We have the first functioning latches. Unfortunately my printer tolerance is still a little off, so even after some percussive maintenance (hitting it with a hammer) only three of the sliding bolts freed up. I'm pleased with the action - not so pleased with the print quality.

I've also gone and found a power source for this build . It's a 10,000mah (claimed) battery bank and is (so far) the only item I've purchased for this build. It is an awkward rounded shape so mounting will be fun. I also need to figure out how I'm going to charge the device without having to remove it from the shell. Maybe some sort of exterior hatch?

On that front, the CAD is nearly done. Lots of little problems were resolved. I'm doing all of this in blender3d. I find it way more enjoyable to work in blender and model precisely/parametrically using modifiers compared to working in freeCAD. Maybe it's just because I'm more familiar with blender?

Fun fact: I've automated the export/slice process. I use the build system "tup" to automatically generate STL's from blender, to check the geometry is watertight, calculate some parameters (eg cost of each part), to slice them into GCODE and upload it  to octoprint. I can then review in octoprint's gcode viewer. No more "oh darn, I printed the old version" for me.

As a bonus, it also generates technical-drawing-style images of each part. Here's the new suspension plate. It has slightly different springs and some mounting bolts on the top now.

Hmm, I should really get it to put the cost/material estimations on the 'technical' drawing.

Anyway, there's a whole stack of printing for my printer to do for the next few days!

Off Topic:

My day job involves AI, and we decided we needed a switch on the wall labelled "AI Emergency Disconnect." Seeing as I had a nice sci-fi looking thingo from this project I threw together a concept for this very ambiguous switch (does it switch the disconnect on or the AI on?):

And today I threw some paint on the dud print:

There was a lot of bleed-through on the masking of the stripes, so I'll need to do another bunch of coats of yellow. Oh well, I've learned something.

I also think that the NDS handle will need to be slightly taller. You can't quite get your knuckles around it properly.