Protolabs

Kreatize

This report explains how vision-driven multi-arm robots let factories switch tasks via software, not hardware rebuilds. 


Vision-Driven Robotics and the Rise of Universal Manufacturing

Gain the technical insights to make your robotics systems more reliable, maintainable, and future-ready.

New Report: Explore How Smart Cable Systems Are Powering the Next Generation of Robotics

The Guide to Understanding the Technologies Defining the Next Phase of Edge AI

The 2026 Edge AI Technology Report Just Launched

This Report shows how tools like artificial intelligence, digital twins, and on-demand manufacturing are no longer emerging concepts, but are already delivering measurable impact across the product lifecycle.

Innovation in Manufacturing 2026

Join Siemens and Altair for a full day of innovation, insights, and real-world applications shaping the future of simulation.

Simcenter Technology Conference 2026

Manufacturing

What is 3D printing? This article goes over the basics of 3D printing, otherwise known as additive manufacturing, covering its engineering principles and applications.


What is 3D Printing: A Comprehensive Guide to its Engineering Principles and Applications

What is CNC turning? This digital manufacturing technology, different from CNC milling in a few important ways, is used to make rounded or cylindrical parts with a high level of precision.

CNC Turning: Process, Operations, Machines, and Applications

This article is a practical PLC programming guide covering the five IEC 61131-3 languages, the scan cycle that governs how your code actually runs, ladder and structured text examples, and the mistakes that cost engineers the most commissioning time.

PLC Programming: Languages, Scan Cycles, and Working Ladder Logic

GD&T uses tolerance zones tied to a datum reference frame

GD&T is the symbolic language engineers use to state exactly how much a part can vary and still work. This guide covers the basics.

GD&T Explained: Symbols, Datums, and Tolerances

This article explains what is a PLC, what's inside it, how the scan cycle works, which programming languages the current IEC standard defines, and how to choose the right controller for your application.

What Is a PLC? A Complete Guide to Programmable Logic Controllers

True position is an important concept in GD&T

This guide covers the true position formula, how to read the feature control frame, and how MMC and LMC generate bonus tolerance.

True Position in GD&T: Formula, Tolerance Zones, and MMC

H7 tolerance specifies a hole that is never smaller than its nominal diameter

H7 tolerance is the default hole class in the ISO system of limits and fits. This guide explains why H7 is useful for manufacturers.

H7 Tolerance Explained: ISO 286 Hole Tolerance Charts

Quartz crystal oscillator on a printed circuit board

VCXO (voltage-controlled crystal oscillator) is a precision timing device that enables fine frequency control. This article explains how VCXOs work, their tuning range, Kv, key specifications, circuit design, applications, alternatives, and how to select the right device.

VCXO Design Guide: Voltage-Controlled Crystal Oscillator

Press fits are common when attaching bearings to shafts

A practical guide to press fit tolerance, including fit classes, interference calculations, and assembly methods.

Press Fit Tolerance: How to Specify Interference Fits

Full stepper control of the stepper motor

How microstepping works in stepper motors, the incremental torque cost of each resolution, and why finer microsteps do not improve positioning accuracy.

Microstepping Explained: Full Step, Half Step & Microstep

How closed-loop stepper motors use encoder feedback to eliminate missed steps, plus driver design, NEMA sizing, and when to choose a servo instead.

Closed-Loop Stepper Motor: How Encoder Feedback Works

AC Servo Drive Unit for Machine Control and Manufacturing

This guide covers what is inside a servo drive, how its nested servo loops behave, how EtherCAT and CANopen interfaces change the architecture, and how to size, tune, and safely commission one.

What Is a Servo Drive? Architecture, Control Loops, Fieldbus, and Sizing

3D-Printed Gear attached to the Shaft of a Micro Servo Motor

This article explains how a servo motor works, its construction, control loops, encoder and resolver feedback, AC and DC types, sizing math, and tuning fixes.

Servo Motor: How It Works, Types, Specifications, and Sizing

The electric wire behind the control board.

What a programmable automation controller is, how PACs are built and programmed, and how to choose between a PLC and a PAC.

What Is a Programmable Automation Controller (PAC)?

