Have been promising a long time to do this, so finally took a few hours to butcher another mini!
Some views are excellentAnother great view And the worst view
As you can see, for the most part, it’s pretty good, but NOT perfect
what I’ve discovered…..
2 part epoxy works best
Each keycap row is a different depth – the top one needs the least glue, row 3 the most
My errors here. I used a hard plastic glue from Bostick. it doesn’t grip well enough on the top of the keyswitches. I glued everything, waited a few hours, half the keycaps didn’t stick
glued the rest, waited, half again didnt’ stick…rinse and repeat about 6 times, adding more glue till finally they all stuck.
The 2 part epoxy stuck fast and hard! – but I used too much.
The repeated adding of more glue caused the multiple key levels you can see in the picture
With a successful 2nd Kickstarter – The Spectrum Next will have between 8,000 and 9,000 users.
Lets Dream a little and imagine a Bright world where all the users have a Super LED Blinkenator 2000 installed….
9000 users = nearly 40,000 inserts to be made!.
lets say just 10% want the blinkenator, I still have to make nearly 1000 of the things.
I’ve been researching a little and identifying bottlenecks to SUCCESSFULLY produce and deliver my board in those quantities
There’s some scary numbers!
So, I’m now pressing forward with TWO designs. one design, the one you’re all familiar with, suitable for small time production in small batches here and there on my weekends, only ever endeavouring to sell maybe a 150 units ever
and the second, a ‘mass produced’ item that requires minimal ‘hands on’ time from me to deliver, but will require some significant outlay up front.
The pictures above are a first run result of my Design For Manufacture for the inserts….A different injection mould, possibly 2 parts, maybe 1 and using a flexible PCB!
some key notes……..
Advantage – no connector soldering needed on my part – currently I’m soldering 16 cheap ‘bridges’ to each main board. with this insert, someone will be soldering 8 SMT FPC style connectors
Advantage – it’s likely that this design will be easier to make ‘injection moulding’ manufacturable. the existing design is tricky, but not impossible
Advantage – FPC connectors are a bit more reliable and easier to use than my bridges for the end user
Advantage – FPC / flexible PCB ‘legs’ on the inserts will mean a little bit easier installation by the end user
Advantage – Uniformity of Light – This type of construction allows for a much thicker ‘top layer’ – which will diffuse the light far more. Also, more of the insert will be better lit up ‘from below’ rather than from the side that i’m currently doing.
Disadvantage – FPC connectors are more expensive
Disadvantage – Flexible PCB’s are more fragile
Disadvantage – Flexible PCB’s are more expensive than FR4 for small quantities, so prototyping ability is very limited. at The quantities I need though, there’s not that much difference
There’s more i’m sure, once the final numbers are ready, I can see if a kickstarter makes sense, it may not be financially viable if the whole thing needs to be sold at £80 each……
if I can get closer to that £50 mark, then who knows!
Progress has been slow but constant!, the new Jumper method of getting the LED inserts to connect to the controller works well, if a little fiddly. I think there’s some changes I can make to allow for an easier installation experience.
A big milestone also – The BETA hardware is at such a point now that i’m happy to send it to the core Dev team for actual installation inside a Next….err, except they can’t have the bottoms on as the USB cable doesn’t fit, D’oh!, another re-design needed!
AND – software – My Arduino code’s finally quite stable – Also, from the Next side of things – the i2c code is great – it runs well at 14MHZ, allowing for some interesting sequences on 8 segments…..I’ll start uploading BASIC programs in the next month or two.
Also, a kind of fork in the road….
Throughout this project, I’ve had an end goal of maybe 5-10% of Next owners owning a Blinkenator. at 3000 Nexts, that’d be maybe 150-300 devices sold over a year or two, making my beer money fund quite happy
Things recently changed……and have made me realise that I’ll probably need to step up my game a little…..
Means that now, there’s over 8000 Nexts in the wild!.
Assuming the same targets, I’d now need to manufacture between 400 and 800 devices…
May not sound much – but at a top level, for just 800 units…….that means some big numbers…..
sourcing 3,200 Plastic inserts….
Sourcing 26,000 LED’s
and with big numbers comes Big Money….and long lead times.
IF someone landed me with an order for 800 Blinkenators tomorrow, at (say) 45 minutes per board, I’d need 600 hours to complete the order.
I have a day job that demands my attention for 160 hours a month. Wife and kids that demand me for a further 80 hours a month…then there’s the whole sleeping and eating thing..
It’d take me a year to be able to fulfil that order 😛
So, the fork in the road……….I may need to do my own Kickstarter!
I’m investigating larger scale manufacture – Full PCBA including through hole, better DFM and Plastic Injection moulding.
All that costs big up front ££…..hence the Kickstarter………is my 5-10% adoption figure massively optimistic. Is it woefully inadequate?
To have any chance at a successful Kickstarter, I need to turn this hobbyist , good quality (7/10, could do better) project into a slicker experience, a better presented finish and professionally produced, not at my dining room table package that would obtain a Crash Smash award, a solid 9.5/10 experience. I KNOW I’m capable of creating the hardware (i’ll learn the software). I’m genuinely uncertain at this time if I would be able to DELIVER that package.
Saying that, I know my limitations, I have a grasp of the fundamentals and i’m costed to the penny for small batches.
Extrapolating that upwards and figuring out where costs stand for different adoption rates is my focus now the BETA 1 boards are ready.
If 30% of Next owners buy this thing, that’s 1800 hours of ‘work’ to do. That’s a FULL TIME JOB!!
scary isn’t it. I have to create budgets that allow for an employee!!
The Beta Board – installedclose up of the new connection method for the LED’sanother closeupA big milestone – SIX Beta Boards8291 times a routine ran from Basic without crashing at 14MHZ!!
Postage on most was actually slightly cheaper than last time! But the two heaviest ones were more, the largest one was quite a bit more than anticipated…so it all averaged out ok…
One repeat customer has a couple of freebies, only one assembled this time!
Also my first ever customer finally will have a spare kit and some stuff to practice with 🙂
Next small batch is coming as soon as the 20cm USB cables arrive.
If you want a kit without the short, tidy looking USB cables then shout and I’ll do a small discount 🙂
Correct orientation of the switchesCorrect orientation from the top. (Except the shift lock…oops! That’s why I put extra switches in :-p)
A funny story about multi sourcing components and the importance of testing before shipping!
I used a supplier on Aliexpress to purchase a few thousand switches in a few orders over a few months but their prices went up quite drastically after the last order (doubled!!) they weren’t the cheapest to start with but were reliable and friendly, worth the extra ££
I found another supplier who did a good deal for a full bag of 4000! Ordered them and waited, very quick delivery and friendly also (will buy again!)
I built my first test new keyboard with the new PCB and switches
It didn’t work. Well, actually, it did! Work perfectly…but in reverse :-p …..
If you mashed every key simultaneously then only released the key you want to press….it worked!! Yeah, the supplier sent me 4000 ‘inverted’ switches! My fault for not checking prior to ordering, they ‘look the same’ so ‘must be the same’ was a wrong assumption on my part! (At least they all weren’t the shift lock type!!)
It’s a VERY easy fix though (found after several panicked hours of testing and building Keyboards)…rotate the switch 180 degrees and it’s perfect!
In each kit I’ve included a small errata note and list of basic instructions to help. It’s an annoyance but for you guys it really just means the silk screen doesn’t quite match the switch orientation so just ask first. Look at the pictures and of any doubt, email/messenger/twitter/Reddit me 🙂
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