January jupdate

Heyo folks, welcome to 2022! I'm still surprised things are going more or less according to plan, no major 'goddamnit that won't work'-moments yet. I've had to adjust designs and plans aplenty, but there's a difference between adjusting and getting blocked :)

Reminder before we get into things, $50 lifetime ahead of next post (~feb 15th) if you want in on the hood-round (black, elf/newmodel). I'll start pinging people when the post drops - should hopefully have the new model mostly sorted by then.

Digging into what's going on, some might notice that the map's gotten cleaned up. Lots of the old dipmold-stuff is all done now, so there's a lot less stuff connected to the new suit items. Wasn't intentional, but I'll take a free visual cleanup anyway! In a perfect world I'd be able to let everyone into the Jira, but in lieu of that y'all still get the high-level summaries, map relations and the fuzzy feeling of knowing that you're implicitly helping me organize this enormous project by making me plan things properly :)

---------------- Some fun things from the last month of slogging -----------------

- figured out how to laser latex better with the glowforge (suit-113). Someone else ran into the same issue and just designed a bunch of fan plugs (https://community.glowforge.com/t/how-to-manually-control-the-air-assist-fan-power/78800), so now I've got a set of those. This means I'll be using the laser more in the future, which'll come in handy for e.g. the fancier hoods (suit-122, described below)

- the core booth (suit-104) is pretty much assembled now, and the liner (suit-105) is ongoing. Went back and forth conceptually on this a whole lot. The chamber's going to be filled with ~250L of liquid rubber, so _massive_ disaster if it leaks. At the same time, one side needs to be possible to open so I can slide the mold in place. I went for a tarpaulin liner as a first step - 650g/sqm. 5x5m square with the edges folded so there's exactly zero chance of leaking from improper joining, that's 16kg of pvc-lined fabric, jfc. Mounting it so the 'open' end can simply fold out with a set of guiding rods. Not quite finished with it yet, but besides the hassle of there being so much heavy fabric it should work fine. If my workshop was bigger and better I'd simply build a better chamber, but it is what it is :)

- The pump (suit-100) is coming along nicely. The mech-parts (suit-109) are mostly done, but I did scrap the idea of using a nice folding bellow design for construction complexity reasons. The leftovers of the tarp from the chamber should be ok enough to build a durable container anyway, and then I trust the construction enough to be a bit rough with the compression. I've got the electronics (suit-110) laid out too, just need to source a missing part or two and we're set. Most of the design and code I can just repurpose from the small-scale rig so it shouldn't take long to finish it up.

- The plumbing (suit-108) is going to be interesting by itself, but meshes a bit with the new todo-item of tetris'ing things around in the workshop again (suit-121). The comments Jon left back in october (thx!) got me thinking... I can't quite do the full fancy method suggested and have the entire chamber slide down like a piston, but using a height differential between the pump and chamber would at least let me simplify the design of the pump. No suction would be needed - once the cast is done the pump piston just retracts at whatever pace and lets the liquid latex flow back via gravity. Unfortunately there's building plumbing in the roof where the chamber is currently at, so yeah, tetris time again... I reckon I'll build the hardware and get it moved into place, then start sourcing the plumbing parts needed for it.

- hood-wise, it's a bit of this and that. The 'big things' like the glue-free R&D (suit-94) are still waiting. I finished off some of the miscellaneous things like zippers (suit-112), labels (suit-120) and worked on the new hood models (suit-83). Some work/practice still needed, but basics in place at least. See pic of suit-112 for example. Also cleaned up the microbubble issue (suit-74) while I'm at it, haven't had too many issues with it ever since I started getting religiously careful when handling molds near the vats. Still a small chance, but insignificant.

- WRT the new hood models (suit-83), I reckon we'll go with the pointy-nosed one. The upnose looked a bit weird in tests when the nostrils were cut out. Pics next update when I've had a chance to test things a bit more.

-------------------- near future plans -----------------------

So, where does that leave us for the near future? There's a few major tracks to follow:

- Glue-free high-tech R&D (suit-94), so damn tempting but I want to get the big suit rig finished before getting distracted. It's going to eat 200h at the very least, need to clear the board a bit more before fighting with this.

- Custom eyehole punching machinery (suit-115), reaallllly want to get this, but also something that can wait until the big-rig's done.

- New item, production-grade hoods to shop (suit-122). I mentioned in the public FB post last week that I need to look over how I balance my time, as the prototype sales are stressing me out. I'm thinking I'll try putting a few of the lessons learned into practice:

 * switch from hand-painted details to lasered decals with etched surface textures. While fancy, the hand-painting is error-prone and I'm mediocre at it.
* light airbrush shading to accentuate details. Still like it, despite the clogging tendencies of painting with latex. Worth the effort?
* default to zippers on all hoods unless requested otherwise. Newer, thicker versions have been difficult for some. Also fancy lasered labels on the inside.
* much stricter sorting and quality requirements. I've already gotten stricter and stricter as the prototypes improved, but now it's time to tighten things up once again. On the protos I permitted minor aesthetic issues through as long as they didn't impact the durability/functionality of things, but yeah, felt bad. Gonna' get stricter with that now.
* lasered tattoos and similar decorative things for hoods where they can cover up tiny aesthetic flaws, no tattoos for when the cast comes out pristine. Should let me get an okay output.
* and last but not least, upping the prices by quite a bit. $75->$150 or thereabouts for the fancier ones? I'm hoping people are okay with the higher costs for the fancier products, and the volume should balance out so I get a bit more time for other R&D. Thoughts, folks? Sounds reasonable?

Hopefully the above works out, reduces stress levels and still lets us spread the elfness (or nonelfness in the case of the new model) while we work on the full suits, ey? I'll probably make an elfy batch like this in late feb/early march, will sneakpeek things to y'all as we get closer.

- obviously, there'll be plenty of work on the big-rig in the near future. I should be able to finish up the construction and electronics, possibly also tetris'ing and some plumbing, in the upcoming month. Unless there's a hidden sourdough in the task-list. Or the day job kicks my ass, to be fair. Leaves restocking chemicals, lots and lots of safety/functional testing, design of fitted fillers for the chamber, and probably something else I'm not thinking of right now. We'll see what the february update has in store for us :)

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As usual - did I gloss over something interesting? Comments? Feedback? All's welcome, and thank you yet again for your continued support on this strange quest!