Originally Posted by WheresWaldo

Too expensive, Almost anything 3D Printed in metal of any kind is cost prohibitive and should only be used in prototyping designs. There are much cheaper ways to accomplish the same thing. The issue with someone like myself doing this, is that the production is of insufficient quantities to have any savings that come with scale. Then on top of that you have bike manufacturers that believe their aero design profiles are better than everyone else's, so you have a different seat post clamp for almost every bike on the market. Longing for the days of old where all posts were round only helps a little as their are so many different sized round posts. Volumes need to be in orders of magnitude larger than anything I do, to make it a worthwhile venture. Even as a design exercise it is time spent that can never be recouped.

Just to give some example cost comparisons, if a nylon part costs $ X, a polished nylon part is usually $ 2X, an aluminum print of the same part is usually $ 5X - $ 8X, other metals costing more. I designed a computer case badge that was offered in 14K Gold, it turned out to be about 120X the cost of the same part in nylon plastic.