That’s a really cool photo and great info on how the piece is manufactured!! I didn’t even think about just not selecting the outside vertices when doing the smoothing, that totally makes sense and does help:

I’m curious if these places are ok, like not in a practice learning model, would they be ok in a production model:

and about the concept of making rings around the holes, is that the common practice? what changes are needed to make the topology appropriate for a real-world production model?