The brand-new FibreSeeker 3 has the key distinction of bringing continuous fibre 3D printing to the consumer market. At around the price of a mid-level FFF printer or CNC router, the FibreSeeker promises new possibilities for engineers and product designers. Rather than being limited to visual models and conventional prototypes, this printer is designed to produce reinforced functional parts. According to FibreSeek, continuous carbon fibre reinforced specimens printed on the system have achieved tensile strength of up to 900 MPa along the fibre direction, although actual part performance depends on factors including fibre placement, material selection, geometry and print parameters.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzg5MTU0Mjc0MTM5LTE3ODkxNTQyNzQxMzkuanBlZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" width="624" height="416" class="fr-fic fr-dii" />Source: FibreSeek<h2>Carbon Fibre 3D Printing Today</h2>Carbon fibre is known for being exceptionally stiff, strong, and lightweight, making it a valuable material in areas like aviation, civil engineering, and consumer goods. In these fields, carbon fibre parts are usually made in a mold, where sheets of woven fibres are combined with a resin to form a strong composite.Carbon fibre can also be found in FFF (FDM), the most common type of 3D printing technology. Many thermoplastic filaments like PETG, ABS, and nylon can be formulated with the addition of carbon or glass fibres. However, engineers familiar with carbon fibre molding are likely to be disappointed by carbon fibre 3D printing filament—despite it being much easier to process than traditional layups. Why? Because these filaments contain randomly oriented chopped fibres rather than the uniformly oriented fibres found in carbon fibre fabrics and prepregs. Chopped fibres can improve stiffness, dimensional stability and depending on the material formulation and processing conditions, certain strength properties. However, they generally cannot transfer loads as efficiently as continuous fibres aligned with a principal load direction.Harnessing the strength benefits of carbon fibre requires continuous fibre placement, allowing loads to be transferred along the full length of the fibre. A normal FFF 3D printer won’t help here: continuous strands of fibre can’t be extruded through a regular printer nozzle or be made to follow the same patterns as molten thermoplastic, and the printer has no way to sever the fibre upon completion of a layer. Instead, a specialized continuous fibre 3D printer is needed, but these printers are more complex than standard extrusion printers and have historically been marketed exclusively at industrial users.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzg5MTU0Mjc0MTQ2LTE3ODkxNTQyNzQxNDYuanBlZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" width="624" height="356" class="fr-fic fr-dii" />Source: FibreSeek<h2>Introducing the FibreSeeker 3  <iframe id="6a8f393675f7de85487b9297" width="250" class="specs-iframe" height="440" src="https://wevolver.com/iframe/specs/fibreseek-fibreseeker-3?iframe=true" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">   </iframe></h2>In November 2025, a new 3D printing company called FibreSeek launched a Kickstarter campaign for the FibreSeeker 3, a continuous fibre 3D printer marketed at the consumer market. The campaign described a printer that would use a proven technology called Composite Fibre Co-extrusion (CFC), at a significantly lower price point than any continuous fibre machine on the market. Before the FibreSeeker 3, the most affordable machines for printing continuous carbon fibre sat around the $10,000 mark, while the Markforged Mark 2, probably the most well-known system in the category, currently costs around $20,000. With an MSRP of $3,499 (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) and almost half that price for the earliest backers, the FibreSeeker clearly obliterates that price floor.The FibreSeeker 3 campaign had raised over $4 million by the time of its conclusion in January, making it one of the most successful examples of crowdfunding for a 3D printer. By comparison, another printer that set about to reshape the market in its technological category, the Formlabs Form 1, raised just under $3 million on the same platform.