I've been playing around in robotics for 25 years, and one of the things that is just as true today as it was in 1985 is that for some mechanical parts, motors, gears, and other linkages, there isn't any 'there' there. And so the ability to manufacture small lots of things is appealing on a variety of scales. That being said, I suspect this particular effort, like those before it, won't come to fruition. The reason is that manufacturing, while easy to comprehend, is insanely complex at the nuts and bolts level.

That being said I would love to see this be successful, I've got a simple idea for a widget and if I could get some time in a factory to make a few thousand of the structural bits to keep the costs down, I think I'd have a nice little niche product. While I'm sure I could get it done in China, I'm not interested in spending the time to learn the way to correctly bribe the necessary people to get the product I want.

Another risk of this capability is weapons production. Making guns is actually pretty easy (the California prison population displays great creativity in this area). So if you create a capability to make small quantities of 'hard metal' products I would expect that you would be visited often by folks who would want to insure you're not tempted to become profitable the 'easy' way.

I hope it works though, it would be great to have a field of small factories bloom.