Back while I was in undergrad, I interned for the VPs of engineering, manufacturing and sourcing at a US consumer products company. (None of them ever had an in

Back while I was in undergrad, I interned for the VPs of engineering, manufacturing and sourcing at a US consumer products company. (None of them ever had an intern so I convinced them to reduce risk by sharing me.) Anyways, the company I worked for relied heavily on contract manufacturing in China. I was able to help encourage getting more prototypes printed here in the US for evaluation instead of waiting for the factories to tool prototypes and saved the company a bundle. The company lost a bunch of time and money shipping prototypes back and forth before they could even get to the production sampling stage. I don't think that 3d printing is going to revolutionize manufacturing in the US. If 3d printing revolutionized anything it will be product design. Empowering designers to experiment and try new things without the fear of having to retool the factory is going to produce some cool stuff in the future.