I have a bit of 3D experience.
Most importantly, buy a dual head printer, it allows you to print the material you are making the item out of, and a material to fill in negative space. Imagine you are printing a hollow cube, unless you printed a sort of arch on each wall you are never going to be able to print the top wall, the material will just sag. At work we print the negative space with a material that is dissolved in a weak acid leaving the part when it is done.
Also try and get something that is enclosed, it keeps the heat in the bed (mine stays at 100* C), and extruder (200* C) I just put some glue down with a glue stick before I print. WHen the glue is dry and the part is finished it comes off easily and cleanly, I always use the "rafts" option my printer has. XYZ printers have a sort of post processor you enter before printing that allows you to orient the part on the printing bed, as well as scale it, add interior support, and rafting as I mentioned.
The printer I bought was a good deal at $500 5 years ago, last year they had a deal on the same printer for $300 with $300 in free fillament. $500 buys you a hell of a nice machine now days.
We have a half dozen $180000 machines at work and they are 360x better, maybe not even 3x better than mine.
Look around on thingverse, theres some fun things you can make, you know those snap together kits to build your own headers? I printed a set, they came out awesome. I also printed some Grateful Dead steal your face coasters lol