Additive machining (a fancy term for 3D printing) does have some very real advantages in some cases. NASA and various companies have been 3D printing titanium rocket engine parts - very big ones too. Conventional machining one of these can take several years and cost a fortune in metal and machinery as the various parts are mainly (large) empty shapes.

To be sure, 3D printing titanium (with a sintering laser) is going to incur a rather big up-front cost, but you could almost cover that by the savings in titanium metal alone. My understanding is that the strength of the laser-sintered titanium is close enough to that of bulk metal - which figures when you consider what a laser beam can do. And you can of course pick your alloy.

Bit too expensive for me though...

Cheers
Roger