Orbit Ready: bite-sized, decision-grade lessons for the machinists, engineers and technicians who print rocket-engine hardware in metal powder and finish it on CNC. Ten weeks from needs analysis to implementation. Built for people who move fast and cannot afford imprecision.
A rocket engine is a long argument with physics, settled one tolerance at a time.
In a powder bed fusion printer, a laser draws a slice of a part into a bed of fine metal powder, the bed drops a fraction of a millimetre, a fresh layer is spread, and the laser draws again. Thousands of times. What comes out is close. Close is not flight hardware. The CNC shop takes it the rest of the way.
Two disciplines, one part, and a hand-off in the middle where mistakes like to hide. I learned in aviation that the most dangerous moment in any system is the handover. The machine shop is no different.
So the brief was not “teach people about 3D printing.” It was: give every operator on either side of that hand-off the same picture of the part, and the same standard for calling it done.
A laser fuses metal powder layer by layer inside an inert chamber. It makes internal channels and organic shapes that no cutting tool could reach. It also brings its own risks: porosity, residual stress, distortion and powder handling.
Printed parts arrive near-net. Mating faces, sealing surfaces and datums still have to be cut, measured and proven. Fixturing a printed part is its own skill, because no two arrive quite the same.
The training followed the part, not the org chart. Every station is a place where an operator makes a call the next station has to live with.
Powder condition, orientation, supports. Most print failures are decided here.
Layer by layer in an inert atmosphere. Monitor, don’t assume.
Release the stress the print locked in, and get every grain of powder out.
Remove supports, fixture the near-net part, cut critical features to print.
Measure against the drawing. The part is done when the evidence says so.
A typical metal-AM part path, shown here as the frame for the training.
A team moving at launch-company speed, adopting a manufacturing process younger than most of its tooling. The gap was not effort. It was a shared picture.
Critical gaps in advanced manufacturing technique, most of all in metal additive printing.
Veteran machinists, new technicians and engineers, each arriving with a different map of the work.
Complex aerospace documentation had to become something an operator could act on at the machine.
Needs analysis with the machine shop. Internal SOPs reviewed, new manufacturing workflows and aerospace standards analysed.
Close collaboration with engineering SMEs and the Talent Development team. Templates set to engineering documentation standards and corporate brand guidelines.
Interactive lessons in Storyline 360 and Rise 360 with technical illustrations and animations, supported by an AI toolkit. No voice-over, so any module can be updated without re-recording.
Every module delivered on time, with stakeholder approval at each milestone and a feedback loop built in for continuous improvement.
Completion is not capability. The part either holds tolerance or it doesn’t.
A finished lesson proves someone reached the last screen. A part that passes inspection the first time proves something crossed from the course to the machine. Only one of those flies.
Fonts, headers and layouts followed engineering documentation standards, so the course looked like the drawings and work instructions operators already trust. Leaving out voice-over was a deliberate call: in a shop where the process changes monthly, a lesson you can’t update is a lesson that starts lying.
The course is live. Open it and work through it the way an operator would: one part, one setup, one decision at a time.
Travel well. And prosper. — Ed Reif