Whether your gateway machine was a 1st-gen RepRap cobbled together with hardware store threaded rods (good luck finding hardware-store replacements for a printer today) or an Ender 3 kit that taught you the value of knowing the thickness of a sheet of paper, that first printer defined your entry into 3D printing.

The lines are arbitrary, but there are some attractive boundaries that seem logical – distinct generational waves in desktop printing hardware. So let's take a generational roll call: which is yours?