Precision, materials,and cost: in the open.

Technical briefs on where continuous-fiber composite additive manufacturing beats machined metal, where it does not, and how to tell the difference on your own parts: written for the engineers and buyers who scan for their pipeline, not for the hype cycle.

Featured·WHITE PAPER·Aug 13, 2026

The weak axis: designing composite tooling around layer adhesion

Fused filament fabrication produces anisotropic parts, and the direction of that weakness is known before the file is sliced. This paper consolidates the three mechanisms behind the Z-axis deficit and the four design responses available while the model is still open: division into co-parts, mechanical compression, distributed shear, and embedded threaded interfaces. It reports no original testing and publishes no allowables.

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Nine pieces: one white paper on designing around layer adhesion, and eight briefs on the economics, materials, and shop-floor decisions around it. New work lands as we test, measure, and learn something worth writing down.

01The weak axis: designing composite tooling around layer adhesionFused filament fabrication produces anisotropic parts, and the direction of that weakness is known before the file is sliced. This paper consolidates the three mechanisms behind the Z-axis deficit and the four design responses available while the model is still open: division into co-parts, mechanical compression, distributed shear, and embedded threaded interfaces. It reports no original testing and publishes no allowables.ENGINEERING · WHITE PAPER · 11 min 02The load path decides where your printed part splitsA printed fixture that comes back in two pieces almost always broke along a layer boundary, and that boundary was set the moment the model went on the build plate. Orientation is a structural decision, not a print-shop preference. Here are the four moves that keep a part together, and where to send the load case.ENGINEERING · 5 min 03Threads that hold: metal hardware in composite toolingPrinted threads are the default failure point when a composite fixture meets torque or pull-out load. The fix is not more plastic: it is embedded metal, designed in from the datasheet rather than added at the bench. Here is where heat-set inserts, bolts, and machine keys go, and how to install them without ruining the part.ENGINEERING · 7 min 04When tooling becomes the bottleneck: the schedule case for printed fixturesMost printed-tooling decisions get argued as a unit-price comparison against a machined fixture. On a running line, the decision that matters is a schedule and risk decision: what the wait costs, what a small lot can carry, and what your team can change overnight. Here is the logic, and the places it does not apply.TOOLING · 6 min 05From file to part: export fidelity and part markingTwo decisions made in your CAD session show up permanently in the finished part: how the mesh is exported, and where the text sits. Here are the export numbers we design to, the marking rules that keep a serial number legible, and the one setting that yields a flawless part at entirely the wrong scale.WORKFLOW · 5 min 06Where composite additive beats machined metal on costThe cost-per-part curve that has governed manufacturing since die casting bends at a break-even point, and most make-or-buy arguments are really arguments about where that point sits. Additive flattens the curve by removing the tooling overhead that gives it its shape, and for domestic composite tooling a 50% metal tariff moves the whole line down again. Here is how to find where your parts sit on it.ECONOMICS · 7 min 07What actually makes a composite part strongCommodity plastics, high-temperature thermoplastics, chopped-fiber matrices, and continuous-fiber reinforcement are four different answers to one question: will it hold? Here is what each tier buys you, and why a carbon fiber placed on the load path can stand in for machined aluminum.MATERIALS · 8 min 08Why additive pilots stall, and how to scale themMost additive programs stall in the innovation lab, not on the floor. Three failure modes explain almost every pilot that never reaches production, and a four-step path carries the technology into daily use. You do not have to own the machine to start.ADOPTION · 6 min 093D-printed components in a stamping dieStamping-die fabrication has barely changed in a century, and iterating on one is brutally expensive. However, additive does not have to replace the hardened working faces to change the economics of a die: it changes the cost of everything around them, such as strippers, heels, gauges, and prototype tools.TOOLING · 7 min

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