Do you guys print more functional stuff or display pieces?

I land on the other side of this, honestly. Maybe eight out of ten prints on my A350 are display or gift pieces, and the functional stuff is the treat. My wife jokes that we have a shelf in the hallway that exists purely to hold things that do nothing. Last month it was a low-poly owl in silk copper PLA, something like 14 hours of print time, and I sat there watching the layers go down the whole evening like it was television. That said, the guilt thing is real. I felt it hard a while back when I printed a giant planter that cracked in the first frost, and I realized half a kilogram of filament had basically become yard waste. Since then I try to keep one functional print in the queue between the fun ones, usually brackets or a replacement knob for something in the kitchen, so the hobby pays for itself a little.

The weird part is the functional prints never relax me. If a drawer slide bracket warps I actually get annoyed, because now there is a job waiting. The shelf pieces have zero stakes. If the ears come out mushy, I just reprint or shrug. I think that is why I drifted this way, not because the objects matter more but because the pressure is lower.

So no, I do not think you are overthinking it, but I would say the plastic was not wasted if you kept picking it up.

I'd choke on the guilt trying your way, honestly. Every time I've printed something purely to look at, it ended up bugging me within a week. I made a big articulated dragon on my A250 a while back, maybe 11 hours of print time, and it just sat on my desk collecting dust untill I gave it to my nephew. Nothing wrong with it. It just never stopped feeling like wasted spool to me. What I've landed on instead is making the useful stuff fun. Splurged on a nicer silver PLA for replacing the little broken clips in my dishwasher's cutlery basket, and sanded those smooth even though nobody sees them. Same satisfying long print session, but at the end there's a thing doing a job. So no, one doesn't make the other feel like waste for me, because I only realy do one. TheOWL shelf comment from earlier made me laugh though, that approach would drive me up the wall. diffrent brains, same machine, I suppose.

I used to be strictly functional until I tried wood-fill filament for a bookend project, and it kind of split the difference for me. It printed like a normal job but came out looking like something you'd buy at a craft fair, and sanding it actually felt like part of the repair instead of a chore. Now I keep a spool around just for pieces that are supposed to sit still. My rule is it has to earn its shelf spot by hiding something, like covering a chipped corner or filling a dead wall space. Does yours do anything, or is it purely a looker?

The part about babysitting a long print with no pressure hit home for me. My weekend prints are usually replacement clips and spacers, stuff that takes 40 minutes and goes straight into service. A while back I did a big vase-mode spiral just to use up the end of a spool, and I caught myself pulling up a chair to watch it like it was a campfire. Now I keep one of those going whenever I need to unwind. The object ends up in a donation box eventually, but the couple hours of quiet while it printed was the actual product for me. Maybe that counts as functional.

I'd push back on the last bit, where you say the plastic was not wasted because he kept picking the thing up. By that logic every spool I ever torched on a failed print was fine too, since I spent plenty of time staring at those as well. Holding an object and it actually doing something are different tests. I did a big decorative lampshade once, looked great, and six months later it was in a box in the garage. Now if a print has no job waiting for it, I ask myself wheather I'd buy it at a store first. Oddly specific filter but it has saved me a lot of filament.

My trick is making the display piece do double duty as a test. Wanted to try PETG on my A150 a while back, so instead of printing boring test blocks I did a little lighthouse model. Same settings, same plastic, but I actually learned something about how the material behaves and I've got a thing to look at. Now whenever I get a new spool, the first print off it is something fun. The functional stuff after that goes smoother becasue I allready know how the filament acts. So the plastic's not wasted, it's tuition.

Update: the wood-fill suggestion actually helped. Ran a small bookend-ish project through it and the sanding felt like finishing a repair instead of burning plastic, so the guilt part is mostly settled. Still stuck on the storage problem though, since my shelf is filling up fast. Do you all rotate older pieces out eventually or just let the shelf win?