I missed this a few months ago, despite the warm welcome it appeared to get!
As someone who just upgraded to a modern $99 3D printer after my last one got destroyed in an office rainstorm my first month at Johns Hopkins, I can tell you first hand this technology is improving like crazy.
What can you do with a printer that costs more than $99? You can 3D print mass spectrometry components! They do have to electroplate them afterward, but what might this do for our field? Got an idea for a better mass analyzer?
SimIon is, what, $800? Design your mass spec there.
(Or - thanks Dr. Steele for this link, there has been some progress in modeling mass spec physics for free with Blender. Reddit post here.)
You can basically just take sketches you've drawn and feed those to AIs to make solid 3D models in case you aren't great at any of the dozens of (often free) CAD design tools out there.
3D print it. Nice printers like the one used here are often available as pay-per-use models at universities, libraries, or little companies (like FabLab here in the greatest city in the world).
BOOM! Better mass spectrometer! Don't think there is room for innovation today? You're absolutely and completely wrong. Thermo just dropped ANOTHER OrbiTOF design !
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