Glowpad
Its a macropad there isn't much to it. Except it does glow which is cool
total time spent: like 12 hours this thing was horrible to make.
the glowie thing
date: june 26
I made this thing a while ago and I don't remember most of it, nor do I have photos of any of it anymore to be honest.
This macropad is meant to just be simple and fun to put together, its part of why I've set it up to be handwired. I also wanted it to be really, really small. Since I'm using a nice!nano clone I can't really use a PCB and make it this size, there isn't anywhere to put it. This is my best attempt of finding a location and even this just a little bit too sketchy for me to try.
This is pretty as small as is possible for a 3x3 choc macropad and I wanted to keep it that way. Unfortunately not using a PCB means that this journal has to exist because it technically isn't a hackpad anymore, so.... that's fun.
i'm writing this journal 20 minutes before the deadline help me
I started out this macropad with one master sketch. Most of these numbers are just to define Choc and MBK spacing but that little 1.1 gap was kinda unique, I had to use my printers scanner to scan a Choc with an MBK keycap on it to find that was the correct offset.
This is when things got weird. I then made a sketch on top of this one to define the acrylic area and the space for the LED's to go.
This was a bad idea. I should've done it all in one sketch, this came to bite me later.
Yadda yadda yadda couple extrudes later and I had this.
A little slot for the LED strip to sit in and hold it in place. Couple more extrudes and I had a full plate.
Voila. An enclosed space for the LED.
There is one teeny tiny little detail I have to point out though: LED's have a thickness to them. It's actually quite a noticeable one, too. I only realized this after about 6 hours of fighting OnShape and trying to make my assembly work. Thats what the little spot in the middle of this photo is; I came back and fixed things.
I also did a bit of a direct modeling hack. Onshape lets you just delete a part, so I just added on to the sketches in the past and deleted the acrylic that was the wrong sizing. New stuff here we go:
Much better. I can actually fit an LED in here, like this:
This leads to the final, lovely finished product after a painstaking and horrible 12 hours trying to make it. When I try and look back to remember what I did, all I remember is being mad at myself for not planning for the LED thickness. Oops.
This was honestly a really informative thing. It's the first time I used Delete Part, something I now make use of often in combination with the derived tool.