Hopefully this year I can get a printer and some tools.

I work in a machine shop and until recently I fixed our CNC machines.

Let me tell you though, the tabletop printers are goofy as hell. They seem very wobbly and stepper motors with no scale or encoder give me cold sweats. You're trusting the motor controller to not screw up turning the motors rather than have a real position feedback. On the other hand additive processes shouldn't encounter any sort of resistance and if the motors skip a few steps yeah the part is scrapped, but you're not breaking a $200 carbide endmill.

Setting up the printer I assume you want the bed to be leveled and perpendicular to all axis, so a good bubble level, indicator and 123 block or square is needed. To measure the parts you'll want a good set of calipers. I don't think these machines are capable of doing anything close to tenths so a mic would be a waste.

I never did any programming, but I did download FreeCAD and a complete set of 1911 prints and screwed around enough to model the barrel (with rifling even), slide and most of the small parts.

I think how the process goes:

Obtain or create model.

Export model to solid and import into a slicer program that creates GCODE that will break the model up into layers and automatically create an interior structure based on design parameters that you're gonna have to decide work best for the individual part. Might have to figure out a good origin for the model so it'll fit on the bed.

Send GCODE to printer and wait.

Measure part to ensure dimensions are correct.

Blend part.

As far as what printer. I don't know but I have my eye on some sort of Ender. Seems like a decent enough sized bed and would be tall enough. It's under $300. I don't know which one, but one had the functionality of being able to send programs through USB as opposed to microsd card and seemed identical to each other except for that feature and being able to transfer via USB seemed worth the extra $20 or so.