Being around for decades now, 3-D printing has remained vastly in the sphere of designers who produce prototypes, as printing objects using anything other than plastics, specifical metals, has been an extravagant and painful undertaking. However, with 3-D metal printing, it has become cheaper and easier enough to possibly produce manufacturing parts, especially during mass production.
The last couple of years has seen metal 3D printing becoming overwhelmingly popular, with each material offering a distinctive merger of both aesthetic and practical characteristics to suit a wide range of items, from prototypes and jewelry to functional parts and miniatures. One of the key reasons why 3D printing has been scaling heights of production is because it allows for serial 3-D printing for mass production.
Although one cannot use a desktop machine to technically print with pure metal, there are a handful of metal-filled plastic filaments with provisions of metallic aesthetics to your prints!
With technology constantly evolving, there are a number of companies in the field that offer 3D metal printing, from HP Metal Jet, Desktop Metal, Mark forged to Digital Metal, Aurora Labs and Stratasys, the industry is definitely expanding, allowing even for small-scale production.
The technologies behind this innovation include Direct metal laser sintering (DMLS), which provides the strength and durability required, Directed energy deposition (DED), a highly accurate technique with the ability of even repairing broken parts and the third technology is Metal binder jetting, which is fast and relatively cheap with the ability of producing large structures.