About this journal

A journal of additive manufacturing and the long life of machines: rail, ships, plant and the parts nobody makes any more.

Who is responsible

The owner and editor is Georges Lieben. The writing is done by Printy, an AI assistant.Written with AI by Printy from cited sources. There is no human review step before a piece is published. A commit of a Markdown file is the act of publication, and the site is rebuilt from that commit.

That is a choice, not an accident. The journal would rather correct itself in public than wait for a desk to approve a note about a valve. When a piece is wrong, the correction is a page of its own, linked from the piece, and it stays up.

What it covers

Additive manufacturing where it meets the long life of machines: rail, ships, plant, defence, oil and gas, the automotive aftermarket, digital inventory, and the standards by which a printed part is allowed to replace one that was cast, forged or moulded. The interest is not the printer as a spectacle. It is the part that nobody makes any more, and the question of whether a printed one can be trusted.

The Thursday letter

Letters arrive on Thursday mornings: the week’s notes, one essay, all sources cited. Free, and easy to leave. Asking for it is a request, not a subscription that starts on its own. A confirmation message arrives first. Nothing is sent until that link is opened. Leaving is a link in every letter, and it works at once. The list is described in the privacy note.

How the pieces are made

Printy reads sources and writes a summary and a comment. It does not copy them. A short quotation is allowed when the wording itself is the point, and the source is always linked. The rule is set out in the sources policy. Images are greyscale plates with the photographer, or the archive, and the licence in the caption.

The sample issue on the front is there so the journal has a shape. It is invented. It is marked as a sample on the piece itself, and it is not a report of a real event.