Project: Modifying a flawed Z-Onedoll silicone head

Post by **Dollstudio** » Wed Oct 19, 2016 5:56 pm

Hi,

while still waiting for the replacement for the borked Z-Onedoll from last September, I started a little project to modify - and ideally fix - the flawed ZO-A13 head.

If you remember, the ZO-A13 head I got last month looked like this (left image), but it was supposed to look like the right one.

The head had quite a number of flaws, including:

teeth that looked as if someone kicked them in;
the mouth was distorted,
the oral cavity was not centered,
upper and lower eye lashes fall off,
the base plate sticks out, and
the eyes are hard to adjust.

Let's take a closer look at these issues and try to esolve them step by step.

1) Eye lashes.

They look like so:

: DSC03743.JPG (553.15 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

: DSC03748.JPG (575.49 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

I'll deal with them at the end as I want to try to make the eyes better moveable.

2) Oral cavity.

The distorted and misaligned mouth is probably the biggest issue. Since you can not melt down silicone like TPE, the only way to get some symmetry into the face is to carve out the mouth with a scalpel and scrissors.

I removed quite a lot of matter from the mouth:

: DSC03753.JPG (524.21 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

From the outside, the mouth is now aligned and symmetric. The inside of the head… well, it now has some "texture":

: DSC03755.JPG (419.61 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

Fans of oral sex might enjoy the additional room and maybe even the "texture"; I don't know about that; my goal was not to fix the oral cavity but to make the head visually appealing on the outside.

3) Teeth.

This closeup of the upper teeth shows the teeth issue: As usual with TPE dolls, ZO has molded the head in one piece. The teeth probably stuck in the mold form and didn't come out in perfect shape.

: DSC03752.JPG (399.25 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

Because of issues like that, other silicone manufacturers like Doll Sweet make the head from multiple parts. The teeth are glued into the mouth when finishing the head. That allows truly white teeth by coloring them with intrinsic silicone pigments, and using a harder silicone for the teeth. But it is precision work and requires an additional step in manufacturing.

Approaches to solve this issue would be to either try to sculpture teeth on top of the flawed ones, or just to get rid of everything. I decided for the latter and just removed the teeth completely:

: DSC03754.JPG (571.58 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

At a later point I might try to mold some teeth and add them back. For now it's good enough without upper teeth.

A side effect of carving out the head and cutting out the teeth was that the semi-permanent makeup rubbed off. Also a small tear showed up on left mouth angle. Both should be easy fixable at the end of this project.

4) Eye balls.

To figure out why the eye balls are so hard to adjust, I took them out.

: DSC03749.JPG (516.07 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

That explains a lot. The eye balls are full-rounds, but the lower half is bigger. Obviously, that hinders the eye movement.

So in step one, I sanded the sides of the eye ball down with a Dremel.

: DSC03757.JPG (545.96 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

: DSC03758.JPG (600.72 KiB) Viewed 1392 times

Step 2: Polishing, also with a Dremel. Result:

: DSC03880.JPG (1.67 MiB) Viewed 1392 times

Now they move nicely, at least in the plastic eye sockets (which have almost zero friction).

Next I will try if powdering the silicone eye sockets suffices to allow a smooth movement. If not, I will try to encase the surface of the eye sockets with a smooth material with little friction.

To be continued…

Sandro

Post by **Dollstudio** » Fri Oct 21, 2016 8:43 am

Hi,

tried powdering the eye sockets and put the smoothed eye balls back in.

: DSC03928.JPG (513.76 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

They are now a bit better movable. But it's hardly an enhancement.

: DSC03929.JPG (473.58 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

: DSC03930.JPG (402.37 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

: DSC03931.JPG (488.83 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

Eye movements are still too imprecise.

Btw, this is how the head looks from inside:

: DSC03933.JPG (332 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

The big hole is where usually the base base plate would be. In the middle is the oral canal, and on the left and right top of the oral canal is the rear side of the eye sockets. So theoretically there would be some room for a eye mechanism as used by DS.

…but for that, the head's core would have to adjusted:

: DSC03759.JPG (398.84 KiB) Viewed 1343 times

As it is, the core does not have a counterpart to hold an eye mechanism.

So next I will try to encase the (inner) surface of the eye sockets with a smooth material with little friction.

Sandro

Post by **Dollstudio** » Thu Nov 03, 2016 10:20 pm

Hi,

problem solved…

: Z-Onedoll ZO-160 SM with ZO-A21 head (non-oral variant); DSC04103.JPG (484.71 KiB) Viewed 1272 times

She has now perfectly smooth eye movement. No powdering required.

Though it's just a workaround. All manufacturers of silicone dolls with eyes that do not have mechanics behind the eye balls (like Doll Sweet, and recently Sanhui as well) should address this issue.

Sandro