Apple details a new manufacturing process for its titanium Apple Watch cases:

It started with a pie-in-the-sky idea: What if 3D printing — historically used to create prototypes — could be leveraged to produce millions of identical enclosures to Apple’s exact design standards, with high-quality recycled metal? […]

This year, all Apple Watch Ultra 3 and titanium Apple Watch Series 11 cases are 3D-printed with 100 percent recycled aerospace-grade titanium powder, an achievement not previously considered possible at scale.

I found this story utterly fascinating. It’s an example of Apple creating truly innovative processes to solve tough materials science challenges (like needing to atomize the titanium into powder by “fine-tuning its oxygen content to decrease the qualities of titanium that become explosive when exposed to heat”). As a software guy, I find this manufacturing stuff deeply riveting.

I own an Apple Watch Ultra 3 (in black), and I had no reason to notice a change: the quality seems as high as ever.

One curiosity:

Using the additive process of 3D printing, layer after layer gets printed until an object is as close to the final shape needed as possible. Historically, machining forged parts is subtractive, requiring large portions of material to be shaved off. This shift enables Ultra 3 and titanium cases of Series 11 to use just half the raw material compared to their previous generations.

“A 50 percent drop is a massive achievement — you’re getting two watches out of the same amount of material used for one,” Chandler explains. “When you start mapping that back, the savings to the planet are tremendous.”

In total, Apple estimates more than 400 metric tons of raw titanium will be saved this year alone thanks to this new process.

(That’s Sarah Chandler, Apple’s vice president of Environment and Supply Chain Innovation.)

Creating two watches from the same amount of raw titanium previously used for one watch is indeed great for the planet, but I can’t help noticing that Apple hasn’t lowered the price of the Apple Watch to account for the reduced material cost, suggesting the reduction is also good for Apple’s bottom line.

Update: My friend and former colleague Matt did some back-of-the-envelope math (sparking me to do the same) which suggests Apple’s per-watch savings might (generously) amount to no more than 50¢–$1 per case—scarcely enough to move the retail price, even with Apple’s high margins. The effect on its bottom line would likewise be minuscule: assuming 5 million titanium watches sold, Apple could save $2.5–$5 million annually—a rounding error for the company. I hereby rescind my snark and acknowledge that Apple may in fact be doing this purely to benefit the planet.