’d expect that to stink right? Well that’s pretty much exactly what your 3d printer is doing… and it stinks. Even the bio degradable, corn based, PLA smells saccharine sweet and will trigger Pavlovian responses from housemates to wonder “what the fuck his he printing now?”.

Of course, that all might sound acceptable in the face of the bold act of simply creating new items from nothing. Lets forget for just one moment that 99% of the shit that these things produce are akin to dollar store key fobs. The user won’t get that far for a while. 3D printers may be amazing, but the rate at which prints fail is even more amazing. So often, your print simply ends up as a jumble of spaghetti, destined for the trash bin.

Even worse, and more rage inducing, is the fact that often a print won’t fail until hours.. HOURS, into the job. The lucky owner of the most advanced rage-machine will be pulling out their hair and cussing the companies which constructed these monstrosities in no time at all.

Industry Anger

Sometimes the manufacturers themselves can supply the ultimate cherry on top in terms of shitty-giftedness. You see, these companies are dropping like flies. If you’re lucky enough to get someone a printer from a company that will soon be ending support, your gift recipient will soon be stuck with one of the must frustrating machines on the planet and have absolutely zero support!

For a super double whammy of shittiness, find them a machine that requires materials sourced from the manufacturer. Yep, some companies require that you use their raw materials to the point that the machine physically refuses to use non-approved stuff, and THEN they stop supporting them! What’s better than a pain in the ass machine that doesn’t work right and has no support? One that you can’t even fucking buy materials for!

DIY Eternal Hell

Some of you may find that buying a printer out right isn’t a good fit for your beloved DIY guru. They’re too smart and smug for that store bought shit. Don’t worry. Appeal to their hyper unrealistic sense of ability and get them a 3D printer kit! You can get all the parts and let them assemble the god damned thing themselves. While they’ll brag about how much they’re learning and how much they really know about their machine, the reality is that they are just adding months of pissed off tinkering as a build up to the final let down that 3d printing just fucking sucks.

However, with the kit method you get the ultimate payoff. They’ll end up doubting their own skills when the printer doesn’t work right! Each failed print will be a soul crushing blow to their ego, slowly chipping away at their confidence. “Why didn’t this print right?” and “what am I doing wrong” will be their mantra. They’ll flood to online forums begging for help to no avail because no one can guess what you did wrong on your kit. Its just almost too perfect of a shitty gift to pass up.

Alienating your friends and family

You know what everyone loves to get for every single holiday and special occasion? Some useless piece of plastic that your machine shit out. Yep, whoever owns a 3D printer will inevitably begin to think that these landfill destined scraps are somehow amazing and worthy of awe when gifted. They’ll hand them over and wait patiently for their accolades. In reality though, everyone who surrounds them will be thinking “oh great, another god damned piece of plastic for me to politely display for a week then throw away”.

So there it is. Get a 3D printer for someone and watch the downward spiral of self loathing and alienation begin!