No, lost casting could work. It should be thoroughly tested before relying on it for your life though.

Yes, but this has been posted a couple times before, and people always act like it’s real. Instead of responding to any of the folks here, I figured I’d just make my own comment.

It's a joke.

But also, there are other, better forms of metal printing. One is to use metal powder and laser-weld it layer by layer. Another is basically using a wire welder essentially the same way you would use an FDM printer.

The image is a poorly executed FDM 3D print stylized version of the image Wikipedia image I posted, and metal 3D printing costs much more than the few cents quoted in the tweet.

Even if you were to 3D print the nut in metal, it wouldn’t be as strong as the machined original due to porosity and such, and being as that is the nut that holds the helicopter rotors to the helicopter, making it weaker would be very ill advised.

I think it might actually be photoshopped to look like a print, because that's the same picture that's on the Wikipedia page for Jesus Nut, with the same hand, background, and shadows, except on Wikipedia it's obviously a metal part. I spent way too long comparing them trying to figure out if they shopped a 3D print over the real one or colored and textured it to look like a print, and I think it's the latter.

saved this comment so I can laugh again when I remeber to check saved

They use a laser to melt the top layer of a bed of metal powder, lower the bed, spread more powder, repeat. It results in a generally more porus part than cast or forged material, thus weaker, but can make otherwise impossible to manufacture geometries that can be lighter weight, which can reduce the strength requirements as well. A jesus nut is not an application you skimp on strength lol

F1 teams 3D print (laser metal sintering more specifically) their pistons these days, so I'd say at the bleeding edge of the tech you can create pretty strong parts. But indeed, anything which a consumer is likely going to be able to afford won't be nearly as strong.