Aside from the still horrendous cost involved, which prohibit private use, the process leaves a lot to desire. Surfaces are quite coarse, in fact to coarse for the fine detail we want.
3D printing will find its way into the hobby - being employed in rapid prototyping processes.
At the present time, the printer costs tens of thousands of dollars which would make each model extremely expensive to produce, so prices will have to go down drastically before it can be used commercially at an affordable price per item.
It has a while to go yet. It is good for samples and such, but it isn't as precise as it could be, yet. The cost would also have to drop a lot in cost to make it competitive with traditional injection molding technology.
I have come across a website www.Click2detail.com where they will convert scale drawings into a Cad-Cam program and produce a model to scale by a 3-D resin printer(they have you-tube videos of the process.). The models are built up layer by layer on the printer. One of the items they printed was an actual musicians flute! Anyway i'd like to know what effect this will have on model building and the hobby now that this Technology has arrived ?