Sadly I can't find any images or videos of the product of the device. The site has a couple of videos showing it throwing sparks, but that's about it.
Additive manufacturing pretty much always needs some sort of leveling phase to cope with z-axis irregularities. Without that you can't hold tolerance. Furthermore without support material you're limited in what you can build.<p>Looking at the pictures this seems like it makes metallic blobs approximating the shape. I suppose if you have a CNC to post-process it into something closer that may be fine. It'd be nicer to do the machining on the fly, but with the width of the material deposition it looks like it would drip down the sides if you did that.
Perhaps manufacturing processes like laser sintering or 3D printing with a MIG welder have not become mainstream because traditional metalworking processes like casting, turning, and milling are so much faster and much more repeatable. Let me know when this thing can hold tolerances of +/- 0.0001". We'll probably have a cure for cancer by then.<p>Metal can be a tricky material to work with. It takes a lot of force manipulate. If you don't know what you are doing, you can very easily get seriously injured or even killed. To me, it would seem much more rational to try to build low-cost milling and turning centers that are small enough to move into a house without taking out the walls and simple enough to maintain where you don't need to have certified mechanics come every time you crash it. You're still going to have to make a considerable investment of time to learn how to safely and properly operate it, but that seems much more realistic scenario than emailing a file to grandma, having her put on her sunglasses, then pressing "Print," followed by 6 hours of sparks flying.<p>Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are applications for additive metal manufacturing processes, but I believe that the cases where they are the best solution are few and far between.
How about something like SHIP2? They print the shape in the green and compress it using gas. This allows 3D printing of Inconel in shapes that require almost no machining after production.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.summitmaterials.com/near-net-shape/" rel="nofollow">http://www.summitmaterials.com/near-net-shape/</a>
I have welded before and I know that you need to clean each weld with a wire brush. I just can't imagine what is created is very strong. We need some pictures and some stress tests validating it as useful.