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzg5MTU0Mjc0MTUxLTE3ODkxNTQyNzQxNTEuanBlZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" width="624" height="351" class="fr-fic fr-dii" />Source: FibreSeek<h2>A Closer Look at the Printer</h2>Only a handful of continuous fibre 3D printers exist, and not all of them work in the same way. The wide technological gap between 3D printing and traditional carbon fibre manufacturing means companies have had to devise creative ways to achieve continuous fibre placement during 3D printing. Some use fibres pre-impregnated with resin; some use a combination of fibre placement and UV resin curing.FibreSeek deploys a technology called Composite Fibre Co-extrusion (CFC), which has been used in industrial-grade systems for over a decade and which offers some unique benefits over competing processes. CFC works by embedding continuous fibre strands into melted thermoplastic during extrusion: one nozzle deposits the pre-impregnated continuous fibres as another extrudes a matrix thermoplastic. Advantages of the technology include precise fibre steering along curved trajectories, the ability to create reinforced lattice structures, and an open material system for maximum thermoplastic compatibility.The novelty of the FibreSeeker 3 is putting that proven industrial technology within an affordable and user-friendly desktop system. According to FibreSeek, the enclosed printer offers three printing modes: FFF-only for fast prints, dual-nozzle for selective reinforcement, or CFC-only for maximum strength. And the accompanying Rocket Slicer software appears versatile enough to serve a range of users. Beginner-friendly features include simplified infill selection and optimized toolpath generation based on load distribution and fibre paths, but the software also offers a more technical “expert” mode for experienced users.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzg5MTU0Mjc0MTY3LTE3ODkxNTQyNzQxNjcucG5nIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7IndpZHRoIjo5NTAsImZpdCI6ImNvdmVyIn19fQ==" width="624" height="211" class="fr-fic fr-dii" />Source: FibreSeekPerformance is where the FibreSeeker 3 will ultimately be judged, and signs are promising for early backers and future customers: test prints have been achieved with 900 MPa tensile strength—stronger than machined aluminum 6061 and worlds apart from chopped fibre filament. Suitable prints could therefore include drone frames, robotic joints, tooling, bike components, and prosthetics. A community of new FibreSeeker users has also been sharing use cases for the printer, such as a reinforced motorcycle motor mount that would cost $1,000 if sent to a machine shop for steel milling.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzg5MTU0Mjc0MTcyLTE3ODkxNTQyNzQxNzIuanBlZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" width="624" height="416" class="fr-fic fr-dii" />Filament. Source: FibreSeek<h2>Continuous Fibres for Everyone</h2>The 3D printing community is about to find out whether FibreSeek has delivered on its bold promise of a consumer-priced continuous carbon fibre printer.Mass production of the printer began in April, and machines are being shipped to “VIP” backers now as the company works on expanding its material range. In addition to its current CCF (Continuous Carbon fibre) and CGF (Continuous Glass fibre) consumables, FibreSeek will later introduce CBF (Continuous Basalt fibre) and CKF (Continuous Kevlar fibre) to suit applications with specific thermal or impact resistance requirements. All of these materials are offered at a price point suitable for the machine’s target market: 500 meters of X-CCF continuous carbon fibre costs $49, about a fifth the cost of Markforged materials and comparable to the raw materials used in carbon fibre molding that come with significant tooling and labor expenses.<img src="https://images.wevolver.com/eyJidWNrZXQiOiJ3ZXZvbHZlci1wcm9qZWN0LWltYWdlcyIsImtleSI6ImZyb2FsYS8xNzg5MTU0Mjc0MTc3LTE3ODkxNTQyNzQxNzcuanBlZyIsImVkaXRzIjp7InJlc2l6ZSI6eyJ3aWR0aCI6OTUwLCJmaXQiOiJjb3ZlciJ9fX0=" width="624" height="416" class="fr-fic fr-dii" />FibreSeek at TCT Shanghai 2025. Source: FibreSeek.On the face of it, the advantages of a machine like the FibreSeeker are clear: a low price point, a huge strength increase over regular FFF, a tool-free process more convenient than injection molding, and a low-waste, desktop-friendly alternative to CNC machining. Its impact on the carbon fibre 3D printing market could therefore be significant. Most importantly, consumers and smaller engineering firms gaining access to continuous fibre printing will give them powers only hinted at by chopped fibre filaments.FibreSeeker 3 will be available through a <a href="https://usstore.fibreseek3d.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">limited-time pre-sale on the FibreSeek eShop</a>, with the first batch limited to 500 units.

