I completely missed this when you posted it, so sorry… I managed to drop off the face of the internet pretty much everywhere, sorry… Brief update on that is here:
It kind of was. I resisted the label a little too hard, looking back. I dropped to half time at work to help with childcare and my after-hours time went to damn near zero in a way I wasn’t expecting over the last year. I was kind of arrogant in my assumption that I’d be able to get my schedule back to normal so fast.
It is not. I’ve been crazy slow, but work has actively been happening.
Stock for all the units in the second batch plus a couple extra is cut and the final production program has been tested and confirmed. I’ve gotten some quotes for sample quantity finishing for the processes I cannot do in-house (mechanical polishing, electropolishing, hardcoat anodization) and I’ve also rebuilt my blast cabinet and run some finish tests on some older units. The visual results are pretty good, though I managed to introduce some pretty significant vibe to the first few units I blasted. It may end up being the case that I cannot blast super thin walls? More testing is needed. They do look pretty, though.
I still need to test my color anodization process for blasted units, though I went through and updated my anodization setup to try and get better results at higher voltages. Still not perfect, but much better than my previous results. Still not 100% sure about how I’m gonna manage to mask off the cup so I can get the color differential I’m after… I’ll post a longform video about the anodization process in the near future.
Haven’t posted here primarily because I haven’t had much time to really devote to my normal level of detail and I feel bad that I haven’t had what I would consider a good amount of forward progress since I dropped from full time at work.
That said, I’m back at work full-time starting tomorrow since the kid will be in daycare 