Materials & manufacturing processes
Product design & engineering
1,896 episodes across 44 shows cover materials & manufacturing processes. The shows that cover it most are Shop Talk Live, Making It and Hackaday Podcast. The most recent, from 14 Oct 2026, is “Designing for Joy: Finding Meaning in Industrial Design with Daniela Garcia | S3E04” from Designing in the Wild.
Choosing and working materials and processes: injection molding, sheet metal, casting, machining, textiles, composites, wood, food formulation.
1896 episodes from 44 shows, most relevant and most recent first.
1896 episodes
Why Your Toughest Parts Still Use 50-Year-Old Materials w/ Fazal Mahmood
Fazal Mahmood, co-founder and CEO of Phase Shift Technologies, explains how AI is accelerating the discovery of new metal alloys to replace 50-year-old materials in industries like oil and gas, aerospace, and defense. He details the…
STL366: No Mallet is Safe
Shea Alexander, custom furniture maker and co-owner of Alexander Brothers lumberyard, discusses the critical importance of context when selecting and working with wood. He explains how factors like wood movement, UV exposure, and oxidation…
U.S. Navy's Captain Deichler on AM in the Submarine Industrial Base
Captain Jason Deichler, Chief of Staff for Submarine Programs at the U.S. Navy, explains the Navy's strategy to achieve a 'one plus two' production goal (one Columbia-class and two Virginia-class submarines annually) by rebuilding a…
#248 - How to Work with a Formulator with Rebecca Urciuolo from BevSource (FB Solutions Group)
Rebecca Urciuolo, a formulator with 23 years of experience at BevSource (FB Solutions Group), explains the critical importance of writing a detailed project brief and using reference products to guide beverage development. She details the…
R&D RADIO: Brian Chau from Chau Time
Brian Chau, founder of Chau Time, an R&D operations consulting firm, explains his four-phase process for taking food products from concept to commercialization. He details the concept of 'fiber stacking' used in functional chocolates like…
STL360: Veneer Glue—Stirred, Not Shaken
Steve Der-Garabedian, author of 'Veneering Essentials', joins hosts Vic and Ben to demystify veneering, discussing why it eliminates wood movement and extends resources like White Ash. The conversation covers practical techniques…
The Race to Replace Plastic: 2026 SF Climate Week
Julia Marsh, CEO of Sway, and Molly Morse, CEO of Mango Materials, discuss replacing petroleum-based plastics with seaweed-derived polymers and methane-derived PHA bioplastics. They explain how these materials integrate into existing…
Why AM and Orthotics & Prosthetics are the Perfect Fit
Brent Wright, VP at EastPoint Prosthetics and co-founder of Life Enabled, explains how additive manufacturing is transforming orthotics and prosthetics (O&P) by replacing hazardous, non-digital traditional workflows with scalable…
#453: Sustainable Material Selection in MedTech with Lucas Pianegonda
Lucas Pianegonda, founder of Gradical, explains that MedTech sustainability is driven by investor pressure, hospital customer demand, competitive FOMO, and EU regulations like the Green Deal. He details how materials and use-phase account…
Operator Spotlight: R&D Insights with Matt Craighead, R&D Manager Trubar
Matt Craighead, R&D Manager at Trubar, explains the end-to-end product development process for their vegan, gluten-free, soy-free protein bars, emphasizing that manufacturability often outweighs pure flavor perfection. He details how small…
Printing Batteries, how AM is changing Battery Manufacturing and Performance
Karl Littau, CTO of Sakuu, explains how the company is disrupting the stagnant battery manufacturing industry by replacing wet, solvent-based slurry coating with dry powder-bed additive processes. Littau details how this shift eliminates…
S7E5 Scott Roberts | The Stainless Steel Hardening Process Most Engineers Don’t Know Exists
Scott Roberts, North American Regional Sales Manager for Bodycote’s S³P technologies, explains the Kolsterising process, a low-temperature carbon diffusion treatment that hardens stainless steel and cobalt-chromium alloys without…
AI Is Getting Hot: Can Additive Manufacturing Help Cool It Down?