Following a successful crowdfunding campaign, the FibreSeeker 3 from FibreSeek is bringing continuous carbon fiber printing to a new audience.

FibreSeeker 3 Brings Continuous Carbon Fiber 3D Printing to the Masses

The world of medical AM is full of promise. Are you leveraging it to its full clinical and operational potential?Welcome to the 9th edition of <a href="https://app.swapcard.com/login/event/additiv-medical-2026/registration/VGlja2V0VHlwZV83NTQwNA==:1/page/UmVnaXN0cmF0aW9uRm9ybV81NzAyMA==">ADDITIV Medical</a>, the premier virtual summit where patient-centric care meets advanced technology. On October 21, 2026, we are bringing together clinical leaders, medical executives, and pioneering engineers for a high-impact, 2.5-hour briefing.Our focus is on addressing the challenges that stand between groundbreaking 3D printing technology and the patients who need it most.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1789030216075-COVER-ARTICLE_MEDICAL.png" style="width:100%px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" />Why Healthcare Leaders &amp; Innovators Are Joining Us:3 Expert-led Panels: 45 minutes of debate tackling everything from surgical precision to the actual economics of personalized care, followed by an audience Q&amp;A.High-level Networking: Use the Swapcard platform to schedule virtual meetings to collaborate with peers, hospital decision-makers, and strategic partners.The Global Pulse: Join hundreds of industry minds to benchmark your medical AM strategy, ensuring your institution delivers cutting-edge care heading into 2027.Register for ADDITIV Medical <a href="https://app.swapcard.com/login/event/additiv-medical-2026/registration/VGlja2V0VHlwZV83NTQwNA==:1/page/UmVnaXN0cmF0aW9uRm9ybV81NzAyMA==" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">HERE</a>. October 21, 2026, 10 AM EST / 4:00 PM CEST.<hr />ADDITIV is a series of global virtual events dedicated to additive manufacturing, offering panel discussions, workshops and networking with AM experts from leading industrial companies &amp; the most innovative firms in the field.

