You are right. They have been around for a while. The one in our lab is great for making models, but the parts are very weak. It is a great tool, but you still have to make the REAL part out of steel, aluminum, titanium, cast iron,plastics, ceramic, or other material.
As I said in an earlier post I saw a few models at IMTS last year that did metal parts, but I’m not sure what kind of metal it was. They laid it down as a powder with a binding agent, and the parts had to get baked afterwards to cook out the binding agent and sinter the powder together. Another poster on this thread said there are machines that sinter the metal with a laser in-process so the baking isn’t required. I suspect you will see great leaps in this technology over the course of the next decade.
I’m curious. What if the part that you want isn’t a metal part? Like a part for a toy where plastic is good. Is the plastic strong/durable enough to be used for that purpose?