The longer pieces: a depot, a powder, an engine room, and whatever the machines demand next.
On obsolescence, fire rules and the slow arithmetic of a warehouse that prints instead of stores.
No. 7 · Essay · 14 minutes · 3 references
Plate I. Locomotive shop, Chicago, 1942. Jack Delano, Library of Congress; public domain.
Why the quality of metal powder, not the printer, decides whether a printed pump part lasts as long as a cast one.
No. 7 · Essay · 11 minutes · 3 references
Plate II. 316L powder under the electron microscope. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Shipboard printers have been trialled for a decade. A sober account of what crews actually make at sea.
No. 7 · Essay · 9 minutes · 3 references