First, thanks for all the support !
Secondly here is a small update on the progress. It’s actually amazing what ideas come to my mind 3am while carring my feverish 6 month old child around.
I hope this shot is ok, since it was taken from my android phone from the Onshape app.
What you see is the bare form of the carry middle part.
The rails were moved from the rim of the shape to the side. This solves I couple of problems for me ( the gray part ).
on the lower left are some extrudes that should help in keeping the lids in place once the are closed and secured with the bars.
I also have done some prototype printing on the rails to see if the fit and to no suprise , they don’t (but I’m very close).
Next will be the bars on the carry to mount the keyboard, so please be patient
Thanks for the interest in my design.
I hope you have something to grab on that you won’t collapse
I popped the parts as they are right now (which aren’t final) in the online tool from voodoo manufacturing website and it states 155$ without shipping.
since the parts are quite large which results in time the price is reasonable.
For example: Slic3r estimates 22 hours of print time for on lid, which doesn’t shock me and was expected.
I guess that the final version will take 5 days of printing for one case on one printer, so that you have a bit of explanation why this is pricey.
So buying a CR-10 for 350$ and producing three case would already pay off
Haha, I grabbed my seat very hard as per your advice. Actually, I more or less figured that the price would be around that or even higher. Thanks for the response!
With pleasure!
Actually I was intersted by myself to see these numbers. Material costs and power consumption , for someone who has a capleable printer, would be around 20$ to 30$, without screws.
You see the orange proto types until they fit perfectly, those were printed on my Prusa. The white one is from a CR10 mini which I have access to, to check if the rail work when printed on a different machine.
I’m right now printing the counter part of the rails. Let’s see if they fit.
Additionally I think I have a deign for the handle that will match the overall design. Pictures will come once I have them drawn.
It looks superb (maybe the handle is too large?), but made me think: an even lower cost version would be a piece that connected the rails together (as in, just the orange part with no handle). This would allow anyone to carry the keyboard in a bag without having the halves shake around hitting each other. In fact, the handle here seems unnecesary to me, since I would not want to carry this precious thing around unprotected. @jesse, do you think it’s a good idea?
The handle is way too large. This was a quick and dirty design and print. I just wanted to test the rail mounts in terms of stability and forces applied.
If just one bar would be sufficient for you I could hook you up , but it would need some support on the lower end too because the are just in thin air. Putting the keyboard in a laptop sleeve would give you some basic protection.
Ideally, you would make it so that when you hold the halves together with their rubber feet touching, it would just be a case of pushing the handle between the halves and sliding along the connector bars. Then you wouldn’t need a spacer at the bottom, as the feet would be doing the job already.
Also, if you made the connector bars as four short bars instead of two long ones, then you wouldn’t have to slide them the whole way along to connect and disconnect, just the length of the lugs on the keyboard itself.
Thanks for the input
I’m investigating the distances and print orientations of such rails.
In terms of the 2 pieces against 4 pieces. The bars that come with the keyboardio are also one piece, reason for that is maybe because there is a little securing nob that will hold the whole bar in place, and this is only on one side. So if I split the bar in half and make them only match the side of the connectors one side will be secured and the other wont. So either this is acceptable or it will be a close fit.
As of speaking,I’m printing such a connector right now in a different orientation ( standing instead of lying flat) and it seems that the tolerances are different
On a side note: It’s really surprising how the whole “dust cover” thing evolved from having a full featured setup to a minimalist bar connector. That doesn’t mean that I will stop on the initial concept. I’m rather thinking of dedicating the different designs it own threads.
