The Mech Touch novel Chapter 396

"Why can’t I get it to work?"

Ves stood stumped in front of the 3D printer as he halted his fabrication efforts. The other mech technicians who watched from the sidelines couldn’t help him either.

Initially, fabricating the components for the prototype went smoothly. Ves already practiced fabricating the most tricky parts, and much of the components used familiar materials employed in his other designs.

The HRF armor plating posed no difficulty at all, although Ves found its lengthy fabrication time to be a drag. It couldn’t be helped, as the formula key draw was to refine a lot of cheap materials into effective armor plating. Transforming all of those raw materials took time that even the best machines couldn’t hurry up.

As for the now-familiar Veltrex formula, Ves knew all of its nuances inside and out. Parts which other mech technicians might struggle with came out of the Dortmund production line with ease.

To be sure of their integrity, Ves scanned each and every part with his Vulcaneye scanner. Even a deviation of 0.1 percent led him to scrap the entire part entirely and force him to fabricate another copy.

Mechs could tolerate a lot of deviances, but just because Ves could clunk some sloppy parts together didn’t mean it would fly in the market. The MTA strictly certified every mech sold in the open market because they disapproved of the practice.

Ves stuck to a higher standard, so he was even stricter to himself than the MTA.

The only unforeseen problem came when he fabricated the two light crystals. As the gimmicks of his second original design, the crystals needed to be attention-grabbing and unique. In order to amplify their performance, Ves stretched their physical attributes to the limit of what he could make.

The smaller crystal posed fewer problems. The main challenge with this smaller sample came when Ves tried to assemble the laser rifle. Even though it was scaled to the size of a mech, some portions required extreme precision, and that was exactly the case with the smaller crystal.

"Still, anyone can assemble this rifle with enough practice." He determined after he fumbled around until he got the rifle to take on its intended form.

The big crystal rested on the chest of his hunched mech. Though the mech’s posture made the crystal a bit less prominent than he originally intended, it would still be able to mitigate energy attacks from the front. Any laser beams that strayed close to the chest would partially lose their efficacy in the vicinity of this crystal.

The problem with this big one was that it was extremely hard to reproduce. It required a perfect environment and a flawless machine in order to recreate a large enough crystal.

It always worked when Ves practiced its fabrication in a virtual environment. He worked under perfect conditions back then. Right now, Ves already ruined his forth big crystal. He looked in dismay as the Dortmund printer spat out a huge crystal that was larger than his body but displayed a very large crack on its surface.

"This is why you need to test out your designs for real." Chief Cyril said as he stepped forward until he stood next to Ves. "More complex mechs sometimes come with hundreds of tiny issues that aren’t apparent during the modelling phases. Especially with weird stuff like these crystals. This is alien technology, right? Those fancy models of yours probably can’t wrap their math around its attributes."

"You have a point." Ves conceded. "The smaller crystal is close enough to what I’ve reproduced in my lab to work. This bigger one is a different story."

He never physically fabricated a crystal of this size before. He vastly underestimated the actual difficulty involved in creating such a monstrosity. He thought it wouldn’t be so troublesome to scale up a crystal according to his current understanding of the alien crystal technology.

Ves discretely turned his attention inward. "Can you do anything to help?"

The spirit of the crystal golem barely communicated back. Even though it was a complete spirit, it did not retain too much knowledge from its predecessor. It retained a lot of knowledge in some fields, but possessed huge gaps in many other areas.

"Do you think it’s a problem with my design or a problem with the working environment?"

The chief scratched his head. "I’m not sure, but my gut tells me that reproducing the crystal is pushing beyond the limits of the capabilities of the Dortmund printer. It’s like trying to cook a traditional meal without a kitchen."

The manufacturing of mechs and its components always centered around the design, the materials and the hardware. All three of these points needed to be satisfied in order to produce a good mech.

Right now, Ves encountered a shortcoming in the one area which he had never really worried about before. The formidable Dortmund printer which Ves relied on to produce his mechs for the next generation started to reach its limits.

Now that they recognized the problem, they could work on coming up with a solution.

"Maybe you should scale back your ambitious design. Do you really have to include such a huge crystal?"

Ves pursed his lips. "I can make some compromises on its size for the bronze and silver label variants, but the gold label mech is my poster model for this product line. It can’t under-deliver on its promises."

"That’s the trouble with gimmicks. It all sounds well and good, but when you try to turn them into reality, you begin to realize that they’re called gimmicks for a reason. Anything that’s good enough to be included in a standard design don’t come with so many issues."

He basically faced two options right now. Either he could scale back his gimmick, or he could try to find a workaround for his problems.

"There shouldn’t be a problem with the concept. It’s only our hardware that’s failing us." Ves summed up. "Problems with engineering can be solved with engineering."

Cyril snorted. "That’s easier said than done. What do you want to do? Improve the Dortmund printer? You don’t understand a thing about how it works."

"That’s true. I’m thinking about using an entirely different approach to create the crystals. When you think about it, using a 3D printer to fabricate a crystal is like using a feather to hammer a nail. It’s the wrong tool for the job."