Yes, laminated composites can be very strong indeed, in certain directions. Plywood is very weak in tension perpendicular to the laminates (causing the layers to pull apart).

But these printers aren't making anisotropic composites, they are making isotopic substances in layers (though this could change).

The empeg knob example is right on, though.

Just to clarify, I am suggesting a leveraged speculative bet *against* the US stock and bond markets, or even against stupidly overvalued individual companies like Salesforce.com (CRM), who could take the kind if spanking that Apple recently took any day. Great company and product, but waaaaay over priced. But predicting when the bubble will burst is impossible. George Soros himself, master of betting against bubbles, claims to have lost over $100M by betting against the dot com bubble too early. The craziness can continue for a long time. He was eventually right, but had an awful lot of options expire before the trade paid off.

The people who predicted the housing bubble crash and the subsequent financial crisis of 2008/9 are predicting a similar event imminently.

I also hope you're being conservative with most of your savings, and just speculating with some of your money. To me, "conservative" is also somewhat unconventional these days (though not historically): no US dollar denominated assets and savings in "real" things like gold and silver bullion coins, hard assets that don't depreciate, etc. An actual "thing" has value no matter what we're heading into...