Only a small thing – Switches are at JLCPCB, and i’m doing last checks.
One thing I introduced is a current limiting circuit. For…reasons.
Spent ages designing a nice cut-out-able sub circuit board that could be flipped around and soldered so the new PCB (which mounts flush to the case) can fit…
takes maybe 3-5 minutes of labour to do this……….
I jumped into it, *thinking* that double sided PCB assembly would make things horrendously expensive, too much of a premium so didn’t even actually scientifically evaluate the option.
Well,today I did!
for 5 off PCB’s, having components soldered on BOTH sides – added a 33% premium! – that’s quite a bit, BUT, the bulk of the premium is a setup charge for the tooling. When you order more boards, that charge is spread out more!
BUT….for 30 off, it’s only around 10% more per board to have compnents on both sides….That’s definitley worth it AND, if I order 100 boards, the premium per board will be far less.
So, summary, very quick tweak needed, I’ll be placing a small test order before Christmas, ready for a large run just after Xmas.
and, do note, this discovery applies to ALL the mini keybaords! The Amiga one’s being ordered at the same time!
One of the biggest ‘holdups’has been due to my still learning of best CAD practices. When you have 100 almost identical items in a model and you discover that a minor change is needed on ALL of them….it’s a LOT of clicking to make that change…100 times.
In the case of the A500 Mini, I’d perfected the keycap fitment with the easier C64mini board….mainly by printing, fitting, tweaking, printing….about 40 sets of keycaps all in, and a dozen now broken PCB’s!
I *thought* the A500 keyboard was much better designed…BUT, at some point along the development, I’d broken a link to the original sketch layout that set the dimensions of the keycaps. That was using my old rotatey switches anyway, So, I started over once i found the switches i’m currently using….(did another do-over also, this is the third ‘from scratch’board now 🙂
but, even then I broke it, again…..
But, unlike the C64 mini (many lessons learned), the switches were designed, PERFECTLY placed on a grid this time. BUT, once setup for printing (and breaking the sketch link) the interior diemsions of the keycaps needed tweaking to match the working dimensions.
…with 100 keys on the keyboard, and a quite slow update time (even on my monster 7945HX with 64Gig) that’s over 1000 operations that needed doing, one at a time, by hand, click mouse, drag mouse, press button, type thing, ..extrude, cut, move, push, pull……
Well, it’s done. I’ve gone over the top on the routing on this one also.
The C64 mini one’s less elegant, but should be working perfectly now.
The best bit, I’ve gone and ordered and consigned 6000 switches to JLCPCB. I’m going to get a small batch of both mini keyboards done, and packaged up into ‘as shipped’ products. Then test, test again, i’ll figure out total costs, and how much to charge! and THEN i’ll order everything needed.
6000 switches may seem a lot, but that’s only 3 rolls of switches, enough for 90 TheC64’s. OR less than 60 TheA500 keyboards, realistically, i’ll probably do about 30 of each for the first batch, which will then fund the next ones……..
I recon early 2026 is a go! I’ve been much more careful with the layouts for my other keyboard projects so they’ve been taking far less time!
Says Release Candidate, That’s final, innitProbably should version number this, or, invent a version numbering scheme based on Eminem releasesAmiga keycaps ready to print – colour seperated too!Yeah, you’ve all seen these before, really, very little change other than switch geometry! and CAD built in supports
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