3D printing is very cool in my opinion. It has led to the manufacturing of a wide variety of products. These products have been very intricate in many situations, as the "design rules" of 3D printing are much easier to follow than in other forms of manufacturing such as machining or molding. The rules simply aren't the same; this means that some seriously intricate designs and products can be brought to life. These designs can involve full functioning parts right out of the machine, interesting feats such as a ball within a ball, and organic shapes with curves and hollow sections. Some of the same designs used in 3D printing couldn't even be pitched at other machine shops and manufacturing plants. These places would simply have to reject those orders; it's impossible as the design rules aren't the same.
Through machining, most methods involve a drill bit coming down on a block of material, or literally a saw of some kind cutting material. CNC cutting is the strongest attribute about machining in my opinion, so let's compare 3D printing to that. CNC cutting uses a drill bit to come down upon a block of material. Typically, this block of material can turn, angle, and rotate to hit the drill bit at a certain spot. Unfortunately for this type of manufacturing technology, it is very difficult to replicate organic curves or shapes. This process is definitely not a layer by layer process, but a material removal one. The possibility of hollow spaces isn't there; it's simply impossible. For this reason, creating intricate models that offer organic curves, shapes, and hollow spaces are simply out of the question.
3D printing doesn't have much competition from mold manufacturing as well. Well, that isn't entirely true. Mold manufacturing is much less expensive to create mass quantities of products, but these products follow a different set of "design rules" and simply can't create some of the same products that 3D printing can. Based on the fact that plastic will be shot inside of a mold, there isn't an easy way to create hollow areas. The possibilities for organic shapes and curves is very doable, but the detail isn't quite the same in many situations. Overall, 3D printing dominates the efforts of mold manufacturing on a small scale when it comes down to product vs product. When speaking in a large scale mass manufacturing situation, mold manufacturing will typically win the bout.
Various form of manufacturing serve their own purposes, but I believe product vs product, 3D printing poses one of the best options for creating organic, curved, hollowed, and detailed pieces. The possibilities within this technology are more than vast. If it can be drawn up on a computer, it can likely be 3D printed. That's not to say that it won't fall apart if you design a product with.01 mm of spacing, but with little knowledge of the "design rules" of 3D printing, odds are that you will do alright when it comes down to producing 3D printed parts.
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