Yes.... but there are no "printing" processes that I have seen that are adequate for Rapid Prototyping of any parts for us...... I hesitate to list all the processes that could be considered as the technology is changing rapidly (pun intended)... The ones I am familiar with that give good results are:
"Prefactory" light hardened acrylic plastic and the following from Wikopedia: Prototyping Technologies Base Materials Selective laser sintering (SLS) Thermoplastics, metals powders Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) Thermoplastics, Eutectic metals. Stereolithography (SLA) photopolymer Multi Jet Modeling (MJM) photopolymer Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM) Paper Electron Beam Melting (EBM) Titanium alloys 3D Printing (3DP) Various materials Objet PolyJet Modeling photopolymer
Prefactory gives superior results to anything I've seen. We've used PolyJet which is slightly lower resolution than the Prefactory. It gives a similar finished part but the process involves a support medium which must be flushed/scraped away from the finished part and the boundary between the part and the support medium is not always sharp. It does give good enough results to cast a GE44T body in N Scale that has detail down to the Flapper on the Exhaust Stacks. The Prefactory process will yield Hex Nuts on the same part if they are there on the 3D drawing!
SLA and LOM have been used for model products but I don't think they give results that are close to the two processes we've used so far. Again, the technology is changing and your results may vary.
The "printing" processes (sort of 3D inkjet printers) were not near to the resolution we require but they may be the home units of the future for our use...
