Apple filed five Liquidmetal patents, two are 3D printing related #3DThursday #3DPrinting
[Philip Lelyveld comment: I'm pretty sure that there is prior art for both of these filings. Maybe they're just trying to see what they can get past the reviewers.] 
The US Patent & Trademark Office published today a new series of five Liquidmetal patent applications from Apple which were originally filed in Q2 2012. Two of Apple’s inventions are related to 3D printing. They are methods of construction a part with build metallic glasses (BMG – Liquidmetal) layer by layer.
In one embodiment, a layer of BMG powder is deposited to selected positions and then fused to a layer below by suitable methods such as laser heating or electron beam heating. The deposition and fusing are then repeated as need to construct the part layer by layer. One or more layers of non-BMG can be used as needed. In one embodiment, layers of BMG can be cut from one or more sheets of BMG to desired shapes, stacked and fused to form the part.
Another method is to selectively deposite molten bulk metallic glass (BMG). In one embodiment, a continuous stream or discrete droplets of molten BMG is deposited to selected positions. The deposition can be repeated as needed layer by layer. One or more layers of non-BMG can be used as needed.
See the full story here: http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2013/11/21/apple-filed-five-liquidmetal-patents-two-are-3d-printing-related-3dthursday-3dprinting/