Physics by Design: Additive Manufacturing for Reproducible Science

Additive manufacturing (AM) is usually framed as a production technology. We argue that it is more importantly a scientific instrument: the bundle of (script, STL, slicer profile, feedstock specification, printer family) can be made FAIR-aligned when archived with persistent identifiers, metadata, hashes, licences, and process records, and AM makes the design variables held constant in a sweep explicit and the residual drift in secondary variables measurable. We make the position concrete with four sweeps from computational and applied mechanics: a Schoenhardt twist sweep for non-convex granular particles, a shell-thickness sweep for the principal scalar moment of inertia at fixed outer geometry and total mass, a triply-periodic-minimal-surface (TPMS)-derived bulk-porosity sweep, and an iso-porosity strut-lattice family of five topologies, accompanied by an illustrative photograph of specimens printed on a desktop MSLA vat-photopolymerisation machine. A held–target–track matrix names, for every sweep, the variables held, the target, and the secondary quantities that drift as a side-effect and must be tracked. A one-dimensional toy fin model with closed-cell porosity maps a porosity sweep to a predicted temperature signal; a true TPMS heat sink additionally requires flow conditions and the (Sv(ϕ),hconv(ϕ),keff(ϕ),(ρc)eff(ϕ),Pwet(ϕ)) characterisation. A three-process protocol (FDM, vat photopolymerisation, laser powder-bed fusion) specifies the proposed reporting requirements.