December details!

'Allo folks! Another month, and a bit of progress! Admittedly slightly less than I'd hoped since I managed to catch covid last week, but eh, vaxed to the gills so it's mild enough. Anyway... on with the textypost! 

 [X] refill black
[X] patreon drop
[X] workshop shuffle
[ ] refill brown
[ ] resume suit rig work
([#] refill light skin)

Project catchup is still looking good. Got the brown vat sorted earlier this week, so all that's missing now is to rebuild the airbrush workspace. I'm probably going to do a temporary improvised one for now, and then build something proper towards late january/february. Mostly a matter of OSHA-stuff with lighting, ergonomics, particle filtering and so on - no real functional parts. I've even managed to get past my "latex airbrushing is a pain" vibe after some robust experiments. Turns out the secret is to use ammonia based thinner and VERY little actual latex. Seems to work great.

On the topic of the workshop rebuilds, I got the revamped printer corner up and running! Curing chamber, washing space, etc. Also got the resin printer properly up and running. I've printed a few material test pieces and mold experiments, so that'll get a bit of time during the holidays. 

The big deal amongst them is a negative hood mold, i.e. pour latex into it rather than over it. Can't make those with FDM printers at all due to the lackluster print quality/tricky post-processing situation for e.g. the insides of the ears, so brand new concept... But if it works it'll be the path towards proper products. Not quite done yet though, still have to do some chem experiments to land the needed surface treatments, but I've got a good feeling about that! 

There's also a second benefit to having the resin printer running, namely that I can directly print airbrushing stencils with flexible resin. Gonna' experiment with that over the holidays!

When it comes to the full suits, I wish I could easily just replicate the negative mold concept. Pouring 70-80L latex into a mold and getting high-quality results straight away would definitely beat having to fiddle with 200L+ and quality issues, yeah? Unfortunately I don't think it's doable right now. The mold would need to be sealed/opened as part of the process, and each seam is a major problem. Surface treatment has to be perfect in order to not get lines all over, and it'd have to be re-applied across the insides of the seams for every cast... and just imagine the amount of seams needed to split a full body mold. Not something that can be repeated at a reasonable cost. It MAY be possible to get around this by using treatment-free molds, but that's still on the todo-list to even experiment with. 

On the other hand, I have given the full suit rig some design thought over the last month. One reason I went for the "standing chamber" style was because the casting results in droplets forming at places on the mold where there are overhangs. See pics for examples. 

One way to avoid it is to angle the mold so that any droplets that do occur are located at a non-sensitive area, e.g. on the top of the head since that'll be hidden by a wig. The second big reason is that the immersion of a huge person-sized mold does displace an equivalent amount of liquid, so there's a LOT of mechanical stress on it. The way I've made my molds so far, i.e. easy to separate into pieces for de-molding, would 100% result in the mold failing and separating during immersion.

The downside of this standing chamber method however is that it ends up being very, very complicated given the constraints of my workshop. Big chamber needs to be openable and guaranteed liquid-proof, pump system needs to be compact and foolproof, etc. I've gotten far on the build for it, but honestly it's starting to feel a little bit too risky (both OSHA and result-wise) given the context and expected results. Haven't settled it yet, but I've got an alternative in mind!

I've gotten a LOT better at the 3d model hacking and mechanics since I did the initial mold. Besides improving e.g. seam line placements and so, I do believe I can get it durable enough to survive horizontal immersion. Alignment pins, half-weight filling of the mold, etc.  I'm thinking of redoing the mold and starting with a horizontal cast, then simply iterating the angle of the casting box upwards as I work on everything around it... Or maybe just building a hinged mold tilt system. 

Besides producing initial (albeit imperfect) results relatively quickly, it'll let me figure out e.g. the pumping system, mechanics and fillers with way fewer risks than the standing system. Couldn't really do this before the reshuffle due to space problems, but now? Should be fine. Experimented a bit with the angles (see pic!), and it seems just a few degrees will have a fairly big impact here.

There's still stuff to do to finish up the brown hoods (making the new stencils etc), so I'll give the fullsuit-casting idea a bit more thought while I finish that... Then we'll see which path this ends up taking.

The january post will be a Patreon/FB crossover again, and then I'll try to refresh the big picture roadmap and declare "project catchup" done. I've also got some "backend" paperwork to prod at in the near future. Some of it critical (bookkeeping for the newly created latex firm), other bits less so (swap out Jira for another cheaper/small-scale-friendly task system). The joys of scaling up. 

I also want to drop a bit of effort on media soon to get warmed up on that bit - maybe some tech-/project/roadmap talk in suit? Don't think I can fit that for january though.

In any case - we're hitting the holiday season now, so merry christmas to you all! Thank you for all your support! I've said it before and I'll say it again, it warms my heart that I'm not the only one who wants to tech-wizard these magnificent suits into a distributable reality. 

PS: You know the drill - did I gloss over something interesting? Ping me/drop a comment!