Iterative Design in the Dark

The DSKY project is a serious labor of love, I'm finding. There are really precious few resources available on the 'net with any usable dimensions, and there are lots of conflicts among that which is available. The most consistent and reliable dimensions seem to be at the displays, so I'll be using these as my reference point and working out from there.

I've spent hours in Fusion 360 this week, and hours printing prototypes. It's really fun, actually, and I'm having tons of "ah hah" moments of every kind.

So far, I've done two complete face plates, a complete alarm display, and the gaskets and adapter behind the displays. That's a week's worth of work for me at my current capability, but I'm starting to get pretty good and revisions are coming faster.

The first face plate was version 13, and it proved to be too small. By the time the second plate was ready to print, I was at version 46. The version number bumps every time I save, and I'm one of those guys who saves after every important step, so the numbers rack up, but still, there's a lot of work behind that.

The face plate is especially important to me. It was originally a die-cast piece, and I want to model it as faithfully as possible, inside and out. It's... challenging. And with no consistent, reliable reference or dimensions, and the limitations of the medium, some artistic license is going to have to be tolerated.

Today, the latest versions of the alarm display pieces and gaskets are printing, and I'm getting ready to do the first print of the adapter plate. Once that's done, I'll probably scrap the current face plate design, again, and start on a new version.

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