I was going to write a reply saying that I don't see why we can't use it in many places as long as we understand the parameters of the product, but as so often

I was going to write a reply saying that I don't see why we can't use it in many places as long as we understand the parameters of the product, but as so often happens I found an excellent source that actually explains your stance in details.[1] The TL;DR is that there are lots of imperfections in 3D printed parts, which means they typically fail at much lower stresses. It actually includes some pretty good video illustrating this at a microscopic level. That said, there are apparently new techniques being researched and discovered that have promise to increase the quality of 3D printed parts. One way to thing of it is that we have hundreds to thousands of years of experience in material science with forming metals in other manners, and we've just started with additive engineering, so there's a lot of room for improvement. 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzBRYsiyxjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzBRYsiyxjI