In my opinion - no tool alone is really all that revolutionary. A waterjet becomes more once you have a press break and can make bends in sheet metal. Similarly, having a 3D printer with a waterjet or laser cutter allows you to quickly prototype 3D shapes without being limited by 2D parts.

A fixture I recently designed was a great example of rapid prototyping with a combination of tools. In this case, a laser cutter and an FDM 3D printer. The requirements of the fixture were to hold and allow rotation of a device under test (DUT) at precise 5 degree increments. It had to be designed and fabricated quickly and use as many off the shelf (OTS) components as possible. The entire design, fabrication, assembly and test time took around 1 FTE day. Everything else were OTS parts ordered off McMaster Carr.

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