An article in Power Magazine discusses how manufacturers of power generating equipment are planning to use 3D printing in metal for production of complex machinery parts:

Siemens announced in December that it would begin using 3D printing - also known as additive manufacturing - to produce replacement burner components for gas turbines rather than using conventional methods. It said that for certain types of turbines, repair times can be cut by as much as 90%.

Meanwhile, GE Aviation announced that it would contract with Swedish company Arcam to produce 3D-printed components for its jet engines. Its oil and gas division plans to start pilot production of 3D-printed gas turbines fuel nozzles later this year. With conventional manufacturing methods, the nozzles are assembled from 20 separate parts, but with 3D printing, they can be created in a single piece.

NASA used similar methods previously to manufacture parts for the J2-X engine, according to this article at Extreme Tech . So, how far will this technology spread? How long will it be before consumer-oriented metal objects are being printed just-in-time at your local department store?

It apparently takes a lot of work to mine for crypto-currencies like BitCoin, or my personal favorite, DogeCoin. It's actually so much work now that using general purpose CPUs is completely fruitless, and even GPU-based mining is falling out of favor. However, what if you had access to a supercomputer? Perhaps you could just "borrow" somebody else's supercomputer for a while... they're already paying for it anyway, right? They probably won't even notice!

Or maybe they will...