Anything bigger than 2 inches (build dimensions) resulted in poor tolerance and out of spec. Good for castings, but not much for anything else. We had high hopes for ExOne, but in the end, the entire order of 10 boxes of 3D metal printed parts was salvage value. The potential for additive printing is tremendous, if you have the right equipment. We found the smaller turbine 3d prints were fine (less than 2 inches) with good tolerance. The first few turbine blades that were printed (less than 2 inches in diameter) were less than $100 each. But then ExOne developed a new business model, which increased pricing so that it was not competitive with traditional machining.
Other prints from Exone:
