July Jsomething

Yoooo! Exciting times!

Suit rig update:

Relatively short because of the sheer scale of this one focused thing, but good news!

• Printed and assembled the "bottom half", aka the upper body, of the mold. ~40 separate printed pieces (with naming conventions all over the place~~), ~10kg of plastic, 24/7 for nearly two weeks across two printers.

• Cleaned out the troublesome fibreglass mold from the casting area. Would've been nice, but eh, not the first time an idea doesn't quite pan out. At least it was a learning experience that led to this new setup!

• Water-tested the new printed mold. The edge seal works perfectly, no leaks (once I added putty to the corners)! Can even commit to simply using edge-clamps instead of screwing the mold together.

• Printed (and not assembled) half of the "top half" pending further testing of bottom half.

Two annoying but minor problems encountered:

• Screwed up the head-slot a little bit in the design, resulting in a negative edge for the ear. Blocks mold insertion. Grind-and-patch type situation, solvable but annoying.

• Despite a triple-layer wall and compartmentalized infill, there are occasional microscopic gaps in the printed walls causing "sweating" leaks. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14JJixcMXhQ for sweating in action. Shouldn't be that difficult to solve by e.g. a resin coating, but still annoying.

All-in-all, still a little bit of work to do, but the big blocking problems are GONE!

The next steps are pretty straightforward:

• finish the resin-coating for the sweating problem

• get the head-socket and plumbing in place

• water-test the half-mold with the mannequin inserted. Verify sweating is solved, etc.

• assemble the "top half" of the mold, attach to lower half

• water-test the full mold + mannequin setup

• Do the final surface coating on the mannequin

• GO-TIME!

I could speculate on suit-related plans of what to do after GO-TIME, but let's not declare victory before it's fully functional! You can bet there's a large capability-and-plans update coming as soon as that threshold is crossed.

Miscellaneous musings

Printers: 

As it is now, printing a mannequin+mold from scratch would take nearly four printer-months (i.e. 2mon with the 2 printers I'm using atm). That's not counting modelling, assembly time or other related activities.

I'm so tempted to try and squeeze in more printers somewhere, but honestly not sure it's viable with the current workshop configuration. It will more or less be a requirement later on if I am to make more models or even full customs, but maybe by then I'll have sorted out a separate printer room / bigger workshop?

3d modelling:

Now you've seen the list of separate print objects for just the chamber. Add in another 20-30 or so for the mannequin and you've got upwards of 100 separate objects needing printing for a 'fresh' suit set. I reckon I'll need to spend some time in the future on IT infrastructure to make managing them easier.

Won't ever get to fully automated "here's a mannequin, auto-slice it to pieces and print" whatwith the manual thinking needed for e.g. print orientations and slice placements, but report generation and/or maybe automated chain-printing? Definitely something to look into before I do any other major print projects.

Hoods and webshop:

Been on the todo-list for a while to cast a couple of fresh hoods for the webshop. I've taken it a bit slow for two reasons - distracted/occupied with the suit rig, and wanting to do a few production improvements to the hoods. Obviously tempted too with new designs and features, but I feel a need to focus on a few efficiency issues:

• no more 'prototypes with minor imperfections', but up the quality requirements to near perfect. Idk, maybe sell 'small imperfections' in a discount pile of some sort? Depends on how the numbers pan out.

• Build zipper attachment jigs that allow for standardized cuts and easy gluing.

• Systematically pre-make latex-prepared zippers, with e.g. flaps from the laser cutter.

• Make custom hole punches (somehow) for eyes + nostrils, saving a slew of manual cutting work.

• Switch to making them sliightly thinner, for wearing comfort. Some experimentation needed.

• Possibly switch from pre-made to made-on-order? Still not sure on that, might affect stress levels etc.

FB page

Will be posting a compact plans-post there mid-august. Y'all get the nitty gritty, FB gets the summaries. Likely going to aim for monthlyposting there during the rest of the year, then we'll see after new years how to evolve it.

As per usual, there's a lot that could be done, question is where it lands in the priority pile WRT available time.

Life in general:

Working on getting back into proper suit shape - so far so good. Barely made any media over the last year, really feel the need to rectify that. Especially if the suit rig comes online.

Also, I may have some great-for-the-workshop news in relation to the day job coming in mid-august with a high probability, so antsy AF right now. If it clicks, it's storytime and celebration. If it doesn't, eh, status quo.

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You know the drill - anything I glossed over? Unclear? Something to write more about? All feedback's welcome!

With both the suit rig and possible other news pending, I reckon the august update will be an interesting one. Until then - I've said it before, I'll say it again - thank you all for the support throughout the project! Y'all are helping keep me sane :)