Professor PS Lee, founder of CoolestDC and head of Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS), explains how additive manufacturing (AM) enables complex unibody cold plates that reduce junction temperatures by…
STL349: Finishers on Flexner
Mike Mascelli, John Coffey, and Mitch Kohanek discuss the legacy of Bob Flexner, author of 'Understanding Wood Finishing,' and his role in creating a community for professional finishers. The guests highlight how Flexner’s book demystified…
232 - MedTech Material Selection: Cost, Compliance, Sustainability, and Biocompatibility Risk
Lucas Pianegonda, founder of Gradical, explains why medtech companies must move away from defaulting to legacy materials or molder preferences toward a structured, data-driven material selection framework. He details how early decisions on…
Founder Feature: Reinventing Honey Through Design, Packaging, and Consumer Psychology with Noah Phillips of Honey Department
Noah Phillips, founder of Honey Department, explains how his background in advertising and design led him to reinvent the honey category by packaging 100% raw thick honey in an aluminum tube. He details the decision to use creamed honey…
250. MIT’s Injectable Mini Liver Could Save Thousands of Lives
MIT researchers Professor Sangita Batia and post-doc Vardhan Kumar developed INSIGHT, an injectable 'satellite liver' using hydrogel beads and hepatocytes to support failing livers without surgery. The hosts discuss how this material…
Inside GM's Additive Industrialization Center with Ante Lausic
Ante Lausic, Lead Process Engineer at General Motors' Additive Industrialization Center (AIC), explains that scaling additive manufacturing (AM) in automotive requires AM-native designs, automotive-grade materials, and cost-effective…
351 - The best RTD innovation I've seen in packaging! 2 cans with Tatiana Chamorro from Toucan
Tatiana Chamorro, CMO and founding team member of Toucan Cocktails, explains the engineering and packaging decisions behind their two-can RTD system. She details the transition from leaky 3D-printed prototypes to a final design featuring a…
Mechanical Engineering at Oxide [chapter images]
Oxide mechanical engineers Doug Wibben, Brooks Willis, Elliott Donlon, and Ben Williams discuss scaling manufacturing for the Cosmo rack, focusing on simplifying sheet metal assembly by replacing PEM fasteners with extrude-and-tap features…
STL334: Understanding Hoadley
Furniture conservator and wood identification expert Randy Wilkinson joins Shop Talk Live to discuss his work and his e-learning course on identifying wood. Wilkinson explains how he transitioned from electrical engineering to 18th-century…
534: I Think We'll Add a Head
Aaed Musa, co-founder of the robotics startup Mecha and a popular YouTube creator, discusses his journey from 3D-printing servo robots in his parents' garage to designing advanced quadrupedal robots. He details the mechanical evolution…
Where it comes up8:12
The rise of metal fuels
Richard Wang, co-founder and CEO of Voya Energy, explains how his company is replacing diesel generators with electrochemical generators powered by aluminum pellets. Wang details why diesel remains dominant due to its high energy density…
Designing Space Robots
Chris Finger, a sales engineer for Harmonic Drive, discusses the technical challenges of designing space robots, focusing on the specific requirements for strain wave gearing in vacuum and extreme temperature environments. He details the…
Paradromics CEO Matt Angle on building the highest data rate brain-computer interface, hermetic sealing vs. Neuralink, and what makes BCIs last a decade in the body.
Matt Angle, CEO of Paradromics, explains the engineering behind the Connexus brain-computer interface, which achieves over 200 bits per second and is designed to last more than a decade in the body. He contrasts Paradromics' hermetic…
Episode 160: Robotic blacksmiths - Edward Mehr
Edward Mehr, Co-Founder and CEO of Machina Labs, explains how their RoboCraftsman system uses AI-driven robotics to perform flexible, on-demand metal forming for aerospace, defense, and automotive industries. He details the transition from…
#445: ISO 10993-1:2025: What Risk-Based Biocompatibility Means for MedTech
Thor Rollins, a leader at Nelson Labs and convener of the ISO committee revising ISO 10933-1, explains the 2025 standard's shift from checkbox testing to a risk-based approach aligned with ISO 14971. He details new requirements for…
Inside a $300 million bet on AI for physical R&D
Ekin Dogus Cubuk, co-founder of Periodic Labs, explains how his company combines frontier AI models with automated physical labs to accelerate materials discovery. Cubuk argues that recent advances in reasoning models like OpenAI's O1 and…
STL326: No Finish? No Problem!
