I spent the last few days tweaking my tire design and printing out a new mold. I wanted to reduced the outer diameter, give the tire a more rounded profile, and make it a little bit wider. This morning I de-molded my "seasoning" tire and had my first chance to evaluate the new design in my hands. I'm a little disappointed, honestly. The OD and width changes are what I wanted, but the profile seems too rounded now, and the treads don't go as far to the edge of the tire as I'd like. I took this comparison picture to show what I'm talking about. The tire on the left is the latest design, the middle is a JC DDv2, and the right is my first design. So while I've made a step in the right direction, I think I want to tweak the tire shape a little more. This time, though, I think I'll print the tire itself before I print the molds. The molds take me about 3 days to print so I'd rather not do that unless I'm sure I've got the design exactly the way I want it. In hindsight it's easy to see that's what I should have been doing, but I don't' think you can blame me for getting excited and wanting to go straight to making tires.
