Techno Trousers wrote: ↑I know that there will be the sweet "stabilizer barrels" for the space bar, but are there going to be stabilizer points on the top plate for those who want to use old-school wire stabilized caps for shifts and numpad? Actually, will we have the stabilizer barrels for phase 1 if we're not producing barrels at all?
There are two stabilizer barrels. One for the
spacebar (needed by both boards), and one for the
vertical stabilizers (potentially needed by the 101-key... emdude's catch from before).
When I said before that there were no unknowns, this is a known, but a decision will be made based on volumes. If we do produce these, it will be done as a hobby mold (there is no chance we have enough for a REAL production run with just 2+ parts per board). In phase 2, we would be making all barrels, and these would just be a 1/20th of a larger multi-part mold. I have done a few hobby molds in the past, and they turn out well (never tried as a moving part though, so that will take some testing). I have done 2-shot though, which is what these would take... with the second shot adding the "clips" to the first shot barrel. I have another friend that has an extremely nice hobby mold press he made that he has already agreed to let me use. Similar to the one below (created based on the plans from
Vincent Gingery):
But like I said, it really depends on volumes. I would likely have the negative of the barrels just printed in metal or heat resistant plastic (fascinating process) as thin as needed, and use an epoxy mold form to hold the print. It's involved, but I have no question it would turn out well. The fall back plan is just welded metal clips (which I would likely just do myself) using a spot/mig welder. I prefer plastic because of metal on metal contact with the stabilizer bars, but it is a still certainly a better choice than ABS clips pressed into the plate like the original F's. Moral... the jury is out on this until we know how many plates we are really needing to process.
EDIT: While discussing decision points, I am reaching out to I$ to see if we can not only turn the PCB into a .1 pitch connection, but also if we can have the producer pre-attach header pins at some cost (assuming the connection remains reliable), vs the need to solder cable. This would DRAMATICALLY save time processing these boards and potentially produce a more stable result (an IDE cable connector would just slip on if we could find one with the appropriate number of pins). He knows more about that world than I, so we will wait feeback. Following is an example of a header pin for those that might not know
SECOND EDIT:
pyrelink wrote: ↑What will be the solution for the space bar stabilizer barrels? Would they just be ordered from a shapeways type of thing, or would we be trying to get them made out of ABS or similar plastic?
My prints out of Acrylate from Shapeways are working nicely (SLIGHTLY more abrasive than ABS, but you guys are making me OCD with this "sound" stuff now
). But the material is a little brittle (WAY more than ABS), and based on how bad they did with the with my latest batch, I struggle to trust them with something like this. If someone knows an ABS print shop capable of EXTREME detail, I would certainly be up for giving them a try. The only ones I know of can't print in enough detail to get what we need
