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3d Printing is quite cheap nowadays.
There are some issues - like the kid in the US that printed an assault rifle (mind you its not (yet) printed from high carbon steel for the barrel) so firing a round through it would be disastrous.
Too imagine printing your own body parts and organ - from cells with your own DNA - so there is no rejection - that day is not too far off - biological printing.
There are folks who printed a 3D lens for a telescope -not very good results to say the least. Others tried mirror blanks, wrapped the blanks in plastic to get a parabolic, smooth surface - again not impressive results yet.
The printing layer by layer when each layer is just not down to fractions of wavelengths of visible light doesn't help telescope fabrication very much - you'd need atomic level smoothness to make mirrors and lens that way.
Still a very amazing filed has opened up! Wonder when one will be able to print a working 3D printer on a 3D printer? Scale it a nanotechnology and your have Sci-Fi's dread replicators from the Star Gate Atlantis series!
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