Electric car company Fisker was already in trouble, but a negative review on social media may have slammed the brakes on recovery. As Stephen Holmes writes, it’s a cautionary tale that all product designers should heed Businesses love social media. It’s an outstanding insight generator, simultaneously capable of stimulating market demand and signalling where product development should go. But it can also leave a product dead in the water. Recently, I was interested to hear about Fisker, an American electric car company that has been experiencing tough times lately and some social media coverag ..read more

The UltiMaker Factor 4 launch signals a shift in the company’s positioning, stepping away from the desktop 3D printing landscape and hitting the factory floor with a 120kg machine built from the ground-up to support engineering-grade materials. With direct-drive dual extrusion, onboard print process reporting, temperature-controlled build volume, and other enterprise features, it has been built to achieve high levels of predictability and minimal variance. UltiMaker states that in testing the Factor 4 achieved over 95% print completion success and dimensional accuracy ‘within ± 0.2 mm or ± 0.2 ..read more

Altair has acquired Cambridge Semantics, creators of analytical knowledge graphs, that can help powering next generation enterprise data fabrics and generative AI. Altair says that Cambridge Semantics’ graph-powered data fabric technology can accelerate the creation of comprehensive enterprise knowledge graphs, integrating the complex web of structured and unstructured enterprise data together into a single, simplified view. Manufacturers currently use Cambridge Semantics Anzo to integrate siloed data into enterprise-scale knowledge graphs, enabling connectedness and interoperability across en ..read more

Formlabs has launched the Form 4, its latest resin 3D printer that promises two- to five-times faster build speed than its previous model, the Form 3+. Form 4 features Formlabs’ new Low Force Display print engine which it says can achieve maximum vertical print speeds of 100mm per hour across a full size (200 × 125 × 210mm) build, completing it in 2 hours. It has an ultra-high-power backlight alongside its Light Processing Unit 4 and features a dual-layer, flexible film resin tank. An improved print quality can achieve 50-micron pixels, which Formlabs says benefits from advanced pixel smoothin ..read more

Nvidia RTX A400 (4 GB) and A1000 (8 GB) GPUs to enhance AI and visualisation workflows Nvidia has launched its first entry-level professional desktop GPUs to feature RT cores for ray tracing and Tensor cores for AI. The Nvidia RTX A400 (4 GB) and RTX A1000 (8 GB) are built on the Nvidia Ampere architecture, which was first introduced in 2020, and not the Nvidia Ada architecture used in its most recent Nvidia RTX 2000, 4000, 4500, 5000 and 6000 class professional GPUs. According to Nvidia, the new GPUs have AI processing capabilities that surpass traditional CPU-based solutions, enabling profes ..read more

Ansys has partnered with space logistics start-up The Exploration Company to develop its reusable space vehicle, Nyx, via the Ansys Startup Program. Nyx will feature a methane-based propulsion system designed to withstand extreme loads and high thermal and pressure variables. This is hoped to reduce pollutants and extend travel capabilities. More predictively accurate landings are also predicted to take place due to methane-based systems being easier to navigate. Traditional turbo engines rely on fossil fuels that create challenges when it comes to sustainability, and limits deeper space explo ..read more

BMW has explained how from 2025 it will be using WAAM (wire arc additive manufacturing) to create lighter, stronger vehicle parts and generate less waste, to optimise its use of generative design tools. The WAAM process showcased uses aluminium wire feedstock being directly deposited via a laser welding head, allowing the automotive company to build lighter and more rigid than comparable large parts. The CAD showing the generatively designed suspension strut support built using WAAM To optimise parts to be built with the technology, BMW says that a combination of the manufacturing process and ..read more

Luminary Cloud and its computer-aided engineering (CAE) SaaS platform have left stealth mode, promising high-fidelity simulations 100 times faster than legacy vendors. Leveraging the raw speed of GPU- and cloud-based processing, its proprietary simulation platform is powered by parallel Nvidia GPU clusters hosted in the cloud, allowing engineers to iterate and test a variety of scenarios, and optimise product design. Lumi AI, Luminary’s AI-based engineering design copilot, is said to cut down the time engineers spend in setup and simulation, replacing the manual, time-consuming steps of mesh g ..read more

Farsoon has announced the release of the FS721M-8-CAMS Concept Integration, with 8 500W or 1000W lasers onboard the FS721M platform for large format 3D printing. The new 3D printer is a continuation of the FS721M design, which was first introduced in 2021, and is intended for large-format industrial applications, including automotive, moulds and tooling. The system has an internal conveyor system and exchangeable cartridge strategy. The breakout process is carried out simultaneous to the transfer of the completed build cartridge to the inert breakout station and the loading of the second cartr ..read more

Altair has announced a new multi-disciplinary solver for PCB (printed circuit boards) and integrated circuits within SimSolid for electronics for fast and precise design iterations. Altair SimSolid can predict structural issues within circuits without the need for geometry simplification or meshing, two of the most time-consuming parts of traditional finite element analysis. Altair says that the solver will use precise multi-physics scenario exploration for electronics, including chips, circuits and full systems, allowing it to predict complex issues ‘up to 25 times faster’ than alternatives ..read more