Inside manufacturing

Inside the factory. Manufacturing a Suitcase 🛫🧳🏖️.

Inside our battery pack manufacturing line. Designed for aviation.... Built for scale.show more

Inside our Solar Array Manufacturing Center in Sunnyvale, advanced... robotics, precision manufacturing and skilled technicians are redefining how high-performance solar arrays are built for space.show more

Inside the plant at Cleveland NC. Freightliner Truck manufacturing... plant has a 3 alarm fire going on. You can see my earlier post of the outside.show more

Don’t worry CO, none of the HALF A TRILLION... DOLLARS worth of AI computing systems NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang revealed for manufacturing inside the United States of America,will come here. CO Dems will continue to drive away the trillions of investments coming in for manufacturing. Meaning no new jobs or better pay. Vote Red 🔴 this Nov if you want prosperity!show more

You can’t convince me there isnt a Lab somewhere... where they are manufacturing Nicki Minaj clones and putting them into the world. this looks like she was born in a laboratory inside of Onika Universityshow more

Last month Anker recalled over one million power banks... due to an unspecified battery manufacturing issue. We CT scanned 3 recalled power banks and 2 that weren’t recalled to see what’s going on inside. Here’s what we found…show more

WATCH: President Trump jokes about the packed crowd and... hot temperatures inside a manufacturing facility in Michigan, saying that giving speeches in the heat helps him stay in shape. "It is a little warm up here, but I love that because every time I make a speech, I lose weight. It's wonderful. It's a wonderful way to lose weight."show more

China now operates over 1,000 industrial grasshopper farms that... mass-produce hundreds of millions of insects annually. Inside large greenhouses, these locusts are bred and harvested in 35 days for deep-fried snacks, commercial protein powders, animal feed, and traditional skin remedies. This aggressive scaling of insect farming is rapidly expanding across rural provinces to meet commercial manufacturing and agricultural supply demands.show more

Polymorphic moulding: a manufacturing method that forms parts using... a grid of computer-controlled pins: Each pin can move up or down independently, so together they shape a surface that acts like a custom mould. Instead of building a fixed mould for every product, the machine quickly repositions the pins to match a new digital model. This means a mould can be created in minutes, used, and then reshaped again for the next design. Because the hardware stays the same and only its configuration changes: > no permanent tooling is needed > very little material is wasted > setup time between products is minimal The system essentially turns mould making into a programmable process. Engineers send a design file, the pins form the mould geometry, and the material is cast or formed inside it. Especially useful for rapid prototyping and customised manufacturing, where many different shapes must be produced in small quantities without rebuilding tools each time. Credit: ---- Weekly robotics and AI insights. Subscribe free:show more

❗️❗️🇺🇦Ukraine is on the verge of an unprecedented military... manufacturing leap, with domestic production of Patriot air defense missiles poised to launch within a matter of mere weeks. Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz revealed that Ukraine is fast-tracking a highly classified tech-transfer initiative to assemble these sophisticated interceptors directly on its soil. Poland—one of only four NATO nations authorized by Washington to handle elite Patriot manufacturing and maintenance technologies—is actively partnering with Kyiv to establish the localized production lines. To bridge the critical gap before the assembly lines go live, Warsaw has also delivered five high-end PAC-3 interceptors from its own stockpiles at the urgent request of NATO leadership, a move the minister stressed pushed Poland's current donation capacity to its absolute limit without compromising its own airspace. This rapid industrial mobilization shatters the timeline of traditional military bureaucracy and represents a monumental shift for European security. By bypassing standard logistical bottlenecks and anchoring Patriot production inside a combat zone, Ukraine and its closest NATO allies are creating an unbreakable logistical fortress that fundamentally undermines Russia's strategy of exhausting Ukrainian air defenses.show more

