FDM parts of any material are an inappropriate (and i would argue unsafe) choice for any loaded application where they’re critical (supporting humans, a part of a critical safety mechanism, etc.) this goes beyond anisotropy (which is a challenge, but solvable). you could in theory use non-linear FEA to model the behavior of the part, but it takes a herculean effort and still doesn’t provide the whole point of FEA in the first place for safety critical parts — the predicted failure mode at a specific loading this isn’t because these parts are hard to model, instead, it’s because FDM is inherently flawed. there are no guaranteed mechanical properties. vendors will list toy values on their websites, but they do not reflect the “real” values and are misleading. real means as built every car, plane and multi-story commercial building utilizes an important property of materials that manufacturers have gifted to engineers over the centuries, and that’s reliable mechanical properties aluminum, steel and most metals have a yield or ultimate value by which engineers design to, enabling us to predict when and how parts will fail. FDM does not, and it isn’t the material’s fault, it’s the process’s fault when i analyze a part, it produces values by which i can meter against mechanical properties of the material. the main problem with FDM is that it does not. the process itself invalidates the underlying mechanical properties the produced part does not have bulk material properties of the constituent material due to the geometry of the “lay up” of the filament that produces the part. this means an accurate analysis would not be on the “as modeled part”, it would have to be on the “as manufactured” model of the part, or the “sliced” model of the part and even if you did this: it would still be for moot because the shear resistance of each layer produced is dependent on the orientation and settings of the print and the environment in which it was printed. the properties can vary wildly between prints i won’t even get into cold flow which is exacerbated by this lamination issue. i still think FDM is great in the limited cases of onesie-twosie fixtures and tooling here’s a solution: sheet metal is cheap. use a sheet metal substrate to build up the load bearing structure of your parts. they become safe with proper analysis and can also get rid of the temperature independent cold flow problems that hamstring most FDM parts

"Most hardware engineering is actually software engineering in disguise."

A machine should know whether it made a good part. At twentyfour26, we’re building toward that: AI machinists that plan the work, run CNC machines, check the results, and use that feedback to correct the process. We’re starting with on-demand CNC machining for hardware teams in the Bay Area, with turnaround times as fast as 48 hours. Our bigger ambition is to make manufacturing expertise repeatable, so every machine we add inherits more of the knowledge needed to make the next part. Hardware teams should be able to turn a new design into a physical part without weeks of waiting. That’s why we’re building twentyfour26.

.@NASAAdmin Jared Isaacman on Artemis III crew visit to the White House: "Not only did the president wanna meet the Artemis III group, we had an opportunity to present to him the largest moon rock we ever brought back from the Apollo era."

glorifying long hours like this is dangerous. everywhere i’ve been, we’ve rightfully had hard restrictions on what you were allowed to do based on your shift length you’re allowed nowhere near a mill or welder after hour sixteen on your shift