ADDITIV Medical 2026 will bring together more than 500 medical professionals

ADDITIV Medical 2026 to explore Additive Manufacturing

<div id="isPasted"><div>Choosing between 3D printing and injection molding is one of the key decisions in product development—especially when moving from the initial concept to a functional prototype.The correct answer depends on four variables: quantity, material specifications, part geometry, and schedule. This guide covers all four. Get specific recommendations from FACTUREE based on over 9 years of experience in online manufacturing.</div></div><div><div><h2>What is the difference between 3D printing and injection molding?</h2></div><div>Injection molding is a forming manufacturing process. Molten plastic is injected under high pressure into a mold that contains the desired geometry as a negative. After cooling, the finished part is removed from the mold. The mold can be used thousands to millions of times.3D printing, on the other hand, refers to additive manufacturing processes. The part is built up layer by layer based on a CAD model. Common technologies such as FDM, SLA, MJF, and SLS operate according to this principle. However, they differ significantly in terms of resolution and mechanical properties.Injection molding enables material properties close to those of mass production and a high degree of repeatability. Delivery times vary by project and depend on the choice of material and the mold design. 3D printing offers a high degree of flexibility for small batch sizes, although cost-effectiveness must always be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.The two methods are not mutually exclusive. Many development projects use 3D printing for early design iterations. They switch to injection molding only once the geometry has been finalized and properties representative of mass production are required.<div id="isPasted"><div><h2>When is injection molding better than 3D printing for plastic prototypes?</h2></div><div>FACTUREE recommends injection molding if at least one of the following four conditions applies.<ul><li>Condition 1: The material must be equivalent to that used in production. FACTUREE manufactures injection-molded prototypes from the same resins as the eventual production part (PP, PA, ABS, PC, POM, TPE, LSR). This means that functional test results can be directly applied to production qualification without the need for re-qualification due to a change in material.</li><li>Condition 2: In terms of cost-effectiveness, injection molding is the better choice. Whether injection molding is more cost-effective than 3D printing depends on the break-even point, which is determined by tooling costs, geometry, material, printing process, post-processing, and total quantity.</li><li>Condition 3: The geometry is suitable for injection molding. Components with uniform wall thicknesses, draft angles, and no deep undercuts are ideal for injection molding. The process then delivers the highest repeatability and smooth surfaces without the need for post-processing.</li><li>Condition 4: The part is needed for end-user testing or market validation. If the prototype must match the eventual production product in terms of appearance and feel, injection molding is the more suitable process.</li></ul>If none of these conditions apply, 3D printing is the more cost-effective choice for that particular development phase.</div></div><div><div><h2>When is 3D printing better than injection molding for plastic prototypes?</h2></div><div>FACTUREE recommends 3D printing for prototypes in the following situations.<ul><li>Condition 1: The component is in the early design validation phase, where material properties and production-grade equivalence are not yet critical. SLA and SLS deliver models in 1–2 business days without tooling costs.</li><li>Condition 2: More than three design iterations are planned within two weeks. A change in geometry during 3D printing requires updating the CAD file, but does not require a new tool or a new setup process. However, it is necessary to re-examine the build orientation, support structures, data preparation, and process parameters.</li><li>Condition 3: The component requires a high degree of geometric freedom, which would require design adjustments in injection molding (e.g., draft angles). Nevertheless, 3D printing also has process-related limitations, such as minimum wall thicknesses, overhangs, the need for support structures, the handling of closed cavities, material removal, as well as build volume and post-processing.</li><li>Condition 4: Small quantities are required. For small quantities, 3D printing is often more cost-effective because there are no tooling costs. However, the decision must always be made on a project-by-project basis.</li></ul>Read the article on FACTUREE's website to find out more about the selection criteria, how to evaluate manufacturing procedures correctly, and more: <a href="https://www.facturee.de/en/3d-printing-vs-injection-molding-for-prototypes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.facturee.de/en/3d-printing-vs-injection-molding-for-prototypes/</a></div></div></div></div>

Choosing between 3D printing and injection molding is one of the key decisions in product development—especially in case of prototyping.

