Stereo lithography as a generic term involves anything produced using UV activated resin, activated using a laser, it's not 3D printing. SLA systems have become smaller and cheaper, but they are still pretty expensive compared with 3D printing, and SLS has opened up a whole new world of materials that can be used including nylon and aluminium.
The 3D printing discussed here doesn't use lasers at all, it's just like a very precise hot melt glue gun. It doesn't need special resins and they usually do work with plain old ABS that's heated up until it melts then squirted onto layers just like an inkjet printer, which is why it's considerably cheaper and you can pick up small desktop machines.
I used to make a living years ago cleaning up and finishing SLA resin models, the technology at the time meant they had at least a 0.5mm step, with bigger models having 1mm steps on them. Had a SLA resin lawnmower body to clean up once, took nearly two weeks of sanding and filling to get something good enough to take a mould off and cast in a suitable polyurethane as the resin was too brittle for prototyping. Today they can make it in the right materials to a much finer tolerance to a much cheaper price, which is why I'm fitting kitchens these days.
I'd agree with the ABS materials used in the 3D printers not being suitable for r/c parts, although if you can find someone with a Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) system that has some free time then they are capable of building parts from nylon, aluminium and even glass filled nylon.
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