Very long post incoming. My husband bought a 3D printer years ago; I only know a little bit about 3D printing through him.
I know there are different types of 3D printers -- ours (Flashforge) uses a plastic filament called PLA. The filament comes in big spools and in all different kinds of colors, there's even glow-in-the-dark filament and some weird shiny iridescent kinda filament which we haven't gotten around to trying yet, but it looks so cool
The other main type of 3D printer I think is the one that prints with Resin material, but it's absolutely required to have proper ventilation for that (a YouTuber I follow has her resin printer in her garage), and you also need to know how to work with resin in general, though you can probably learn about working with resin on YouTube.
I think there are also ceramic 3D printers? And maybe other types of plastic 3D printers? Not sure how commercially available ceramic or other non-plastic 3D printers are.
As for ours though, it's pretty cool, but to be honest we don't use it very often. When it comes to the 3D model files themselves, you can either design your own things to print if you know how to 3D model, or you can use other peoples' designs. I love the website
Thingiverse, they have a lot of free-to-use files for 3D printing (just make sure that the file you want to print is compatible with your printers' filament type). I had my husband print a cat from there in glow-in-the-dark filament. There are other websites too, some of them you have to buy the 3D model files.. There are these
ACNH gyroid files that I have been dying to print for years now
Obviously when printing something it can take a really long time, depending on the size of the thing and also depending on the detail setting. You can have the printer print something relatively fast in low detail, resulting in a coarser print where you can see in between the layers much more easily (doesn't look great), or you can go all the way up to super fine detail where it takes many, many hours to print something much more smooth. With super fine 3D prints I'm able to sand, gesso, and paint the model, and in the end its not as obvious that it was printed, at least when you're not looking at it super up close lol. But even something very small (an inch or two high maybe) printed in super fine detail can take a couple hours to print.
I 3D printed these quail-sized eggs for my entry in TBT's 3rd egg decorating contest (2023)
The most annoying part about 3D printing is that if you have a very organic design, something with drastically concave and convex elements, then supports are required to print these things so that they don't collapse while being printed. It's annoying to deal with getting rid of all the supports once the print is done. Sometimes they all snap off super easily, other times you have to use scissors, pliers, and/or other tools. Even something as simple as an egg can require supports, unless you cut the egg in half vertically and print it flat sides down (then glue the sides together to make the full egg).
My husband says the printer we have (Flashforge) is good for beginners so long as you are prepared to learn something. There are likely cheaper, easier-to-use 3D printers out there, though. I'm not sure if there are recycled-material type filaments