February frontpage

'Allo folks! Lots of progress all over the place, and the main focus is finally on the suit rig! Big updates, small updates, we have it all~~

Workspace

First up, the workshop finally has a good work-table!

You may recall from the previous updates that I was planning on consolidating the actual "working area" of the workshop into a single table. That table is now, after many ifs and buts, complete (barring some tiny tweaks here and there, but y'know...). After a LOT of work, I finally finished my custom fume hood! 

• 180*60cm, lots of space for body-sized projects and it fits PERFECTLY into a slot of the floor plan.
• Stainless steel surface for easy cleaning
• 60W overhead led-lights, spaced to give a nice even illumination to workpieces.
• ~7 electrical outlets split left/right in the back.
• fully enclosed on all sides (barring a bit at the front), so no dust/gas leaks
• Several hundred CFM of negative airflow up through the roof of the table, so particles/gas is a non-issue.
• Exhaust pipe connected to outdoor ventilation slot, so any stupid gases vent safely.
• Clear acrylic shields, so I can work unobstructed on things that gas/dust like mad. See head-holding-pic, it's a game-changer.
• Storage space on top / on the mini-shelf underneath.

Behind the scenes it's a restaurant kitchen table I found for cheap, a load of 45mm wooden girders of the kind I tend to use for all construction projects, two cheap "shelf planks", two acrylic plates, a couple of overpowered fans and a couple of printed connectors. Homebrew++!

Obviously this is a "sustainable healthy working environment" thing, and I'll be honest - feels great to finally have a slightly less hazardous environment. I do spend A LOT of time in the workshop after all. There's a whole slew of activities that are impacted:

• Airbrushing gets a lot easier and space-efficient. I have proper lighting, lots of space to airbrush, and absolutely no worries about particles missing my previously tiny dust hood.
• The new suit rig requires a LOT of plastic processing for the new mold, and that's historically turned the workshop into a plastic dust hellscape. Non-issue this time around!
• The paint experiments for the negative molds fumes a lot. Go figure. Not that fun to work for hours and hours next to it.
• The paint stencils I print with a resin that is absolutely horrendous in liquid form. Irritates the lungs and eyes something fierce. All of a sudden a non-issue, and I genuinely look forward to trying it out now!

Big rig updates

Now that the work table is done, this finally has my focus. Besides "latent work", aka thinking about it, I've experimented a bit with the new mold design and concluded it needed a few tweaks. Lots of the printed parts scrapped, but c'est la vie. Printed them with lightning infill (aka very empty) for that exact reason.

What's the tweak, you may ask? Plug/socket tolerances and part sectioning. There's essentially two types of connectables in this mold - the "remove every cast" stuff like full arms and legs, and the "maybe swap sometime" like hands/feet/head. The latter needs to be very snug and stable, whereas the former needs to be durable enough to go on/off dozens of times. Not entirely trivial to get the design right when dealing with FDM printers.

In the updated explode-view (see pic) you can see that there's a lot more parts, and that the "meat" of the parts is separated from the bit that contains the plugs/sockets. This lets me print the big pieces with relatively low infill, and the connectors with a lot higher density and thicker walls. That then lets me file the connectors up to a nice and snug fit, and saves me a lot of pain in the future should one break or need further tweaks.

By now I've gotten most of the pieces for arms/legs/head reprinted with the new design, and with three printers running 24/7 I should have the torso done by next weekend or so. Once I'm satisfied with the connector functionality I can start integrating the mold into the casting cradle (which I have yet to build, so update on that next time?) and from there it should be relatively straightforward. 

Miscellaneous stuff

As usual, a bunch of smaller things got done too:

• Zipper method: tried a few tweaks and added a keep-the-hair-out-flap after a bit of feedback, and it seems to work okay enough. I'll try to pre-make a dozen or so over a day in the upcoming month, and rely on that kind of mostly-premade-stash to keep things sensible. Pics next round?
  
• Cleared up the old Jira setup, saving me a chunk of cash every month. I haven't set up an alternative yet - will do that once the suit rig is done and there's more spread-out work to do again.
  
• Bookkeeping's done, and hopefully okay enough to get me through the tax agency checkpoint later this spring. Still not much automation in it though, but the manual workload isn't big enough for that to be a real concern yet.
  
• Registered for VAT. I know, mentioned last time I'd try to avoid it - but there's a problem. I may have discovered that there's a "activity has to be mostly towards sweden"-clausule in the VAT exemption. While the Patreon could be argued to be under that umbrella, selling hoods internationally most certainly won't be. I'll try to get the shop confed for it over the upcoming month. On the upside, it's not like I or hoody people lose on this as my paid VAT is WAY over the received VAT. Workshop expenses are huge and offset the payments, so the same amount still ends up in my pockets. Just needs a bunch of time from me to handle, so eh.
  
• Improved packaging. You might've seen the post, ey? It may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but the bag + improved printable labels turns a slightly fussy activity completely smooth. If only more things could be improved to that level :)
  
• Negative mold casting experiments. Unfortunately, the experiments turned out as negative as the mold. Printing the molds is easy enough, but they need a hydrophilic surface. The solution I use for the positive molds is a spraypainted primer from one specific supplier, but that can't really be done with the negatives. The spraying needs to be precise and adjusted by visual inspection as you go along, and that's just not possible on e.g. inverted ears or fingers.
  
  I've been trying to find a non-sprayable liquid equivalent for a while now, but none of the paints I've found so far have provided the right level of hydrophilia. At this rate I'll just have to start emptying spray-cans and using the liquid base. It'll be expensive, but the bigger problem is that if for some reason I run into supplier issues there I'll be screwed. There'll be another update on this next month - the experiments are simple enough to carry out as a side-activity.
  
• Connected the laser cutter ventilation. Finally operational in its new home corner.
  
• Prettied up the entire workshop a bit with curtain doors. Dampens sound a bit too, and keeps the heat in during the slightly chilly winter season.
  
• Rewired my entire desk so the standing/sitting flexibility works as it should. Small note, but jfc that was half a day of angry cabling~

Closing words

Very much one of those "lots of miscellaneous non-latex things"-months. Lots of progress though, so I'm okay enough with it! Feels great to clear the backlog from all the misc things that, big or small, do have a noticeable impact on the working environment here.

The main things next will be finishing the new suit mold and building the cradle system for it. As with most of the other stuff here, it's simple in theory but difficult in practice when we're dealing with this huge scale. ~180cm long mannequin with around negative 80kg bouyancy by default... Yeah. At the same time I'm pretty confident in my redesign, so it's just a matter of time now before I get to validate my concept in real life.

I'll try to do a video tour of the workshop too for next months update, warm up the media muscles a bit. In the longer run I still plan on sorting out streaming from here, but for now a video-walkthrough should give you all a better picture of how this entire setup looks and works :)

Finally, you've heard me say it before, and I'll say it again - thank you all for your support. Every bit helps, especially during these times of global meh'ness. Stay alive out there, and I'll be back with hopefully more good progress news in march!

PS: usual drill, did I gloss over something interesting? Ping me! Feedback's always welcome!