Keycap production snapshots-lots of pictures

A quick pictorial ! on the process of creating keycaps.

Step 1, Recycle the IPA. Leave it standing for a few days, it settles, becomes clean! This is a month or two of settling. I now have about 4L left from my original 7.5L…not bad for nearly 10L of resin printed

Step 2. Print and drain! Leave like this for maybe half an hour or so to drain off excess resin.

Step 3. Scrape keyboard off the build plate

Step 4. Throw keyboard into a small bag of IPA

Step 5, throw bag in ultrasonic cleaner! BONUS step….put bottles of coloured resin in for a while to get them mixed well

Step 5a. Drain IPA off into settling container for recycling. Fill Ziplock bag with water and drain to bucket. Repeat again. One clear GPU can run under the tap!

Step 6 – dry and separate the keys! Then leave overnight in a box to dry properly before curing

Step 7 – ensure you agitate the vat well, scraping gently all the pigment off the bottom.

Step 8 – sorting! – visual inspection of each set to grade them A or B. Also, within the same colour mix batch I’m able to potentially make one good set out of two bad ones!

I’ve missed out a few pictures, but this covers the basics. Using a timer, it’s around half hour all-up per keyboard. Sometimes a little more if a print fails!

A failure!

Tried to make a ‘GOLD’ keyboard but need to research a little on how to keep the particles suspended. This one failed due to too much gold. It all sunk to the bottom causing layers to become underexposed and ultimately sticking to the FEP

This was supposed to be clear!

Also tried to make a crystal clear keyboard…unfortunately I topped up the vat with a tiny bit of the gold mix from a poorly labelled bottle I use f or mixing (I didn’t write any label!) I’ll give these away with a kit to the first person that asks 🙂

F Keys!

Quite late into development, I’d realised that the F keys were supposed to be a different colour. So, I add two sets of F keys to kits. Some early ones went out without the extras. Happy to send some out if you shout.

C64 Mini keycaps, Bleugh’s Log, date 12012021….second print!

This one went well 🙂

Note, the intentional ‘stone effect’ finish 😉

Most people would say this was caused by an over excited person, whom, upon waking early and discovering the complete print decided to not follow the correct drying / washing procedures in order to get it finished quickly!

I, err, disagree…

Either way, I now have a firm grasp of changes needed to the CAD model and also the supports needed in the slicer.

Those changes are fairly substantial, so I expect it’ll be a little while for my next update, happy to document them also if anyone’s interested.

Freshly dried and washed

Perfect size

A quick comparison

Super LED Blinkenator 2000 and that J15…An epiphany?

I’m going to be reserved till it actually works…….But, I really think this could actually work

C64 Mini Keyboard – ‘Invisible’ fitting mod – Part Deux- More images

Not much of an update, I put a shorter USB cable inside so thought I’d take some pictures of the top of the USB cable wiring…..

I’ve not installed heatshrink yet on the sticky-outy USB Pins – this WILL be needed to provide strain relief – being truthful, I hadn’t expected it to work first time so didn’t bother 🙂

Showing the complete wiring –

Joystick USB port -> USB Hub ‘output’

Keyboard -> USB Hub ‘output’

C64Mini Circuit board -> USB Hub ‘input’

There’s two free internal USB sockets now!

C64 Mini Keyboard – ‘Invisible’ fitting mod

Spent a few hours this week adding an internal USB Hub, getting ready to start on a basic instruction sheet for the kits

As can be seen – you can’t see it’s modded externally (well, other than the keyboard). Both external USB ports still work and internally there’s a free USB port for a USB Stick 🙂

Spectrum Next Light strips – more! – FIRST LIGHT

The inserts arrived – and they look fantastic

I hand soldered them using 2 year expired solder paste and a hot air gun

Spectrum Next – A little distraction – Push Push SD card?

Had a little bit of a play with the daughterboard to see if there’s any possibility of putting a ‘push push’ SD card inside…

Unfortunately it isn’t without chopping at a couple of supports inside. I’m trying to keep my Next case fairly minty – untill it’s possible to get another, i’m going to avoid this mod.

The reasons it won’t fit – The case was designed with two ‘helper’ guide rails for the SD card – shown in yellow in the images above. Those rails stop any push-push mechanisms from working – there’s just not enough mounting depth for the card reader.

Now, if someone were prepared to snip those rails off….then it’s entirely possible to knock up a new daughterboard……I’ve already done most of the EDA before I thought to take the next apart and check 🙂

C64 Mini Keyboard, 1/2 alive and Some CAD

Bit of a change of pace from the electronics, onto the CAD…Here’s a first draft of the first key on the C64 Keyboard – the Left Arrow!

Done at full scale, then at 50% scale

C64 Keyboard – It’s alive – More!

Straight as a laser beam!

C64 Mini Keyboard – It’s ALIVE!!!

Here’s the Money Shot!………….

And some of the journey so far……….

C64 Mini Keyboard….more progress and a little setback

It fits! There’s a tiny offset on the left for some reason but I don’t think that affects things when the key caps eventually go on

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

C64 Mini Keyboard – Some progress!

Not much really – Shift Lock keys just arrived off the slow boat. The pinouts are confirmed, I’m going to hit ‘go’ to manufacture after another quick check on the PCB

Also, from a bit of researching, i’m not so sure the Diodes are needed.