3D Printing vs. Injection Molding for Prototypes

When designing parts for aerospace applications, there are considerations that go beyond just structural qualities. Equally important is your choice of finishes and finding the right one can help your parts last longer, increase durability, and enhance resistance to environmental conditions. In some cases, finishes and coatings can even help your parts look better.<hr /><h2>Manufacturing Processes for Aerospace Components </h2>The first step is determining what manufacturing service you need to manufacture your parts. Here’s a quick rundown of our core services:<ul><li><a href="https://www.protolabs.com/en-gb/services/cnc-machining/">CNC Machining</a>: Offers precision with high-quality surfaces and an <a href="https://www.protolabs.com/en-gb/services/secondary-services/">array of coatings and finishing options</a></li><li><a href="https://www.protolabs.com/en-gb/services/3d-printing/">3D Printing</a>: Allows for highly organic metal, plastic, and even silicone geometries that other services may have difficulty creating, as well as advanced finishing options </li><li><a href="https://www.protolabs.com/en-gb/services/injection-moulding/">Injection Moulding</a>: Used for plastics and elastomers, this workhorse offers numerous finishing options and the advantage of rapid higher-volume production</li></ul><h2><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1786630745426-1786630745426.png" class="fr-fic fr-dib" />NASA Aerospace Part Manufactured by Protolabs Types of Aerospace Finishes </h2>There are few more challenging environments for parts than those aerospace parts encounter. They must endure incredible heat, cold, stresses, and vibrations that earthbound parts never face. Aerospace parts must meet rigorous standards such as strength, durability, and even appearance. Your choice of finish can significantly influence these required characteristics. So, what are the available choices?<h3>Metal Finishes</h3><ul><li>Electropolishing: Great choice if you need smooth surfaces and attractive aesthetics. Application allows for complete coverage of complex or internal surfaces</li><li>Media Blasting: Another good choice to achieve uniform, textured finishes, and even hide machining marks</li><li>Brushed or Polished Finishes: Adds aesthetic qualities and improves surface consistency</li></ul><h3>Plastic Finishes</h3><ul><li>Vapour Smoothing: Vaporised chemicals melt uneven surfaces, closing pores in the plastic and enhancing water resistance</li><li>Dyeing and Colouring: Often used with Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) parts to provide rich colours after printing</li></ul><h3>Other Coatings</h3><ul><li>Powder Coating: Powdered pigment adheres to parts electrostatically followed by a bake in an over to achieve even, thick layers. Works especially well with sheet metal parts but added weight may not be optimal for aerospace applications</li><li>Plating: Electroplating and electroless plating enhance resistance to wear and help improve part longevity in tough environmental conditions</li></ul><h2 id="isPasted">Best Choices for Harsh Environments</h2><h3>Electroplating</h3>This durable, corrosion- and wear-resistant finish works by coating a material with a “sacrificial” layer of metal so that when exposed to harsh conditions, that layer will protect the main material. The process also helps prolong part life by reducing fatigue due to mechanical stresses. This is a good choice if you need to reduce friction between moving parts.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1786630828604-1786630828604.png" class="fr-fic fr-dib" />Electroplating Process<h2 id="isPasted">Best Choices for Corrosion Resistance</h2>Preventing corrosion is critical in aerospace applications where longevity and safety are paramount concerns.One of the most effective ways to control corrosion is passivation. Applied to metals, this process converts iron into more stable iron oxide on the surface, eliminating the prime culprit in the corrosion process. While rust is an iron oxide, it is hydrated ferric oxide, which actively eats away at any iron it finds. In its place, passivation adds a thin and less reactive oxide layer.For aluminium parts in particular, you can use <a href="https://www.protolabs.com/en-gb/services/post-processing/chromate-conversion/">chromate conversion coating</a>. The process acts much like passivation, but it yields a thin layer of chromium compounds as a protective layer. It also acts sort of like a primer, allowing additional coating with paints, for example.<a href="https://www.protolabs.com/en-gb/services/post-processing/anodising/">Anodising</a> is a process that takes metal (typically aluminium) parts, runs a current through them, and places them in a sulphuric acid bath. The metal accepts oxygen atoms, creating a controlled form of corrosion that protects the parts, but is porous, allowing dyes to be introduced to give the parts a more colourful, metallic appearance. The coating is extremely thin, so it is in sync with aerospace needs. Note that there are two different kinds of anodising so it’s important to choose the best one for your application. <img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1786630852101-1786630852101.png" class="fr-fic fr-dib" />CNC Parts Finished with Anodizing<h2 id="isPasted">Applications and Considerations</h2>Different finishes affect the performance and application of aerospace components. Components of an aerospace engine require finishes that protect against wear and high temperatures. Parts in the interior of a plane use coatings for flame resistance and durability. Each aerospace application brings its own challenges where a finish can play a role.While finishes are one way to protect a part or make it more aesthetically pleasing, it is equally important to design parts for longevity. Use uniform wall thicknesses to achieve optimal finishes, especially when using vapour smoothing. In the end, a properly applied finish and a thoughtful design work together to improve parts.Protolabs comprehensive manufacturing services include an extensive finishing library accessible within each service line. Our customer support team is available to assist in selecting the best finish for your aerospace application.