❗️❗️🇺🇦Ukraine is about to shatter Russia’s final illusion of... safety with its own homegrown ballistic missile, and the Kremlin is completely defenseless against what is coming this autumn. Ukrainian defense startup Fire Point is on the absolute precipice of a historic military breakthrough. Co-founder and designer Denys Shtylerman confirmed that only a single engine test stands between Ukraine and its first operational, domestically produced ballistic missile. Once this final milestone is cleared, flight testing begins immediately, with plans to combat-test the weapon directly inside Russian territory by autumn 2026. This marks a devastating strategic shift that permanently alters the geometry of the war. By manufacturing its own ballistic arsenal, Ukraine completely bypasses Western restrictions on long-range strikes, creating an independent deterrent that leaves Russia's deep rear totally exposed and dooms Moscow's critical military infrastructure to an inevitable, unprotected beating.show more

The PCB’s in today’s smartphones contain an ever-increasing density... of components and integration. The iPhone uses “Substrate-Like” PCB technology to achieve impressive levels of component density, everything is so closely packed, and no space is wasted. With this PCB technology, a "PCB sandwich" could be made by creating cavities in an FR4 PCB substrate and then stacking another PCB on top to form a lid, the “walls” formed by the cavities can be plated and then used as interconnects. This is similar to hollowing out the inside of a loaf of bread and then filling it with cheese & ingredients – or components in this case! Standard FR4 substrates A clever and smart PCB technology for the modern smartphone. Apple has been using Substrate-Like PCBs since the iPhone X and has been evolving and iterating it with every new iPhone release. It will be interesting to see how this concept is implemented now with the new iPhone 15, looking forward to seeing iFixit next teardown! #b3d #blender3d #geometrynodes #iPhone15Pro #iPhone15 #simulation #electronics #Engineering #hardware #Smartphones #science #kicad #altium #freecad #Eevee #pcbdesign #manufacturing #technology #artshow more

i'm not fine after reading this a guy with... a laptop got his own silicon chip manufactured with software Google gave away. the commercial version of that software rents for up to $1,000,000 a year. he never signed a vendor contract and never paid for a seat. he wrote the logic, pushed it to GitHub, and nine months later a wafer came out of a fab. getting silicon with your name in it used to take a company. now it takes nine months. his slot was 160 by 100 microns: about 1,000 logic gates, 8 inputs, 8 outputs, clocked past 50 MHz. more than 600 designs have already come back this way. this is the open silicon stack. Google and SkyWater published a complete 130nm manufacturing process, DARPA funded the software that turns code into a fab-ready file, and all of it sits in public repositories. turns out the whole flow fits in a git push: - write the logic in Verilog, or drag gates around in a browser if you have never done this - push to GitHub, an action runs synthesis, placement, routing and sign-off on the commit - OpenROAD finishes place-and-route with no human in the loop, code to fab file inside 24 hours - SKY130 carries the fab's real design rules, so passing the checks means it is manufacturable - a few hundred designs share one wafer, which is the only reason a person can afford the masks nobody puts this part in the thread: 130nm is roughly where the industry stood in 2001, and you wait six to nine months for silicon. this does not get you a GPU. it gets you a real object with your logic inside it. bookmark this. the video is one of those designs opened layer by layer, and every rectangle in it exists in the file that was sent to the fab.show more

🚨 SOUTH KOREAN SCIENTISTS JUST CREATED HOLLOW SILICON NANOTUBES... THAT TRAP HEAT AND TURN WASTE ENERGY INTO ELECTRICITY. Researchers at POSTECH have developed a new hollow silicon nanotube structure that dramatically reduces thermal conductivity. By turning solid nanowires into microscopic pipes, they trapped heat-carrying particles (phonons) inside the tubes, cutting thermal conductivity by 70% compared to solid wires. Even when both structures had the same surface area, the hollow nanotubes still ran 33% cooler. This phonon localization effect previously thought to require extreme cold or exotic materials was achieved at near-room temperature using simple silicon nanotubes. Why this matters: • Waste heat from data centers, EV batteries, factories, and electronics is currently lost this could capture and convert it into usable electricity • The technology uses abundant, cheap silicon instead of rare and expensive materials like bismuth and tellurium • It’s highly compatible with existing semiconductor manufacturing, making large-scale production more realistic • It solves a long-standing problem: silicon is great for chips but terrible for thermoelectric energy conversion The deeper implication: This breakthrough shows that clever nanoscale engineering can unlock new capabilities from ordinary materials. By controlling how heat moves at the atomic level, researchers are opening a path to more efficient energy recovery systems without relying on scarce resources. As AI and computing power keep growing, finding ways to recycle the massive amounts of waste heat they generate will become increasingly important. How significant do you think waste-heat recovery technologies like this could become in the next decade? Follow for more frontier materials science and energy innovation.show more