I may have to make two batches of board, one with, one without

 

C64Mini Keyboard – PCB Layout Success

After a loooong weekend and sneaking in a few hours – Success with the keyboard layout dimensions!

There’s few tweaks here and there remaining to align things perfectly and also to add some nice Silk Screen artwork

And, how I got there!

C64 Mini Keyboard mod – More Electronics Part II – OOPS

After spending a while lining up the buttons and generally making the PCB layout a bit tidy, I figured I’d print a 1:1 and see just how well it aligns….

 

Oops…

C64Mini – Keyboard Mod

The Bottom Side of the C64 Mini Keyboard

There’s Plenty of Volume – But what switches can be used to put inside the keyboard?

I’m not too worried about the electronics  side right now, there’s plenty of Arduino keyboard emulator tutorials out there.

 

Wanhao Duplicator 9 – New X Axis parts coming

It’s been a busy personal and work life for the past few weeks so it’s been difficult to ‘tinker’……….I have however made something new!…………..

D9 – Some more upgrades – Belt Tension

I’ve designed another thing that solves some more problems with the D9 – a Belt tensioner!

Thanks to Jerome on Facebook for posting a pic of his Tensioner

I’ve posted this up on Thingiverse……….

It’s been printed at least 10 times by guys on the facebook group and provides an immediate and cheap improvement over the stock……..

First signs of life and possible ‘bugs’

Everything’s gone superbly up to now…The printer’s levelled all lovely like.

The bed moves back and forth as it should.

So, lets try a first brand new print , as I already have one printed months ago, which I broke due to not enough infill…It’ll be a good ‘benchmark’

Wanhao D9 Idler mount from Thingverse

Err, doesn’t look great does it….The first layer went down lovely, then at some point during these first 6 or so layers, a shift happened, there’s some blobbing, and, well, it ain’t too pretty.

First thoughts are many expletives, followed by a ‘ah well, that was a fun experiment’ resignation.

The rails aren’t perfectly frictionless in their moving, but they aren’t bad either..I’ve seen worse on automated production lines….Could I be experiencing STICTION????

If so, that’s gonna be some mechanical engineering stuff i’m going to have to figure out…Whilst ‘fun’ trying to calculate stuff with excel, wikipedia and various internet forums (are the MGN12 ideal for this job? – who knows?)…..I don’t fancy being bored, typing crap out on a computer (yes, i’m blogging, typing stuff out on a computer, hopefully not crap), I want to get stuck into tinkering, printing…..

I try another print and just stand and watch……

I luckily and quickly notice an odd ‘cyclic’ type of motion happening with the pattern laying down, almost a tiny figure of 8 type of motion happening on the print head with respect to the bed…..

I have a look underneath to see what’s causing it, maybe the bearings are wobbling, or i’ve not tightend the rails properly?

In summary –

Tighten the belt holder holding nuts when you re-assemble the thing! these ones shown below…..

Yes, tightening these two solved my odd pattern issues and layer shifting

MGN12H rails small tweaks to perfect…

Ok, the rails are on and working a treat, kind of…

The right angled fittings I purchased to secure the 20×20 extrusion to the 40×40 have some little tabs on them, I can’t find any readily available way of securely making this connection with off the shelf parts so i’ll have to grind down one side’s tabs…

The slight amount of pressure this tab is putting on the extruision is enough to twist it and stop the MGN rails from running smoothly!

A secure 20×20 extrusion. But slightly twisted due to the small lump

View from below…if I add a little drop down to the right hand carriage, it’ll be easy to re-use the existing limit switch by mounting it on the side of the 2020

Close ups of the existing limit switch and the protrusions on the right angled mounting block.

Overall, minor things , but shows you should plan things a little in advance and test fit stuff before ‘going for it’

Fortunately this is nothing a quick angle grind and carriage print can’t fix….which means re-assembling the original printer to print a new bit, D’oh!

MGN12H crappy linear rail bearing blocks

What’s more sensible than spending $9USD on a basic, possibly non working chinese no-name bearing block?

……..Spending hours and a few quid trying to do ’em up!

Parts I’ll need…

• 3/32 Drill Bit (or possibly 2.4mm if it needs some play) …………..[edit, turns out a 2.4mm is too small! Looks like 2.5 is the go]

• 3/32 Ball bearings (bound to loose a few)
• Something to drill with
• something to clamp down the carriage without damaging it

After a few minutes with the calipers and Tinkercad, I give you……….

Wanhao Duplicator 9 – D9 – Technical ‘stuff’ – Part Deux, the LCD Part number!

LCD

As you can gather, I get a little sidetracked, this thing’s a 3D printer and, well, I’ve not done a huge amount of 3D printering yet……….Ah well

Lets go back to DWIN.com.cn  

The T5 Processor on the back of the LCD

Wanhao Duplicator 9 – D9 – Technical ‘stuff’

 

Getting right into the guts of this thing, there’s a few basic discoveries

There’s two names on the market –

Monoprice MP Maker Pro Mk.1 is an alternate supplier of this printer – Externally they look identical!

Hardware

Main Board

Delivery and unboxing of the D9 – part 2

During the unboxing, a bit of an oddity showed up, the build plate didn’t look level at all

taking a picture from the front, looking in, it’s clear that the height between the plate and that block thing is quite a bit more on the right, than the left

…….See post about V Slot Wheels