Explore how the right finishes and coatings can improve aerospace parts by boosting durability, extending service life, enhancing environmental resistance, and delivering the performance and appearance required for demanding applications.

Finishes and Coatings for Aerospace Components

<a href="https://cdfam.com/pasteur-labs-nyc25/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Alexander Lavin of Pasteur Labs</a> spent his New York presentation at CDFAM on simulation intelligence, and stopped partway through to name the thing underneath it: the data interfaces problem in digital engineering.<blockquote>If you think you don’t have this data problem, you just haven’t run into it yet.— Alexander Lavin, Pasteur Labs, CDFAM NYC 2025</blockquote><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SfypDDqn0qY?&amp;t=986s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">                   </iframe>Pasteur hit it early, four years before that talk, and ended up building a data engineering pipeline for its own machine learning staff before it could build much else on top.That is the shape of it across four years of CDFAM presentations. Many of the talks that look like they are about AI turn out, once you get past the demo, to be about data: where it came from, what format it arrived in, and whether it carries the information the problem actually depends on.A 2022 article opened on the gap between text-to-image progress and 3D engineering, and landed on the reason: “the same volume of open data does not exist for 3D objects in quite the same way.” Four years later, the three answers taking shape are common formats, synthetic data, and fields.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1789403099289-3MF+ISO+Banner+150+X.jpg" style="width:100%px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" /><h2> </h2><h2>Formats are the Plumbing</h2>Geometry has to move between tools before anything else can happen, and the format it moves in decides what survives the trip. The STL problem is the familiar version: a lattice or a TPMS structure described by a short mathematical function becomes an enormous pile of triangles the moment it is tessellated, and the design freedom is then capped by triangle count.The <a href="https://3mf.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">3MF Consortium</a>’s Volumetric and Implicit Extension attacks this by letting a file carry spatial functions — a stack of images, a mathematical function, or both — so material properties and geometry travel as the thing itself. Jan Orend, who contributes to the specification on behalf of EOS, framed the stakes plainly in a <a href="https://cdfam.com/3mf-consortium-volumetric-and-implicit-extension-release/" target="_blank">CDFAM interview</a>: the consortium exists to solve “the interoperability challenges that are holding back the industry.”That matters more now than it did when the extension was released. Every agentic workflow demonstrated assumes tools can call each other and hand over geometry without losing what makes it meaningful. Wesley Essink of Siemens showed the receiving end, exporting the same implicit model out as volumetric data, mesh, B-rep, beams or slice data depending on where it was headed next.<h2>Synthetic data, because the real stuff is expensive and wrong</h2>The bottleneck Francis Bitonti of <a href="https://www.lexset.ai" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lexset </a>described in 2023 has aged well. Collect images, send them to a third party for annotation, wait, run quality assurance, send them back with feedback, repeat. Hundreds of people touching your data, biases and fatigue baked into the labels, security exposure, and a cycle his customers measured in months.<blockquote>Before working with us this process can take about six months, and we’ve even had some customers say this takes a year to go and collect these data sets.— Francis Bitonti, Lexset, CDFAM NYC 2023</blockquote><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RANHS_7PpE4?&amp;t=296s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">          </iframe>His conclusion was that crowdsourcing does not scale with model size, and that simulation and synthetic data are where the field goes next. It went there. Verena Vogler of McNeel Europe described teams using Grasshopper to generate training sets as a matter of course. Wasil Rezk of BeyondMath showed models trained on self-generated data grounded in first principles rather than on a customer’s simulation archive, reporting predictions within a few percent of full CFD while needing an order of magnitude less data, and more to the point, generalising to geometries the model had never seen.The economic argument is the one that lands with manufacturers. Training data you generate is training data you do not have to buy, annotate, or wait a year for.<h2>Fields, where words run out</h2>The most interesting shift is in what counts as data in the first place.Mike Frei of ARENA-AI opened his Barcelona talk on human intuition — how we know by looking how heavy something is, learned across thousands of small physical feedbacks. Then he put up a band-pass filter, a structure used in RF constantly, and demonstrated how the electromagnetic wave propagates through it.<blockquote>Probably few of you would know. Even fewer people actually have an intuition of how to change the structure to have it do something different.— Mike Frei, ARENA-AI, CDFAM Barcelona 2026 · <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd80tO-pZzM&amp;t=160s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">watch</a></blockquote><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dd80tO-pZzM?&amp;t=160s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">        </iframe>An 8mm square, one layer, and the simulation still takes minutes. A modern system might be twenty layers and half a metre across. There is no vocabulary that compresses this usefully, because the thing being described is a continuous field, and language is the wrong container for it. His group’s answer is two models: a forward model that takes geometry and materials and characterises the electromagnetic behaviour, and an inverse model that runs the other way.The same logic shows up in geometry tools. Essink’s demonstration of field-driven design treats a parameter as something that varies through space rather than as a number — lattice parameters, fillet radii, shell thicknesses, all under spatial control.<blockquote>This is really where we can take data and map it to the geometry, because a lot of the data that we work with is either volumetric or planar.— Wesley Essink, Siemens Digital Industries Software, CDFAM Barcelona 2026</blockquote>The inputs he listed are instructive: CAD features, simulation output, raw point clouds, a CSV with a scalar at every point, image data. Any of it can drive geometry once geometry accepts fields as an input. Luminary’s <a href="https://cdfam.com/luminary/" target="_blank">case for physics AI as a strategic advantage</a> rests on the same foundation — the value sits in the field data, and in being able to compute over it fast enough to stay in the loop.<img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1789403334890-Coreform+A+range+of+analyses+run+with+IGA.jpeg" style="width:100%px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" /><h2>What this adds up to</h2>Formats decide what can move. Synthetic data decides what can be learned. Fields decide what can be expressed at all. The AI tooling is the visible layer, and it rests on those three.Which is the same thing people at CDFAM were discussing<a href="https://cdfam.com/the-need-for-data-for-ai-generated-engineering/" target="_blank"> in 2022</a>, before there was much to demonstrate: more than geometry, this needs design intent and validation.<hr />Hear it from the people building itSearch the <a href="https://cdfam.com/presentation-index/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CDFAM presentation index</a>, with transcripts of every recorded presentation in the series. Search by speaker, company or topic, or search what was actually said to find the moment itself. Every result links to the exact second of the recording.

