e.g. the (at least here) ubiquitious E3D hot-end. A user here (lawsy) originally designed a set of printable extruder parts that work with it, and a large number of users now use this or something derivative of his design (here's one for the v6), which you can download and print.

I would definitely describe this more as 'coercion', but it's often half the fun of owning one of these things at the moment!

Do you guys have third party bits fitted to your printers? Is it easy to find replacements that will work? do they act as a direct replacement or is there a fair amount of coercion involved?

Till we see a Press in the wild, it will be hard to guess if they can be easily upgraded or not.  As for my "same old printer"  I plan on keeping it around and running till it's beyond repairing. (if that is even possible)

+1 until something truely revolutionary comes along that completely changes the process of 3D printing.

But as the dust settles and sobriety takes control I start to worry a little about Solidoodle's rapid iteration. I guess support for my as-yet-non-existent printer might be as fleeting as the 60 day warranty.

So that's the basis for my question really; I'm fully prepared to become an experienced user, strip the thing down and perform repairs, maintenance and mods but that all depends on the availability of parts.

I appreciate that questions surrounding the Press are going to involve a large dose of speculation, but I was wondering how model specific third party parts are. If I bought an all metal hotend is it likely to work or will I find myself in a technological dead-end when support dries up?

Also do you guys stick with the same old printer doggedly fixing and upgrading where you can or do you consider reinvesting in a newer model when things go wrong?

Thanks!