2015-03-15

Notes.

This week I published a thorough and in-depth report on what I've learned 3D printing titanium over the past year and a half. It went up in three pieces on 3D Printing Industry, and in one longer post on my own blog.You should really read and share it; it's very good.

If you're in NYC, come chat with me at DFM Forum this Thursday! And for the really committed, me & Zach are looking for helpers to come to a packaging & shipping party for The Public Radio on March 28th. Come!

Pathing.

• Autodesk open-sourced the resin for their Ember 3D printer. Smart.
• The second part of that long piece on artificial intelligence I posted a few weeks back. Really interesting stuff, but something strikes me: Does intelligence matter? Our comparative superintelligence relative to ants doesn't make their existence any worse, and neither does it slow their absolute dominance of the resources that sustain their species. Anyway, something to think about.
• A really good explainer on the benefits and drawbacks of different 3D CAM milling toolpath strategies.

Building.

• My internet friend Greg Koenig (the guy that explained the differences between HMCs and VMCs a few weeks ago) wrote a long and very good step-by-step (with pictures) of how Apple makes their watch cases. The detail here is impressive.
• GE tested some 3D printed hot-stage jet engine turbine blades. This is a big deal. They were made on Arcam EBM machines out of titanium aluminide, an intermetallic (if you'll recall, an intermetallic is kind of like a metal, but kind of like a ceramic).
• The Navy is building railguns. Which are intense.
• Does anyone out there know of a good explainer on semiconductor fabrication? Preferably with pretty pictures.

Logistics.

• Really, really great pictures of container ships lined up off the coast of Long Beach Port during the labor disputes a few weeks ago.
• Heat propagates through graphene as a wave.

Evaluation.

• A really great article about the folks at Penn State's CIMP-3D and the difficulties of 3D printing metal.
• Anisotropy is the property of a material that one or more of its physical properties are directionally dependent. Wood is famously anisotropic (with regard to strength, etc); most 3D printed parts are as well.
• Wikimedia (and the ACLU) are suing the NSA, and it seems like they have a decent case.
• Jordan explains, in much detail, why "Murder Marley" is a funnier dog name than "Chappie Creamy."

Stuff that doesn't fit into my dumb/arbitrary categories.

• Bill Watterson did a long interview, and it was published in a book about Calvin and Hobbes.

And.

Structural steel often performs *really* poorly in fires.