Brief

Weekly 3D Printing Brief

Jessica’s Monday note on metal AM, binder jetting, production additive, and what it means for digital manufacturing. Subscribe from any post sidebar.

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Binder jetting goes hot: superalloys, cleaner binders, and production metal AM

  • Senke’s Andon Tablets Meet the Five-Second MES-to-Ticket Handshake
    Senke (Shanghai) launched Andon-enabled industrial tablets on August 21, 2026—high-brightness multi-touch with built-in green/yellow/red/blue status LEDs. Plants that wire MES downtime into CMMS tickets cut unplanned downtime 30–50% with auto work orders in under five seconds.
  • Sign In With Entra. Keep the Thread On Your Floor.
    N23D signs in with Microsoft Entra ID — the badge plant people already wear — while the digital thread stays local-first on your floor. One native Rust binary. WordPress is marketing only.
  • Cimatron CAM Agent Turns Geometry and Tool Libraries Into Full 3-Axis Paths
    Modern Machine Shop (Sept. 16, 2026) covers Cimatron’s IMTS CAM Agent—built with Limitless Labs—which reads part geometry and shop tool libraries to generate complete three-axis toolpaths, alongside SuperFinish and FeedOptimizer as AI programming capacity hits the show floor.
  • Fisica Bets on Creo and Windchill for Post-Merger Configuration Control
    PTC said Sept. 15, 2026 that Fisica Applied Technologies—defense antennas, EM systems, batteries after an L3Harris spinoff merging three antenna providers—standardized on Creo CAD and Windchill PLM for design consistency, configuration control, and traceability across four business units.
  • PLM on a Lease Is Not Ownership
    Subscription PLM keeps your design record on a vendor clock. That is rent, not ownership. N23D’s claim: permanent license, local-first thread, one native Rust binary.
  • SOLIDWORKS FD04 Puts Leo on Explodes, BREP Conversion, and Renders
    TECHNIA reports SOLIDWORKS Design R2026x FD04 (Sept. 12, 2026) ships LEO-prompted exploded views, sharper BREP-to-parametric conversion, assembly-instruction PDFs, and a Visualize rendering assistant—while Engineering.com documents blue-token metering at $1,250 per 25,000 tokens.
  • Manufacturers Fund Machines Over ERP as AI Raises the Data Bar
    A Sept. 14 Manufacturing Dive report cites Caddi data: 69% of manufacturers plan physical-asset spend vs 33% for ERP/MES—while AI agents still need clean books, and Schreiber Foods is putting agents across 40+ sites.
  • N23D Keeps Your Digital Thread On the Floor
    N23D is one native Rust binary with a local-first digital thread — your plant’s truth stays on-site, with Entra for identity and a permanent license instead of cloud rent.
  • Greenheck Standardizes MES Across 30+ Plants
    Greenheck Group selected Critical Manufacturing MES to replace site-by-site tools and SAP MII across more than thirty facilities in the U.S., Mexico, and India—starting with a pilot and phased campus rollout as MII support ends in 2027.
  • Thirteen Vendor Handoffs Is Not a Digital Thread
    Manufacturing stacks that pass BOM, change, and quality across thirteen vendors are collecting an integration tax — not running a digital thread. N23D’s bar is one native Rust binary.