Tesla cut its Gigacasting processing time from 180 seconds... to 75 seconds — nearly 60% faster 🌊 The Model Y Juniper rear casting now weighs approximately 60 kg, down from 67 kg on the previous generation. Much of the industry conversation centers on press size and tonnage. The concrete gains in speed and mass on this high-volume part come from targeted process refinements inside the die and across the production system. -> Processing time reduced from 180s to 75s on the rear casting -> Part weight lowered by 7 kg through incremental design improvements -> Faster cycle achieved while improving microstructure and mechanical properties Conformal cooling makes the difference. Complex water channels, drilled or through 3D-printed inserts directly into the die steel, target hot spots and pull heat out rapidly and evenly across the entire casting. This accelerates solidification, reduces temperature gradients, and allows the part to be ejected sooner without defects. The result is a casting that is both lighter and stronger, produced in less than half the time. Supporting elements include advanced software that controls every injection parameter and runner/gate designs refined through five years of iteration since 2020 + close collaboration among casting designers, die engineers, production, and safety teams running high-volume lines on three continents. Tesla’s manufacturing edge is not the Giga Press hardware itself. It is the accumulated knowledge of how to run these machines at scale. 📊 The Gigacasting Database gives you the full picture of the market: Credit: Atomic Industries - Aaron Slodov ❌ Don't leave your insights to chance with the X algorithm ✅ Subscribe for free to my weekly newsletter about all things Gigacasting and magnesium Thixomolding: 📬show more

This looks like a simple transparent shock absorber filled... with oil. But what you are seeing is one of the most destructive phenomena in fluid engineering. This is cavitation in its true form. The white cloud forming beneath the piston is not foam and it is not air. The oil is literally changing from liquid to vapour at room temperature. When the piston moves rapidly, the oil is forced through tiny passages inside the damper. The fluid velocity increases, the local pressure drops, and if it falls below the oil's vapour pressure, the liquid begins to boil without any increase in temperature. The moment the pressure recovers, those microscopic vapour bubbles collapse almost instantly. And that is where the real damage begins. The destructive forces of cavitation is really not understood well by most. A collapsing cavitation bubble creates shockwaves and high-speed microjets that strike nearby surfaces with enormous local forces. Repeated millions of times, these tiny implosions can slowly eat away hardened metals, destroy precision components and reduce the lifespan of expensive machinery across industries. This same invisible phenomenon is one of the biggest challenges in naval engineering. Ship propellers operating under enormous loads can suffer cavitation erosion, losing efficiency while creating underwater noise. For advanced stealth submarines, that noise can become a major problem because cavitation can reveal their position. Decades of research have gone into specialised propeller designs, pump-jets, surface finishes and hydrodynamic optimisation to delay its formation. The same issues affects hydroelectric turbines that convert the energy of entire rivers into electricity, and industrial pumps that move oil, chemicals and water through critical infrastructure around the world. Perhaps the most remarkable part is that after 4-5 decades of advances in metallurgy, coatings and manufacturing, engineers still cannot simply build a material that is immune to cavitation. The solution is not to make stronger metals forever. It is to understand the fluid dynamics so precisely that cavitation is prevented before in those destructive bubbles ever form.show more