Seri Robinson, a wood scientist and author known as Dr. Spalting, explains why unfinished wood is the safest material for food contact, debunking the need for mineral oil or wax on cutting boards. She details how wood's hygroscopic nature…
From Make-Use-Throw Away to Circular: Plastics Manufacturing’s Next Chapter w/ Ross Eisenberg
Ross Eisenberg, President of America’s Plastic Makers (the plastics division of the American Chemistry Council), discusses the industry's shift from a linear 'make-use-throw away' model to a circular economy driven by advanced chemical…
210. Origami-inspired Concrete Construction
Hosts discuss research by ETH Zurich PhD student Lote Shadabi Bishan on origami-inspired concrete construction that reduces CO2 emissions. They explore how a reusable, foldable mold made of wood and fabric creates strong, vaulted concrete…
Mini Episode: Extracts and Essences (Tea, Coffee, and more) with Vibrant Ingredients
Bill Hayes, Director of R&D Applications at Vibrant Ingredients, explains the technical distinction between tea essences (capturing volatile aromas via steam condensation) and tea extracts (providing body, color, and astringency from…
Bonus Episode: Giving robots the power of human touch
Vladimir Ivan, Vice President of Robotics at Touchlab, explains how his company develops e-skins to give robots the sense of touch, moving beyond visual-only perception. He details their new product, Tacto, a generalizable tactile…
The state and future of nuclear waste
Dr. Jen Shafer, a former ARPA-E director and professor at the Colorado School of Mines, explains the composition of spent nuclear fuel, noting that 95% is unreacted uranium dioxide while the remaining 5% contains long-lived actinides and…
220. How Popcorn Popped an Idea for Sustainable Manufacturing
Hosts Bo and Maxine discuss a Carnegie Mellon University research breakthrough that uses microwave energy to synthesize MXene ceramics in 90 minutes, reducing energy consumption by 75% compared to the traditional 40-hour furnace process…
Fixing AI’s Bottlenecks: Memory, Scale, and Sparsity
A panel of neuromorphic engineering experts, including Dr. Damien Querlioz, Dr. Julian Büchel, Professor Tamalika Banerjee, Dr. Maxence Ernoult, and Professor Steve Furber, discusses the bottlenecks in AI hardware at the Atoms to Bits…
Episode 153: Origami-inspired robots - Chenying Liu
Chenying Liu, a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, explains how embedding intelligence into robot bodies through geometry and materials enhances autonomy. She details the design of an origami-inspired robotic gripper that…
AI Update in Additive Manufacturing: Design, Process, Workforce and Industry impact
Duann Scott, founder of CDFAM and executive director of the 3MF Consortium, discusses the evolution of AI in additive manufacturing, moving from hype to practical tools like the Raven plugin for Rhino/Grasshopper. He highlights the…
The world of battery recycling
Dr. Dan Steingart, chair of the Earth and Environmental Engineering Department at Columbia University, explains the technical and economic realities of battery recycling, noting that current feedstock is dominated by gigafactory scrap…
Can AI revolutionize materials discovery?
Shayle Khan interviews Ekin Dogus Cubuk, a research scientist at Google DeepMind, about the current state and future potential of using AI for materials discovery. They discuss why historical material discovery was often serendipitous, the…
316 - Micro plastics are where?!? packaging today show special
Hosts discuss a Fizz.org review on microplastics and nanoplastics in packaging, noting that eliminating plastic entirely is currently impossible due to necessary polymer coatings on paper and glass alternatives. They highlight the societal…
239. The Saucies: 2025 Recap & TNB Turns Five!
The hosts of The Next Byte Podcast celebrate the show's 5th anniversary and recap their 2025 favorites, highlighting nine key episodes ranging from sustainable recycling to AI-driven manufacturing. They discuss Georgia Tech's research on…
Episode 147: Miniature living robots - Maria Guix
Maria Guix, a senior researcher at the University of Barcelona’s ChemInFlow lab, discusses her work on miniaturized living robots that combine synthetic structures with living muscle cells. She explains how these biohybrid entities…
Designing for Joy: Finding Meaning in Industrial Design with Daniela Garcia | S3E04
Industrial designer Daniela Garcia, who revitalized the Boston IDSA chapter and works with companies like G appliances and Medea, explains her design philosophy centered on 'joy' and reducing user stress. She details her workflow, which…
172. Don’t Throw Away Coffee Grounds; They Could Solve The World’s Water Crisis!
Hosts Daniel and Forbode discuss research from George Mason University’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, led by Professor Jeff Moran, on creating 'coffee bots' from spent coffee grounds to clean polluted water. They explain how the…
146 - Lyophilization/Freeze-Drying, Filling, Sublimation, Disorption, Backfilling, Stoppers, Vacuum and Water's Triple Point with David Simoens
David Simoens, founder of Life Science Professionals, explains the lyophilization (freeze-drying) process for pharmaceutical products, detailing the transition from liquid to solid state via sublimation and desorption. He distinguishes…
Structural Electronics in Altium Designer: 3D PCB Designs Explained
Jack Henriques, product manager at Altium, demonstrates structural electronics functionality in Altium Designer, covering 3D PCB designs, printed electronics, and 3D-MIDs. He explains how the software handles routing on curved surfaces…
231. The Patch That Can Heal a Broken Heart (Literally)
The hosts discuss a collaboration between ETH Zurich and the University Hospital of Zurich to create a Reinforced Cardiac (RC) patch for treating heart ruptures. They contrast this new 3D-printed solution with traditional bovine…
Will Photonics Loosen the Bottlenecks in Neural Systems?
Dr. Patty Stabile of Eindhoven University of Technology explains her all-optical neuromorphic computing architecture using semiconductor optical amplifiers and wavelength division multiplexing to achieve ultra-low latency processing…
The story of steam
Addison Stark, co-founder and CEO of AtmosZero, argues that decarbonizing industrial steam is a critical but overlooked opportunity, accounting for roughly 30% of industrial heat in the U.S. He explains why he believes 'waste heat' capture…