Making perfect Keytronic replacement keypads

On 9/18/13 1:01 PM, Fred Cisin wrote: The problem I ran into was not getting perpendicular cuts through the foam if I tried cutting it without the shim stock attached, because the foam deforms and bends to the side as you force a leather or cigar punch through it. Also, if you look carefully at a pad, the foam is a slightly smaller diameter than the stiff plastic. If the diameter of the foam is too close to that of the stiff plastic, it is difficult for it to clip into the little plastic tabs on the plunger. Once I switched to a die cut it came out perfect. I did some experimentation today with plastic up or mylar up die cuts, and plastic up seems to get a cleaner cut through the mylar, and bevels the mylar edge downwards towards the foam. I also did some experiments time wise with putting old plastic and mylar on new foam vs punching 20 at a time from a glued strip, and it is quite a bit faster punching the later once a batch of strips have been made.