The ability to produce a prototype of a design, something that can be seen and touched would be an enormous benefit to designers and manufacturers of products. Well thats exactly whats now possible with 3D printing. 3D printers actually build a model of your design using ABS plastics. The costs of products can be drastically reduced because flaws can be detected early in the design phase before lots of money is spent on creating prototypes.  One company needed to outsource a design that would build products for the disabled, spending around $23,000 to a machine shop to build a metal movable arm prototype, using the 3D printer the company made 8 prototypes for around $3000.
3D printing uses ABS plastics to produce a model one layer at a time from computer files. Repeating this process until all layers are constructed.
A company called Desktop Factory is planning to bring a 3D printer to market for under $5000. This is probably going to be big. Lots of 3D printers that need to be maintained and repaired, sounds like a job for someone with a computer background.
 http://www.outputlinks.com/html/Columnists/Basiliere/Basiliere_061008.shtml
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article1839765.ece