March manufacturing

'Allo folks, welcome to another monthly update wherein I combine braindumping and planning!

First off - I'll be casting hoods now in late march/early april, so expect the patreon drops during the next month.

Beyond that, it's been a bit on the hectic side here. Hoods and fun inventions have been on the backburner, main focus has been the big suit rig and my 'drop the second job'-plan (wrote about it on FB) that'll net me more time for latex works. So far so good with both of those!

Also snagged a cheap fish-eye-lens for the phone so I can take (slightly blurry) overview pics in the cramped environment. Got it after I moved everything around though, so no 'before' pics :(

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Latest from the suit rig:

- SUIT-121: I managed to move things around in the workshop and get the rig placed where I can elevate it. Bonus is that somehow the entire workshop feels a lot brighter :)

- SUIT-123: Rebuilt the casting chamber a bit, managed to reduce the height to exactly 200cm. With the pump being about 50cm tall and the roof height of ~250cm, this should work great for gravity-draining the chamber.

- SUIT-123: managed to source a good 'base' for the chamber, two work-benches that support 500kg each. Will have to cut down the legs on them a bit, but worth it for the massive safety margin. The chamber will weigh about 300kg when filled, after all...

- SUIT-110: finished the coding & mechatronics assembly for the pump. All core functionality works as it should, so once the bladder's done the pump will be complete.

misc:

- SUIT-83: finished up the new hood molds. Now we've got a full set of sizes for the new model. Still have to warm them up and do a couple of starter casts though.

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Current near-future todo-items;

- SUIT-128: fix the electricity supply in the workshop. Ever since the short last month, loading too much drain at once results in janky power fluctuations in the workshop. Gonna' see if it's something I can fix myself, otherwise I might have to drag in an electrician to have a look at the junction box. This kind of blocks me from doing the hood casting as they need to be oven'ed as part of the process.

- SUIT-123: Get the casting chamber mounted on the support stands. A bit of metalwork to cut down the stands, some heavy lifting and whatnot. Straightforward enough. 

- SUIT-125: build the drawbridge-like casting chamber door. You may recall my back-and-forth about how to seal the chamber. With the entire chamber getting elevated it struck me that building a drawbridge-like door is perfect. Gives a nice working surface for when the mold is pulled out of the chamber, and lets the side-surplus liner fold up on the outside of the chamber. Perfect solution, if I may say so myself.

- SUIT-108: design, source and assemble the pump-to-chamber plumbing. Once I get the chamber elevated I can start on this. Haven't done much plumbing work before so brand new sourcing research needed.

- SUIT-127: assemble the pump bladder. Once the plumbing's sorted I'll be able to figure out the last details on the bladder design and build it. 

- SUIT-124: design, build and mount the casting chamber filler inserts. Without any fillers, the chamber fits around 1000L, ~900L with the mold in place. In my early CAD'ing I managed to get that down to the needed 200L-range with very basic shapes. Actually building them IRL is of course a different challenge. I can get started on it once I've got the plumbing in place - then I can finish up the mold mounting system and build the fillers around it.

- SUIT-126: order the rest of the liquid latex (~160L). Not overly tricky, just omfgexpensive. Gotta' see if I can optimize shipping and whatnot.

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We've got the goal in sight here, not much left to do. There's of course going to be at least one weird unforeseen problem, but I'm way optimistic about it right now. All the hood casting work has given me a lot of experience, and that breeds confidence. 

Let's get this done, folks! We've got people in need of fancy rubber suits! And again, thank you all for the support on this journey!