but indulge me a moment as two passions of mine have inexplicably collided: 3D printing and Rocket League.

While the just-launched season 23 of the game brings the expected roster of unlockable goodies including goal celebration animations, car decals and titles, there's also, for reasons unknown, a Benchy.

Available as a topper (read: hat) for your car, the model – now famously public domain – is an odd inclusion for a game about rocket-powered car soccer. Credit to Redditor Ok_Debate9268 for first flagging it on the r/3Dprinting subreddit.

A paper published in ScienceDirect's Additive Manufacturing Letters journal details the algorithmic benefits of wave-inspired path planning for flat, unsupported overhangs – similar to arc overhangs we've seen before, but cleaner.

As with arc, seeing it up close it looks nothing short of magic. The paper's author points to OrcaSlicer and PrusaSlicer forks with the feature enabled, so you can try it out (provided you're comfortable compiling the software yourself.)

FDM’s dirty little secret is Z-strength: layers that cool too quickly before the next layer arrives making prints delaminate like a stale croissant. Researchers at Germany's OTH Regensburg want to fix that with a laser-enhanced FDM printhead that preheats the surface just before fresh filament lands. Laser-assisted FDM has been studied for years and shown to improve layer bonding, so why is it still mostly trapped in the lab? Cost, safety, and reliability may all be culprits. Still, if this approach works commercially, FDM’s Z-strength problem might finally meet its Bond villain.