I find I use my 3D printer a lot for photography related items. It all started with Jason Lane's glass plates. I couldn't find any plate holders for them so I designed my own and printed off a bunch for less than $3.00 each. I use the dark slides from regular 4x5 film holders. I also have some early 20th century lenses that have odd diameters - good luck ordering a cap for them. Another thing was custom sized lens boxes for each of them.
Anyway, it's worked great for me and more than paid for the printer. There's a learning curve and be prepared for some frustration and a bit of work though. I use "Tinkercad" for design and Cura for slicing. Both are free and fairly intuitive with active helpful online support groups on Facebook and Google. Tinkercad works using basic shapes and is fairly rudimentary. It does what I need though and worked great for my lens caps but there are other more powerful ones if you need more (Fusion 360 etc).
I should mention that our local library will print out designs fairly cheaply. My problem with that was the turnaround time was fairly long at 4 weeks.
Good luck
Dave
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