The data problem

The Data Foundation for Engineering with AI

Across four years of <a href="https://cdfam.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CDFAM Computational Design Symposium</a> talks, AI agents have gone from a research curiosity to something structural engineers run in Slack. The record of how fast that happened is sitting in the transcripts.<table><tbody><tr><td>Event</td><td>Talks referencing AI agents</td></tr><tr><td>NYC 2023</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Berlin 2024</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>NYC 2024</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Amsterdam 2025</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>NYC 2025</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Barcelona 2026</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>Washington DC 2026</td><td>4 of 6, so far</td></tr></tbody></table><a href="https://cdfam.com/cd-dc-26/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Washington DC</a> recordings are still incomplete. Four of the first six talks released mention agents.The word arrived before the capability. In 2023, when Chris McComb of Carnegie Mellon described agents to a <a href="https://cdfam.com/nyc/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CDFAM audience in New York</a>, he was reporting an experiment rather than a product. His group had run human design teams against hybrid ones, and the hybrid teams were missing half their people.<blockquote>We had some human teams, we had some hybrid teams where we ripped out half of the people and replaced them with AI agents.Chris McComb, Carnegie Mellon University, CDFAM NYC 2023</blockquote><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/72yVB9_PNJE?&amp;t=868s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">              </iframe>The finding was that the hybrid teams held up, and that they held up because communication went up rather than down. People took on what McComb called the role of an AI handler, translating between the model and the task so the agents could stay useful members of the team. Two years later that description reads less like a laboratory result and more like a job.<h2>The Turn</h2>What changed between 2023 and now was not the idea but the plumbing. By the Amsterdam symposium in 2025, Andrew Sartorelli of Synera was describing an agentic layer sitting on top of automated workflows that already existed, wired into the systems a manufacturer actually keeps its knowledge in: product lifecycle management, simulation data management, requirements tracking. The agents were not being asked to invent engineering. They were being given access to it.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RfBTGqdDsRg?&amp;t=328s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">             </iframe>That is the pattern that repeats across every discipline in the year since. The interesting work is rarely the model. It is the harness.<h2>Aerospace</h2>Ryan McClelland's generatively designed spacecraft parts at NASA Goddard were already familiar to the CDFAM audience by 2024, but the agent question he raised was about assembly rather than geometry. Once individual evolved components exist, they can be combined into larger systems either by code or by agents, until an automated electronic box is something you specify rather than something you draw. The unit of design moves up a level.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DV_DVw0UIF0?&amp;t=1257s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">           </iframe><h2>Automotive</h2>The most concrete automotive account came from SEAT in <a href="https://cdfam.com/bcn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Barcelona in 2026</a>. A year of automation work on body-in-white development had already cut development time from two hours to five minutes in one case, and from forty-two hours to one in another, before agents entered the picture at all.What they showed next was a multi-agent system for sheet metal manufacturability. An engineer uploads a CAD component into a chat window and a supervisor orchestrates the agents beneath it: one extracting geometry such as wall thicknesses and blank size, another running forming simulation, others handling cost and carbon once sourcing data is supplied.<blockquote>There's a supervisor which is calling and orchestrating all the agents underneath.Tilman Steininger, Synera, CDFAM Barcelona 2026</blockquote>The output is not a verdict but a location. If a component cannot be made, the system returns images showing where the problem is, and the engineer goes back into CATIA to resolve it. That loop, rather than any individual model, is the product.<h2>Architecture</h2>Architecture and structural engineering produced the year's most concrete demonstrations, possibly because the work is so heavily gated by specialist availability. At CD/DC in Washington, Sergey Pigach of CORE studio showed an agentic system his firm runs on AWS and interacts with through Slack. Ask it, in a sentence, for a concrete column stack and footing for a five-storey residential building in New York and let it make the remaining assumptions, and it calls the same tools the firm's engineers use, renders the column and writes a design summary.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TqKjZU0UfT0?&amp;t=189s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">         </iframe>His framing of why it works is the sharpest line anyone offered on the subject.<blockquote>It's not a domain expertise problem. It's really an unhobbling problem.Sergey Pigach, CORE studio | Thornton Tomasetti, CDFAM Washington DC 2026</blockquote>Frontier models, on his evidence, are already competent at engineering work. What they lack is a way to reach the tools. Pigach also noted something easy to overlook: the agent lives in Slack deliberately, because putting it in a shared space where people already work changes the relationship compared with sitting down in front of a chatbot.Matthew Goldsberry and Junling Zhuang of HDR gave the practitioner's counterweight at NYC 2025, opening by locating themselves precisely: from the trenches of trying to use these tools in an architecture firm. Their term for it, form jamming, describes assembling AI coding tools and image generation into something usable per project, and their conclusion was that the framework matters more than any finished pipeline.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fv6yCKngCe0?&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">       </iframe>At Barcelona, Augmenta described full automation of mechanical, electrical and plumbing design as fully agentic, compressing MEP work from weeks to days, while noting plainly that there is a long way still to go.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tmgj-DoGXHQ?&amp;t=784s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">      </iframe><h2>Industrial design</h2>The consumer-facing end of the field has been slower to use the word and quicker to build the constraints agents will eventually need. Ruben Verhack of Datameister put the problem precisely at Amsterdam in 2025. Industrial design is governed by hard points: fixed locations, dimensions and rules that cannot move without major consequence, whether that is where a car's engine and occupants sit or where the batteries and cooling zones fall in a consumer device.<blockquote>You don't want to be creative on these things.Ruben Verhack, Datameister, CDFAM Amsterdam 2025</blockquote><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zoSI979fcjw?&amp;t=165s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">     </iframe>General-purpose visual AI generates from the surface inward, he argued, while design works from the inside out, and the last twenty percent is always where it breaks. His team's answer was to constrain generation to geometry already known to be manufacturable, so an exterior can be explored freely around components that are fixed. Laurence Cook of Generative Engineering made a parallel case at Barcelona for splitting a simulation pipeline apart, so stress, impact displacement and manufacturing cost can be explored alongside a designer working in the language of form.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-RjobfZM634?&amp;t=757s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">    </iframe><h2>What has to exist underneath</h2>The most structural claim came from Intact Solutions at CD/DC. Today's tools, they argued, give you a co-pilot sitting inside an application. What replaces it is a set of agents standing in for domain and subject-matter experts, talking to each other, over what has to be a robust callable physics infrastructure underneath. Without that layer there is nothing for an agent to call, and the demonstration collapses into text generation about engineering rather than engineering.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cwEyKEsIIQ0?&amp;t=513s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">   </iframe>That is also why the sceptical voices this year have been so precise. SimScale's Andrew Acuff opened his CD/DC talk by renaming it: the programme said agentic workflows were reshaping simulation-driven product development, and he told the room he preferred accelerating, because the iterative loop between design and simulation is worth keeping. What he wanted gone was the waiting.<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mr3H905ePsg?&amp;t=55s&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1&amp;origin=https://www.wevolver.com" frameborder="0" class="fr-draggable">  </iframe>Read across four years, that is the actual shape of the change. Not the arrival of autonomous design, which nobody credible is claiming, but the steady disappearance of the queue.<h2>Hear it from the people building it</h2>Every talk quoted here is in the CDFAM presentation index, along with transcripts of every other recorded presentation from the symposium series. Search by speaker, company or topic, or search what was said to find the moment itself. Every result links to the exact second of the recording.<a href="https://cdfam.com/presentation-index/" target="_blank">Explore the CDFAM presentation index</a><img src="https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wevolver-project-images/froala%2F1789145485842-SearchforspecifictermsatCDFAM-ezgif.com-video-to-gif-converter.gif" style="width:100%px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" />

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