8 Nov
2011
8 Nov
'11
12:57 p.m.
Mark Benson wrote:
Do you foresee that the laying out of traces on the PCB can't be automated?
The milling I'd expect to be reliable, and it would seem there's some
scope for automated testing of the result (using the same 3-axis bed which
could potentially be used for the printing and milling)
I'm wondering if constraining designs to a row-oriented layout (which
covers the majority of keyboards out there anyway) wouldn't make things a
lot easier - then all you have to worry about is the spacing and frequency
of keys on a given row according to the user's design. There'd be an
enforced minimum distance between rows, maximum key frequency etc. (and
there's potential for larger keys to span rows still, of course) which
would ensure space to route PCB traces.
Of course it's all theoretical, but it's nice to think about how these
things might be done :-)
cheers
Jules
That's
easier than the case. The PCB is CNC milled from a
single-sided copper-clad PCB. The metal baseplate for the keyboard is
also milled.
Milling isn't the issue. What is the issue is every one of those PCBs
has to be laid out, spec'd and tested as a one-off. That's quite a
costly and time consuming exercise.