October observations

'Allo folks!

I mentioned in the sept post that I felt much better now that the headache of the rig issue was past, and that is holding up! The late september "make a bunch of skin-toned hoods"-plan went well enough, so that means we can look to the future with all this new energy. As usual, feedback's greatly appreciated! Let me know if I gloss past something that makes you go "wait what", yeah?

There's basically three main categories of todo-items as I see it right now;
1) Research-heavy / fancy extras (e.g. glue-free movement system). These can wait a bit while we get the core things working properly.
2) Fund-assisting, aka shop-related (fix the texture issue (aka SUIT-99), add new models, ...). The texture issue has pretty high priority, as that'll affect everything I cast until I figure it out. Adding new models etc can wait until that's fixed, but it's a good work-variation to mix in with the next category...
3) big expensive slog-work (build the fourth (!) iteration of fullsuit-casting rig). This we're going to talk about today, because hell yes we're getting started!

Pictures say more than a thousand words, so if you haven't clicked them already, go for it. Since it's a two-part project we can talk about the pieces separately:

1) The casting chamber.
I did a quick CAD-sketch with the elf mannequin mold and math'ed a bit around it. With just basic block-fillers in the dead space we end up needing around 300L of liquid latex, but invoking Engineer's Judgement I estimate the total can be brought down towards 200L without too much trouble. A lot of liquid latex, but not an insurmountable quantity. I'm sure there'll be strange issues that only show up when this is scaled to such a ludicrous size, but I feel quite confident after the year of hoodmaking-experience.

There's a whole pile of side-quirks to the casting chamber too that I didn't bother to CAD up;
* The front needs to have a full-wall door that can open outwards and seal tightly when closed
* There needs to be a window in the front, both for aesthetic and 'wtf was that sound'-reasons
* There has to be a roof-mounted rail system to insert the mold, as it has to be prepped with coagulant outside the chamber. Could theoretically do a two-fill chamber system and avoid it, but that'll need two of the crazy-pumps described below. Can't fit that into my tiny workshop.
* Space-fillers must be possible to attach to the inside without compromising the liquid-proof nature of the chamber.

None of these ought to be overly complex, just more work that needs to be done to finish it all. The complexity comes from piece #2...

2) The pump
This is where things get a bit requirement-complex.
* Must fill 200L in <2min. Too slow and we'll end up with way thicker at the bottom.
* Must empty 200L in <10min. Too slow, as above. Too fast and we'll get latex dripping all over the surface.
* Must support pumping +-2M height. We need to cast the molds standing to avoid drip-bumps all over them. That means we'll be pumping a fairly tall container, with all the height issues that entails.
* Must fill/empty with a continuous flow throughout the entire process. If we pause even for just a second or two in either direction we'll end up with a latex ridge that ruins the whole cast.
* Must not have any falling action that can cause splatter/bubbles to form. Splatter leads to bumps, bubbles leads to holes. With a sealed 200L container we can't easily deal with bubbles either.
* Must support bidirectional pumping with variable speeds. As mentioned above, speed in either direction is important. Since we're dealing with height requirements from the standing mold and no-fall limitations we can't just have drainage taps for filling/emptying either, we need a proper pump to extract all the liquid latex.
* Must not have parts that have mechanical friction while in contact with the liquid. If you've ever worked with liquid latex, you know why this is a thing. Any kind of friction will cause the latex to clog up and solidify sooner or later, and that's the bane of pretty much all 'brilliant' mechanical ideas for managing this headache of a liquid.

As you can probably puzzle together, the above invalidates pretty much every reasonably priced standard pump. There is however one major saving grace - we just need to pump ~200-300L in and out, not a continuous stream for hours. Brainstormed for an afternoon with a day-job colleague, as one does when needing input on casting latex girlsuits, and we figured out a viable idea: a custom bellows-style pump. ~200L latex in a deformable container, linear-action mechatronics to empty/fill it. Pumping the liquid out of it will be trivial, pulling it back in will be slightly trickier but should be solvable.

Combined with the CAD'ed casting chamber, I should be able to just fit both the chamber and pump into the 'casting corner' of the workshop too, so hell yes - there's an actual plan now! I plan on getting the shopping lists sorted and parts ordered pretty soon, then I'll puzzle out which end to start in for this weird offshoot of the suitmaking adventure. Stay tuned, november will bring updates on this~~

All-in-all the new rig should result in...
* Cheaper per-suit casts, dropping material costs by 50% or more. Should see the amount of latex I've had to pull off the walls of the spraying chamber after each spraycast...
* Lock-in to one base color of suits. 200L pre-colored, vs prepping a 20L batch for whatever color. Win some, lose some. Can always prep more 200L-batches later if I manage to get a bigger workshop.
* Less complex space required for suit casts, as I don't need to have a sealed neg-pressure room to spraypaint in.
* Less prep-/post-work for casts. Just prep the mold and go, no room prep or cleanup needed.
* Better quality suits. Even coverage, no drips, no thin spots, no 'spray bubbling bumpiness', etc.
* Higher reliability, less risk of user-fuckups. Spraying was a massive skill-game where one fuckup could completely ruin dozens of prep-hours and hundreds of euros in material. In comparison, the immersion casting is a controllable digital engineering process where all issues can be wizarded away with a bit of time, money and coffee.

No clue yet how long this'll take to build, but guessing 3-6mon. If all this comes together we'll be one major step closer to being able to spread suits to the world though, so worth the effort. Future's looking pretty neat, eh? 

PS: will do a patreon 'thank you' hood round when I've figured out the texture issue, hopefully the last one before I can call them production grade. €50+ lifetime cutoff again, but I <3 y'all on either side of that line. Can't thank you all enough for the support throughout this journey!