September's tuff

Heyo folks! Been a slow month with the day job eating most of my energy, but progress nonetheless.

• Finished up the redesigned & strengthened pieces of the mannequin mold.
  Since I needed to re-print them for the changed posture anyway, I went all-out and upped the wall thickness and fill quite a bit. Around Twice as expensive to print, but should be worth it. Had some issues with previous thinner walls (0.8mm) where a good knock could puncture them. Going up to 1.2mm and a crazy-dense fill for the size (~8mm grid lines) should keep things intact.
• Did a bunch of testing with the fiberglass goop.
  (https://www.artsuppliesonweb.com/en/Catalogue/02-Epoxy-Resin/Filled-epoxy-resin/Modelling-epoxy-with-fibre-for-support-mold-MS253-W12-17kg for the record)
  A bit of annoying kneading to get the catalyst in, which kind of limits batch sizes to around a kilo or so, but after that... Imagine if soft modeling clay set to an almost indestructible plastic overnight. Strong as hell, possible to shape, and attaches nicely to previous casts of itself. Can be cut with a grinder and some effort, but for normal wear and tear it's incredibly durable. Worked beyond expectations!
  
  Why am I so happy about that? Y'all know how I'm basically trying to invent this whole thing from scratch, yeah? This goop is absolutely perfect for doing alterations to the mold at a later stage. Reinforcement for a bad/thin spot needed? Just add goop. Need more space for the feet? Cut off old parts, prep mold, re-apply goop. Something wrong with the liquid filler system? Remove, renew, goop. Surprisingly straightforward and wysiwyg.
• Figured out how to do the shell casting in what should be a viable enough way.
  "Do two shells, how hard can it be?" and all that. As has been the case many a time before, scale makes this tricky. A big 10kg mannequin with a carefully applied coagulant coating needs to be possible to insert and lock into place without touching the walls at any point, and the entire thing needs to hold 50-100kg of content. Nontrivial. I'm going to try a 3-piece shell, with one frontpiece and two back halves that may not get separated that often. Some simple printed 'slots' for the mold to fit into should hopefully work well enough, with the foot slots being open-sided so it can slide in (see pic).
• Got the shell started
  Gonna' take me several days of work to get it all covered properly. Hand-kneaded. Yeesh. One of the few downsides of the goop. Can probably machine-knead/replace if this needs to scale in the future. The lumpy clay look is a thing too, but eh, c'est la vie.

Upcoming rig work:

• Finish the shell (including fitting basic plumbing connectors by the backpiece)
• Build simple stand supports so there's no risk of tipping/crazy failure
• Verify mannequin insert/removal procedure works
• Build the plumbing (going way simple here, elevated filler funnel + drainage tap by the bottom)
• water test the entire thing, get #s for the liquid. Napkin math, ~2sqm body surface, ~2cm thickness, ~40L plus the usual 50%-factor, so around 60L?
• Do an actual cast.

I'm all nerves and going slow with it, but if the technique works it should be viable to do future models quite a bit faster. We'll see how it goes.

Other stuff:

• Still having my life eaten by the day job thing. Long story, but at least it's looking like I'm hitting the "best case scenario" for it. Unfortunately even the "best case scenario" takes a lot of energy and time, but I'm aiming for taking my much-delayed summer vacation towards november'ish when the stressful main milestones are completed. Should get me back to normal afterwards.
• Shop re-opening going to take a bit. Day job is eating way too much energy during this intense cleanup period. Thinking it'll be better to re-open when I've gotten that settled.
• Will see if I can push down the hosting costs for the shop by dropping a feature level or moving it elsewhere. Contract renewal in the middle of october, so a bit of time pressure.

A bit less than the usual pace, but alas. Looking forward to getting past the whole day job muppetry.

For now though, as per usual - thank you all for the continued support, and see you next round!