August "ansträngning"

...aka swedish for effort. With an AI slop cover that doesn't hit uncanny valley. Actual workshop progress now though, so consider me upbeat!

Gonna' try the in-line picture style that Patreon added support for... sometime after I began posting, but definitely longer ago than my last post :p

First of all, I survived two weeks of business trips and I've got my workshop properly back at last! Was supposed to finish mid-may, so a mid-august wrap-up is... annoying, but better late than never. They removed most of the cumbersome plumbing pipes mid-july, and now this last week they finally did the last bits and reconnected the workshop-specific plumbing. Operational again, finally.

Probably a final inspection or somesuch in a week or two, plus some miscellaneous fixes to the external vents because they had to pull in pneumatic tubes from a mega-compressor in the yard, but still... it's over! This is why I slipped to mid-month for the update too - wanted to post actual progress now that I'm finally able to!

~~~ Suit rig update ~~~

Cleaned up and got everything back in place. It's amazing how much roomier the place feels. Kind of shows I've hit the upper limit for what equipment I can fit into the workshop, but so be it - I have what I need!

With the pipes removed I could finally maneuver the mannequin properly throughout the workshop too. Demolded the previous cast, and I'd say it's above expectations. Compared to the spray-cast attempts earlier, and specific bubbling production flaws aside, the result quality is much higher. Soft, supple and durable, the way medium thickness latex is supposed to be. The spraycast suits ended up a bit harder, and with a weird tendency to crack/fragment in a vertical direction. Plus the overall jank with a lot of defects in spraying.

Production flaws though, there are a few that I need to deal with;

• Contact points between mannequin mold and shell, obviously produces scraping/surface removals. Annoying, but eh. Result of tight tolerances and the prints not quite being tolerance-perfect, multiplied across a hundred pieces. Smallest problem, can do localized patches if needed while I figure out the bigger ones.

• Feet. Kind of obvious fix - finish the mold.

• Surface bubbling. My theory is that it's caused by aeration of the liquid latex as it sloshes through the pipes. Should be fixable by making thinner pipes and keeping the system 'filled' during the entire process, i.e. never letting the pipe get any air into it.

  

Obvious feet fixing aside, I had a small heureka moment when it came to the pipes. Since I'm thinning it down it'll hit garden hose dimensions, so might as well go for some cheap and modular hose systems! Quick-connectors, valves, etc, they've got it all.

Even if I maybe have to replace some of the pieces due to latex clogging it in an uncleanable spot, the most expensive piece (dual valve splitter) is like €5. I also shifted things around a bit, made more space for dealing with the draining, and made a new leaning bucket to easier get a scoopable corner.

The mold, as per usual, required a bit of service. Some polishing, assembly, spray-filling and priming later it was good to go again.

What got me a bit worried was that my main surface primer brand had decided to do some sneaky adjustments to the primer. Was a few years ago since I restocked and I'm using it for a different purpose than they intended, so I'm naturally vulnerable to collateral damage. First attempt looked like it wasn't working at all. Luckily it seems waiting a few days got it to settle down, as the second round of testing seemed to work fine. Pictured below you can see a section where it's clearly not hydrophilic in a big spot, and surrounded by perfectly fine and working wetted areas.

Primed the mannequin, got it into the chamber, sealed it up, and off we went to cast. For those of you who haven't given it too much thought - know that it's nerve-wracking. The mold cost €1000+ to make, the liquid filling it is €1000+, and that's not even counting the hours and hours of effort needed to build and assemble things. The ~2m liquid pillar is a lot of force, and the mold makes scary creaking sounds as it fills up.

On the upside, it went mostly well. The shelf-jug system works perfectly, and with the thinner tubing going into the mold it's very easy to keep the entire system 'filled' to the brim. I should even be able to make it a 'fire and forget' system if I can tweak the buffer vat a little bit, i.e. I just open up all the jugs at once and don't touch them again during the process.

On the downside, once I made it to ~foot level or thereabouts, one of the seals down by the bottom decided to spring a leak. Did what I could to seal it, but couldn't. While I didn't have a visual on the liquid level in the mold, the leak seemed sizeable enough that it'd impact my ability to raise the liquid level further.

The inflow clearly struggled a bit against the outflow, and each liter I loose to the floor is around €10. Had to call it and start draining. That bit went great at least, although I realized way too late that I could've just attached a bit of hose to the secondary outlet and made my life a lot easier. Next time ey!

Cracking the mold open, two things immediately hit me. Firstly, one arm came off. I'd fixed that one earlier, and was a bit worried about it tbh. The joint between upper and lower arm is nearly circular and lacks guiding features, so I must've gotten the angle wrong enough for it to get pressured by the shell. May also be some glue issues, but I need to wait for all the liquid latex of the cast to dry before I can do a proper forensic examination.

Secondly, bubbling. So much bubbling. Mostly, it seems, along only one side. That is very goddamn weird. It can't be the surface primer or salt primer as I fiddled on both sides of the mannequin mold with that. It can't be a simple case of air in the system because that'd hit both sides...

Unless it's coming directly from the hose entry point which is slightly offset to the same side as the bubbling, but with the system kept full there shouldn't be any bubbles in it?! Right now I'm genuinely a bit stumped. Again, forensic examination once the latex has cured up so I'm not wading through the floor spill. Suspect I might just have to do another cast and see what happens. If we get the same result along the same side it's clearly the inflow tubing. If not... Eh, we'll deal with that when we get there.

TODO for next round:

• Attempt post-cast repairs on the surface bubbling, just 'cause practice is good. Not sure if my latex thickener is still good, but will restock if needed. Won't be pretty, but curious how well the suit will hold up.

• Sort out a drainage -hose- also. Easy fix with another quick-connector.

• Transparent tube as a surface level meter? Will need a bunch of supplies to make it happen, but seems very doable.

• Clean out the lower edges of the shell for even better clamping. Maybe also fine-tune the chamber bases. It's a little bit difficult to get everything perfectly positioned when sealing it up right now, which causes janky seals by the head-angle. I should be able to clean out more of the supporting foam to both improve visibility and enable more clamps to be attached. As for the base shell alignment, actual plan tbd still.

• Double-prime the mold, 2*24h drying times. If it's something to do with the surface primer or salt primer, this should eliminate it.

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Feels like I've got my work cut out for me. September update should be straightforward and hopefully bubble-free. With the amount of effort needed for resets, troubleshooting, improvement builds and casting, it kind of feels like we'll be doing one cast per update until I get it working.

Y'all know the drill, DM/chat/comment if I gloss over something interesting. A big thank you also for bearing with me during the very goddamn frustrating months of forced workshop renovations. Hopefully we'll have a steady stream of progress again now that things are back to normal!