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The best use case I have dreamt up so far is replacing this annoying plastic guide that broke off my shower door. I have looked everywhere but cannot find a replacement. In short, I see your point.

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I met a guy who bought a 3D Systems Cube - justifying it to himself (and his wife) saying he was going to use it to make toys for his kids for Xmas. It worked out great for that - then he realized that the broken part on the $250k+ printing press that was keeping it out of commission at work, and was unavailable because the manufacturer was in receivership, could also be easily enough modeled and printed out on his "toy". So he did, and it worked fine.

This printing press at work, was it a commercial 3D printer? That would have been quite ironic. (under some definition of "ironic")

Nope - it was some fairly specialized printer that printed onto thick corrugated cardboard to label packing boxes.

3D printers that print 3D printer parts are pretty much the whole idea behind RepRap - arguably one of the very first consumer/hobbyist 3D printer projects…

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