April: the Month of Suck (Patreon)

Suck Choker & Squeeze Choker

This month I began developing my first new SHE BON augment of the year! I haven’t really decided on a name for it yet, but for now I’ve been referring to it as the “Suck Choker”. As the title suggests, it is a device worn on the users neck which replicates the experience of someone’s lips tangent to the skin creating a small oscillating vacuum… but from many angles all at once!

(here is a mockup of the look I'm shooting for with the design- it's mildly Elizabethan)

This particular device has presented three separate design questions to address:

• how it is driven: the manner in which suction is creation 
• suction cups: the surface body making contact with the skin
• sensing: what will this augment be acting in response to?

Over the past month I’ve bounced around between all of them quite sporadically, which has made documentation somewhat non-linear and difficult. Some days have involved designing molds for my suction cups, or pouring silicon into one of them. Other days I’ve focused primarily on methods of creating adequate suction using syringes, as well as deciding how I’d drive those syringes mechanically to produce a steady and consistent pressure gradient!

MY CHALLENGES

The device has to be safe. So, preferable I don’t get strangled by the device, or sucked so hard that my little blood vessels pop. This is why I’ve chosen to stick with syringe driven suction, rather than a full on vacuum pump… or any other type of pump.

I want this to be gentle……… and realistically, when we’re talking about having our necks sucked on, I personally prefer to relate the experience to something deliberate and gentle, than fast-hard and immediate; but that’s me.

The device should be comfortable and look nice. I managed to create somewhat of a juxtaposition between the string of suction cups, and the drive system of syringes.

The choker is somewhat of a deconstructed tentacle. It looks elegant, understated, and fairly innocuous, even when in use. It is almost like a string of pearls:

The bank of servo driven syringe pumps looks like it might be part of a fuel burning engine in an old roadster…. or part of the black gate from Lord of the Rings. Appearance-wise, it is the opposite of the string of suction cups it’s providing suction to:

MOLDING

I created four different molds for my suctions cups before I made one that I was completely happy with. Molding silicone is a stick business and therefore, something that I typically avoid in projects unless it’s super necessary that I make my own shapes from scratch… In this case, I swallowed hard and got through it… pouring molds twice daily until I at last had (8) suction cups that were all the same and without flaw.

*what I’ve learned*

The suction cups I’ve made all pretty much look the same, but there is a major difference once you flip them over and look at the inside of the cup itself. The syringes have to remove all of the air inside the middle area of the suction cup before they start creating any meaningful suction…. So if the area within the circumference of the sucker is too large, the syringes wont suck enough air our of the cups by the time the plunger is fully extended.

On the flip side- if the area inside of the suction cup is too little, then you risk the chamber inside collapsing in on itself, at which point the air pressure is cut off and no suction will occur. I had to find a happy medium!

*something else I learned*

The best way too get a smooth, consistent lip on each sucker was to mold a sleeve that was double the length and then fold it completely in half (the unfolded suction cups look sorta like mini-flesh lights)

Folding an elongated sleeve in half also made the outer wall more taught and stiff, which helped to create better suction.

I’m calling the completed suckers “scallops” - because they look like sea scallops as you’d get them in a restaurant: plump and marshamallowie.

THE CIRCUIT-WORK

I created two separate and unique circuit boards especially for this device. Just like all of the other SHE BON augments, it has its own dedicated brain, yet this augment also requires a satellite board to provide a decorative element locally to each individual scallop. The main brain is called the TAKO, and the satalite board is called the CALAMARI…. Because it looks like calamari…

The TAKO is responsible for driving the servo motors of the syringes, and for controlling the string of calamari boards:

The CALAMARI will light each of the scallops from within:

The silicone material I used to mold the cups is a nice light defuser, so I figure it would be silly not to take advantage of this aspect and add some visual feedback to the suction!

WAIT! WHERE ARE YOU PUTTING THE BIG ASS RACK??

Those servo/syringe banks look kinda large, huh? Don't worry... they're going to be mounted on my upper back, but they're going to need to share space with another augment I'm currently brain-storming. I'll elaborate on where and how I'm placing them on my body in my next update! 

SENSING?

Every SHE BON augment exists to sense something from the body… all of this mechanical stuff is merely fancy indication of that which the device senses. It might seem like I’m getting ahead of myself by designing the indication first, but realistically that has been my design process for all of these augments so far. Don’t worry, this thing will be reacting to stimuli, that part is just being developed separately.

So, what will this “Suck Choker” be reacting to? For this augment I have chosen to key in on respiratory rate. That is, my lungs expanding in and out as I take in oxygen. The suction will happen in parallel to my breath: so when I breathe in, the cups will also “breathe in” and create suction… and when I breathe out, they too will release it. 

WAIT, I MENTIONED “SQUEEZE CHOKER” IN THE TITLE!

That’s right. In addition to this sucking choker that makes use of pressurized suction cups to simulate hickeys… I’ll also be creating the spiritual opposite of this device; one which constructs the neck slightly by means of inflation.

How I intend to do it will take another post with more explanation, which I’ll get to in the near future. It is going to involve more silicone molding however >.< More to come on that soooooon!

Again, thank you for believing in my crazy enough to fuel its growth <3

Keep making the awesome stuff you wish to see exist in the world,

-Sarah