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Dear Reader,

Almost there! I cannot believe we are already at the penultimate month of the year and we will soon be in 2023. I was at the shops today and was surprised to see all the christmas stuff which tells of only one thing: we are almost there - and it is all exciting.

I welcome you to this week's newsletter. I hope your week has been great. I will reflect on the following:

1. 3D Printing, NTopology and diverse possibilities.
2. Behind the Scenes at CM Videos: Another milestone.
3. Quote of the Week: The Charged Life and Brendon Burchard.

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3D Printing, NTopology and diverse possibilities

I read this tweet by Enrico Gallino - a self-confessed additive manufacturing enthusiast, where he was jokingly assemblying a team of 3D printed table football players. Here is a screenshot of the tweet.

I was drawn to the little exercise Enrico was making, creating these little footballer models and wondered what the steps were and what can computational modelling help us in the process. So here are critical issues that he will have to overcome in this exercise.

• Virtual domain creation: To be able to 3D print the footballer models, Enrico must be able to create virtual representation of the footballers in order to transfer that into a computer as a CAD design. One way of doing so is to use 3D optical profilometer to scan the physical object so that its surface coordinate positions can be used by another software to reconstruct the virtual domain of the footballers. The resulting CAD file will have to be converted to an STL file which is short for stereolithography. It is a file format that 3D printers read but more can be said about this in future.
• Lattice structure design: The lower regions of the footballer models were designed based on a lattice structure which you can see more clearly in the picture below.

The ball itself was also created as a lattice structure. Each of these models have a different design of a lattice structure. Therefore, Enrico would have to figure out how to design these complex lattice structures as traditional software like ABAQUS, or even CAD tools as SolidWorks are not very suitable for this.

• NTopology: The challenge of designing complex lattice structures is solved by using a bespoke software called Ntopology. It is a next-generation software that is popular in additive manufacturing industries. It is not so easy to master but once you do, you are equipped with a powerful tool for all things 3D printing of complex structures and their design. I have a copy of the software which Ntopology kindly gave me. Whilst I am no expert at using it, I find it very useful for truly structural level analysis of lattice structures. If you want to learn more about it, visit this link: https://ntopology.com/ntopology-software/​
• 3D Printing techniques: Once you have sorted out the virtual domain design of the structure, then the next major obstacle to scale is the actual 3D printing. There are may 3D printing techniques such as Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), Stereolithography (SLA), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), etc. Identifying the right type of 3D printing technique for a given project is important. In the above case, as Enrico explained in his tweet, the footballer models were printed from aluminium using a metal binder jetting technology. This technique involves the selective deposition of liquid binding agent onto a thin layer of powder particles (say foundary sand, ceramics, metal or composites). This process leads to the build up of a good structure, capable of bearing load.

The lesson from the tweet above and the reflections here are that the use of 3D printing technology opens up a large set of opportunities for design engineers in developing next generation products. In future, I will like to publish a series of videos on the use of NTopology in design of lattice-structure based products. I will hope to integrate the Ntopology approach with my typical ABAQUS modelling. Please let me know in a reply to this email if this is something you will like to see.

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Behind the Scenes at CM Videos: Another milestone

This week, I was able to achieve another milestone with the YouTube Channel. I crossed the 2500 subscriber mark. I remember writing about the expectation awhile back, saying the VidIQ software that I use to track and analyze the performance of my YouTube Channel, predicted that the channel will reach 2500 subscribers in early October. I was hoping to beat that but unfortunately did not. I still reached that by 30th October.

Lately, I have seen a reduction in the subscriber rate on the channel. I think this was because I have been experimenting a lot with the channel trying different formats and different videos types. All these make me wise and more knowledgeable of what my audience wants. Another lesson from this is that as a content creator, we cannot always control what metrics we get on the channel such as number of subscribers you get at a given period. It is so arbitrary and not in your control. I will rather set goals such as I want to publish a certain type of video over a certain period as that is something I can control. Whether people subscribe or not to the channel is really not anything I can control. Thank you everyone for supporting the channel and following my journey.

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Quote of the Week: The Charged Life and Brendon Burchard

I started reading this new book called The Charge by Brendon Burchard - a life coach known for his being able to help his clients attain high performance outcomes. In the quote above, he described about a person living a charged life. This is a life where you are living the best of yourself with so much enthusiasm and sport for new and exciting things.

Prior to that quote, Brendon identified three categories of persons: (1) The Caged life, where people are living on other people's terms (2) The Comfortable Life, where you are living an okay life: just like every other person but not stretching yourself to explore new possibilities and finally (3) The Charged Life, where the individual is always exploring new things, being creative, highly optimistic and living the full potential of why they are here on earth.

I have really enjoyed reading this book and have a lot of positive energy following the principles that Brendon presents in the book. One of the critical part of the charged life is the ability of such individuals to create solutions and inspire others. This speaks to me because the creation of the YouTube channel, this newsletter and all the other things that have happened to me in the last 18 months are all aimed at creating solutions for others and inspiring my audience.

It feels like I am living the charged life but I will keep reading the book and see if I truly am. I will encourage you to think of what potentials there are in you and ask yourself as the quote stated above: "Am I living my truth and actualizing my potentioal? Am I living an inspired life and inspiring others." If you do so, you will find you will be so happy, very positive and feel quite fulfilled. It is not too late to start thinking of what marks you will leave on the sands of time.

That is it for another week. It ended up being a long newsletter but I hope some of these reflections have really blessed you. I have enjoyed reflecting on these issues.

I wish you a wonderful weekend and we will catch up again next week. Tot Ziens (Bye bye in Dutch).