Along these lines, a current Kickstarter project, which uses a 3D printer and a saltwater jet in a very clever way to ablate metal electrochemically. It even presents the prospect of doing metal deposition printing by reversing the process/current (skip to 9:50).
To be clear, if you read Hacker News you owe it to yourself to watch the entire Applied Science back catalogue; without exception every video is fascinating.
I remember laughing so hard the first time I saw the video, and he said:
"... the nightmare scenario here is: you've got this super powerful pump, you know, making 30 or 40 PSI, at gallons per minute flow rates of hot ferric chloride; and if one of those things bursts, I mean the mess is just going to be beyond spectacular.
this has been used in aerospace for a long time, and while making the process accesable, it does nothing for the engineering and validation required to offer complete solutions
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 24.7 ms ] threadhttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/athenatech/liquid-blade...
"... the nightmare scenario here is: you've got this super powerful pump, you know, making 30 or 40 PSI, at gallons per minute flow rates of hot ferric chloride; and if one of those things bursts, I mean the mess is just going to be beyond spectacular.
okay let's press the start button..."