The new store's working, but production problems continue...

26 JUL 2

This post was supposed to be me announcing that I have the new store running and I'm selling type balls again, but when I pulled the first order and tested them most were out of spec. If you saw my March post you may recall that I tested the 200+ balls I had in stock and threw out over half of them for failing QA, but the rest were working correctly. Well, no more—I took a random sample of the remainder and it looks like over half of those are now failing. The problem is they're shrinking just a bit and will no longer fit on the typewriter's tilt ring. I have been able to rework them with sandpaper and a dowel to get them to fit but I don't know how tenable that is, long term.

But I do know what the hitch in my process was: Unaware of the shrinkage issue (which I learned can be up to 8% with this resin) I wasn't consistent with how I was measuring them for calibration. Sometimes it was right after printing, sometimes I'd let them sit around for a while. That certainly helps explain why I was having so much trouble zeroing in on the right values.

So, my next steps are:

• check how much of the current inventory is salvageable
• switch to nylon-like resin, which claims to have less shrinkage than ABS-like
• print test balls, measure regularly over a few weeks to estimate shrinkage rate and total amount
• finalize dimensions based on the above
• back to production??

After I redo inventory I'll post the list here and a link to the dev build of the store for ordering from the list. Apologies for yet another delay!