[evo]

This feels like a refinement on the existing practice of 3D printing metallic powder mixed with a low-temp meltable binding agent, then sintering the resulting object in a kiln to burn off the binder and generate the final part. As far as I know, this also has shrinkage that must be accounted for, as well as a particularly rough finish. That's not that big of a deal if there's subsequent machining steps, but perhaps this direct precipitation of metal out of solution improves upon the precision or tolerances.

[wildzzz]

There are both selective laser sintering and selective laser melting that do not require a kiln step and therefore the final size is the final size. Both processes can produce some amazing metal designs that would not otherwise be possible with a typical metal+binder extrusion process. I've talked to some vendors who have shown me some really cool waveguide and cavity filter designs they've made using either SLM or SLS. There are also some methods using lasers to effectively remelt the surfaces to smooth them out to get rid of the grainy texture that's typical for any sintered material. In aerospace, size and weight are very limited so bolting a bunch of off the shelf waveguide parts together can get messy, being able to get a really compact design that fits exactly can really help with miniaturization.