100x faster, 10x cheaper: 3D metal printing is about to go mainstream

[SixFoot]

Look at what people said about Glocks when they first became mainstream... Now they are everywhere, and every major manufacturer produces polymer frames guns.

Replacing formerly wooden parts (stocks and grips) with polymer parts wasn't a huge leap. They did it for radios, TVs, and Telephones 40 years earlier.

Now, firearm manufacturers use CNC to produce machined steel and aluminum parts in production - which is just a different type of 3D printing (3D sculpting) which has been around since the 1940s. 3D printing was never intended to replace that technology. In the popular imagination, people see 3D printing like replicator technology on 'Star Trek'. It's not that, and never will be. It represents a quantum leap over previous modeling techniques, but it's not intended for mass production.

As the tech progresses I could easily see printers being able to utilize mutiple materials in a single process. This tech is still developing.

3D printers are today what the Apple IIe was in the 80's.

The tech is definitely developing well so far.

MIT's Multi-Material 3-D Printer Isn't Crazy-Expensive

"The ability to handle a wide variety of materials comes in handy when you're printing with up to 10 of them at a time. The MultiFab can handle everything from lenses to fabrics to fiber optics bundles to complex meta-materials, with applications ranging from scientific to aesthetic. In many cases, it spews out improved versions of existing 3-D printing achievements; full-color 3-D printers already exist, for instance, but MultiFab appears to be the first do so without requiring any post-processing."