A500 Mini – part 8 – partly working keycaps and a small PCB reveal

First working keyboard keycaps are off the printer!
Only this bit to show as most of the print failed 😛

Well,, 3 prints failed, I’m trying to learn how to use my Photon Mono-X, so far mostly unsuccessfully, these were printed using a known good combination of Photon Mono and Commodore Brown resin 🙂 ….and still it partly failed!!

Next, I have to optimise the design for printing.
I’d added some features to make them work better, but, those features don’t translate to printing very well, D’oh! (That’s called not doing Design For Manufacture!).

Resin printing can be a hard beast to tame, especially when printing 94/98 individual items (98 if I can two keyboard types!!)

This first print is literally an ‘auto supports, Jab a few extras on, hope for the best’ quick test to prove the mechanics.
When the design is finished,
I’ll need to spend a couple of solid DAYS (maybe a weeks worth of evenings) adding thousands of supports MANUALLY to ensure every keycap comes off the print perfect!

That sounds a lot, but printing a single item is different than printing the same item hundreds of times, so it’s really worth the up front investment in time.

And, speaking of time, I’ve just clocked about 600 hours evenings and weekends, on this project now 😛

I’m rather happy otherwise, next week, I should have a full working keybaord to demonstrate 🙂

Another failure

Another failure!

And, the reveal, part 2

It’s here!!!!