Sintered metals are never going to have the same properties that cast, forged, and/or welded metals have. Such parts may be very strong compared to, say, plastics, but there will always be a huge class of parts (especially for machinery) which just cannot reasonably be made that way.

But that's fine, additive manufacturing doesn't have to be the end-all be-all of manufacturing. People should concentrate more on leveraging the strengths of 3D printing as much as possible rather than trying to make it be some jake of all trades manufacturing tool that it can never be.

> additive manufacturing doesn't have to be the end-all be-all of manufacturing

I agree with you, but thought I should point out that it may do more than you expect. Here's a guy making rocket engines http://rocketmoonlighting.blogspot.com/2012/04/3d-printed-ro... and one post older than this he's firing them.

Impressive! It would be very interesting to see how the weight of his motors compares to equally powerful motors made using traditional techniques.