While I'm still side-eyeing and tentatively approaching AI for use for things like ideation, the world around me is breezing on by, putting it to use in every which way you can imagine. Some ways weird, some wonderful, and some probably incredibly wasteful. What's not wasteful, to my eyes, is putting it to the task of 3D printing housing for mainboards, which it can apparently do very well.

David Soria Parra, a member of technical staff at Anthropic, has used Claude Fable to successfully design a three-tray rack for three 13-inch Framework mainboards. The mainboards are the actual processor-clad circuit boards inside Framework laptops that you can either buy separately or tear out of one of the built laptops. Presumably three of them will be used for a multi-PC setup, or a server, or something like that.

Parra was working on the project since at least early June, having the AI use Fusion 360, AKA Autodesk Fusion, via an "MCP server", which is a way to let an LLM communicate with it (safely).

Apparently it researched the dimensions and so on, and then came up with a design. Parra said it was "straight from Claude to printing", although the finished product, Parra says, took 2–3 iterations with the model:

"I connected the fusion 360 MCP server and used Claude Code with dynamic workflows. Claude created the Fusion file and the stl for every component. So it was print ready. It also got me the bill of material to buy."

The recent final picture shows three Framework mainboards sitting in the 3D printed frame. The LLM even made sure there's a cutout for the heatsink and room for the heat pipe.

I suppose how well it works in practice, ie, how high temperatures get, will be the main question. Still, for the AI-tentative and completely design-inept like myself, this is the kind of thing that catches my eye. A cool project, for sure. Now just hand me one of those Framework mainboards given you seem to have so many spare.