Discussion on:

Sculpteo's 3D printing service brings designs to life

Most 3-D printers can only print one material at a time, or only one material (ink) period - usually a plastic. If you move to printers that are capable of a wider range of materials - say metals or glass, then the costs skyrocket as do the economic limitations for their adoption. The market for 3-D printing regardless of the constant flow of uninformed media hype is still almost exclusively limited plastic prototyping. It isn't going to threaten Chinese manufacturing, it isn't going to create weapons, it isn't going to build anything that is multi-material and complex - or compete with existing cheaper and faster mass manufacturing processes.

Yet.
Like any technology, it has to start somewhere. There is always a threshold, and once it is crossed costs plummet, availability skyrockets, and before you know it we can barely remember what it was like before we had it. For instance, when I was in high school only a small percentage of people had computers. And yes, dduggerbiocepts, people said the same thing about computers as you are saying about 3D printing now. And yes, the next generation thinks they sounded pretty stupid.

The technique used by Sculpteo is quite interesting, the way lasers and plastic compounds are involved in this is really very creative. I have read various rapid prototyping blog but did not see such creative form of printing anywhere.