Look closely at a roughly $109 million F-35B and... the remarkable feature is what you barely see, fastener heads, wide panel gaps or steps between sections. That apparent single shell contains more than 40,000 threaded fasteners and over 1,000 measured seams in between panels. Despite weighing up to 27 tons and measuring 15.6 m long with a 10.7 m wingspan, the F-35B has an estimated frontal radar cross section of just 0.001 m², roughly a metal golf ball once in the air. Even advanced airborne AESA fighter radars and ground based long range SAM engagement radars like the S400 system, typically cannot detect or lock it until within 25-40 km, making long range air-to-air or surface to air missiles extremely hard to employ against it. Radar does not see a “smooth”surface as we do. The aircraft’s shape redirects energy away, while low observable materials absorb part of it. But a single raised fastener head, open or uneven panel gap or small step becomes a new edge or cavity that creates a radar signature. It disrupts electrical currents across the surface and can scatter energy back which advanced radar can pick up. Composite skins are formed on precision tools that set the exterior contour, then drilled to fit the structure beneath. The fasteners are not hidden inside, countersunk heads pass through the skin, are set flush or recessed, measured, filled until the curve is restored, and measured again. Exact F-35 tolerance limits are not public, but the inspection tool repeats to better than 0.001 inch, about 25 micrometres. Seams are separately checked for gap and vertical mismatch, conductive gap fillers and low-observable coatings help stop those transitions becoming strong reflectors points. Fourth-generation fighters already used flush fasteners for reducing aero drag. The real fifth-generation leap is treating every minute seam, material change and removable panel as radar geometry, then reproducing that finish across a fleet. At sea, salt, moisture, fluids and panel removal make preserving it a permanent maintenance discipline. A stealth outline can be copied from a photograph. The real manufacturing capability is making tens of thousands of parts and panels behave like one electromagnetic surface and restoring it for decades. Source, Pacific Airshowshow more

In 1964, a 17 year old from San Diego... conducted the most dangerous psychology experiment ever attempted by a teenager. Randy Gardner stayed awake for 264 hours (11 days) with: • No stimulants • No caffeine • No medical suppressants And Stanford sleep researchers realized too late they couldn't stop him. What happened inside his brain during those 264 hours rewrote everything we thought we knew about consciousness. By day three, Randy's short term memory had completely collapsed. He couldn't remember starting a sentence by the time he reached the end of it. Researchers would ask him to count backward from 100, and he'd stop at 65, staring blankly, having forgotten the entire concept of numbers. But the terrifying part wasn't the memory loss. Randy's brain began creating a second reality that ran parallel to the real one. He'd have full conversations with people who weren't there. He'd walk to locations that didn't exist. His eyes stayed open, his body kept moving, but his mind was living inside elaborate hallucinations that felt completely real to him. Sleep researchers had predicted cognitive decline. They hadn't predicted that the sleep deprived brain would start *manufacturing* an alternate conscious experience to fill the gap. Dr. William Dement, the Stanford researcher monitoring Randy, discovered something that changed sleep science forever. The hallucinations weren't random. They followed the exact same patterns as REM sleep dreams, complete with narrative arcs, emotional themes, and symbolic imagery. Randy's brain was dreaming while awake, projecting dream content directly onto his waking perception. The boundary between sleep and consciousness was more than binary. It was fluid, and without sleep to maintain the separation, the two states began bleeding into each other. By day nine, Randy couldn't distinguish between his hallucinations and reality. He became convinced that Dr. Dement was plotting against him. He accused the researchers of being imposters. His paranoid delusions were so convincing that even the people documenting his mental breakdown began questioning their own perceptions. Randy's EEG readings showed something unprecedented. His brain waves were cycling through all four stages of sleep while he remained physically awake and mobile. His neurons were firing in sleep patterns, but his motor cortex kept his body upright and functioning. He had become a walking sleeper, a conscious dreamer, a person experiencing two incompatible states of being simultaneously. When Randy finally slept after 264 hours, he didn't collapse into a coma. He slept for 14 hours and 40 minutes, then woke up completely normal. The hallucinations vanished. The paranoia disappeared. His memory returned. But the Stanford team realized they had documented something extraordinary about human consciousness that nobody talks about. Your brain doesn't need sleep to *function*. Randy proved the human body can operate for weeks without it. What your brain needs sleep for is to maintain the distinction between internal mental reality and external physical reality. Sleep isn't rest for your body. Sleep is a firewall for your mind. Without that firewall, the dream world and waking world merge into a single, indistinguishable experience where hallucinations become as real as the room you're sitting in. Randy recovered completely, but sleep researchers never attempted the experiment again. The ethical implications were too severe. They had accidentally discovered that consciousness is far more fragile than anyone suspected, held together by nothing more than eight hours of unconsciousness every night. Every time you go to sleep, your brain is performing the most critical maintenance operation in human biology. It's rebuilding the wall between dreams and reality. And without that wall, there is no difference.show more