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The takeaway: A compact metal printer debuting at a hobbyist festival in Colorado is testing whether one of manufacturing's most capital-intensive processes can be compressed into something closer to a benchtop tool. Scrap Labs, a Colorado-based startup, introduced its Scrap 1 system at the Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival in Loveland on April 18-19, positioning the machine as a lower-cost entry point into laser powder bed fusion.

The process – long dominated by industrial platforms – builds parts by spreading thin layers of metal powder and selectively melting them with a laser, repeating the cycle until a finished geometry emerges.…