Topology Optimisation

A steel plate, fixed on the left, load on the outermost 25 mm at the right. 160 MPa and 0.5 mm of deflection are allowed, and the target mass sits under 100 grams against roughly 1000 grams to start. First the base part, meshed and solved for deflection and equivalent stress, so there's something to compare against later.

Up to 75% mass reduction, Ansys' topology optimisation returns a usable skeleton; past that it stops converging and produces floating islands. Translating the result back into manufacturable geometry was always going to be manual work, since that's the part optimisation itself won't hand you. Version 1 weighed 125 grams and blew the stress limit at 196 MPa, so the fixture was split from one continuous bar into four separate supports. Most of the 48 states died right there, in that translation back to manufacturable geometry, not in the computation.

Version 48 lands at 99 grams and 159.9 MPa, a tenth of a megapascal under the limit, after 48 CAD states, each exported, meshed and solved again. Whether that's still engineering or already luck is a fair question.