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| Lasercut Acrylic
Case Tutorial |
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Lasercut Acrylic Case Tutorial - Buttons
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Getting the buttons right is pretty tricky. I'm still working
on the best system for this. There are a few options. Usually
I want my buttons to protrude a little from the surface of the
case, and to be matte finished like the main plastic.
The first option is to cut the buttons from a thicker stock
than the front plate acrylic. This way they can stick up a
bit. My current favorite however is to have the buttons
superglued to the top of a microswitch from digikey, which
itself is mounted to a PCB designed for the purpose. The PCB
is mounted to a stack of cut plastic sheets, and a laser cut
foam gasket is applied to the front of the button PCB. Taken
together this spaces the button board away from the top sheet
by a certain amount, and also braces it against the back
sheet. The foam gasket is cut such that some fingers of foam
extend into the hole cut in the front sheet for the
buttons. These fingers serve to stabilize the edges of the
buttons and give them more return force for when they are
depressed.
For this picture sequence though, the buttons are just glued
onto microswitches, which themselves are glued to the back of
the li-poly battery inside the case. Tiny pieces of foam are
adhered to the back of the larger buttons to stabilize them
during depression. The buttons are wired to the controller
board using tiny strips of copper tape.
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Paint the buttons in the same way that the main plates were
painted. The same stencil method may be used to put graphics
on the buttons, which I have gotten more into recently.
Paint the Buttons
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Sand and buff the buttons. I find that this is ok to do by
hand since you are just trying to round the top edges of the
buttons and the surface area in question is small. It helps to
mount the buttons to something; in this picture I've hot glued
the button to the end of a paint pen. The back of an xacto
knife works well too (remove the blade first). After
finishing, the button can be peeled off the mandrel and the
hot glue can be picked off of it. Apparently the bond of the
screenprinting ink to acrylic is stronger than the hot glue to
paint bond.
Sand and Buff
the Buttons
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For mounting, cut and adhere the tiny bits of foam. I buy my
foam with adhesive on one side from McMaster-Carr.
Then apply a tiny drop of superglue to the top of a
microswitch, then drop the button in its hole. Sticking the
front of a button to a piece of tape is helpful, since then
you can grap the ends of the tape to maneuver the button into
its hole.
Button Mounting
Let the glue dry.
On to pics of the Finished Product
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Design partially original and partially ripped off from other websites
by Holly Gates
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