Getting a 3D printer for my 17th birthday wasn’t just a gift — it felt like unlocking a new skill tree. I went with the Bambu Lab A1 Mini (not sponsored), mostly because it’s compact, fast, and beginner-friendly without looking like a toy. The moment I unboxed it, I realised how much potential this thing has for the next years of my “Builder” roadmap. 
Right now I’m still in the simplest mode possible: printing objects directly from a smartphone app. It works, but it’s basically “download → print → hope it doesn’t fail.” Zero editing, zero designing, zero learning beyond the basics. It’s fun, but it’s also limiting — and I don’t want to stay stuck in “consumer mode” for long. The whole idea behind my mission is to graduate from using tools to building with them. 
The next step is clear: I need to choose my first real 3D design workflow. Blender, Fusion 360, Shapr3D, Onshape — I haven’t decided yet.
Once I decide, the plan is to start designing my own parts. Storage solutions, adapters, small functional items — the same way Phase 1 pushed me to build my first digital systems, this printer will push me to build my first physical ones. 
This is a good reminder of what I wrote in my Mission Sheet: “Creation over consumption. Proof over opinion. Iteration over perfection.”  3D printing is exactly that. You design something, it either works or breaks, and you learn by trying again.
The excitement is real — not because the machine is cool (well, it is kind of cool to see something just commig out of the ground in a perfect form), but because of what it enables. A new tool, a new skill set, and a new area where I can build systems from scratch. Exactly how I want to spend my 17th year.