Case Improvements and the keymat

[TeDaDeS]

Thanks for the update ED. I like a fresh thread to talk/read about the progress.

 

[second exodous]

Good news. I'm glad this time around it can be upgraded with a new board, I remember being disappointed by the power of the Pandora when I got it. Of course that was unfounded as it is actually still a good emulation machine despite how old it is.

So is the function printed on the rubber or the keys? If they were printed on the keys that aren't glued on then the keys could easily be swapped out for different layouts. Maybe something for the future to consider if it isn't the case.

 

[levi]

I can't imagin how twitchy the pre-pre-orderes must be right now

Not as twitchy as brexit is making me at present, and that would likely be the same whether I was a pre-preorderer or a plain pre-orderer or just someone planning to buy one in the future really. I've not been able to find out what rates computers and phones and things would attract under WTO rules. I did find this old press release that suggests the default could be as high as 17% but many nations reduced this to 0% by the year 2000, but it's not clear to me where the UK would sit on day one.

On producing custom heat sinks there is: "EEVblog #1196 - Custom Heat Sink Design" [1]. Only about 4% relevant, but there might be something useful in there. (I find this fellow a little annoying -- far too much energy! -- but he certainly knows some stuff.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTmzVs6LHRo

Yes, I got round to watching that yesterday. It suggests that using that extra 1.5mm might be a big gain in reducing heat resistance, but for mass producing you'd need to pay for another mould for the injection moulded aluminium final parts. Along with others, I'm fine leaving this as an upgrade I could buy later. I tend to think that with the external interface continuing to be the USB cage, the ability of an aluminium block to retain heat over the continued ability to excrete it via the USB cage might become more useful.

Edit: Fixing spellin g

 

[Grench]

The talk of changes to the mechanical nature of the keymat (the moving bits) has me a bit concerned. It took a lot of attempts to get the current design 'just right'. Hopefully the above solution will simply work thereby proving these concerns unfounded.

 

[Xcl4m4t10n]

October.

 

[EvilDragon]

The talk of changes to the mechanical nature of the keymat (the moving bits) has me a bit concerned. It took a lot of attempts to get the current design 'just right'. Hopefully the above solution will simply work thereby proving these concerns unfounded.

The previous changes to make it feel so good were simply done in the rubber material. The caps haven't changed. And the rubber material also isn't being changed, so that's not a concern.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

@EvilDragon So the springs' job is to make the movement of the buttons more even by applying resistence on a side, where there was too little before - or something like that?

 

[Coupo]

Not as twitchy as brexit is making me at present, and that would likely be the same whether I was a pre-preorderer or a plain pre-orderer or just someone planning to buy one in the future really. I've not been able to find out what rates computers and phones and things would attract under WTO rules. I did find this old press release that suggests the default could be as high as 17% but many nations reduced this to 0% by the year 2000, but it's not clear to me where the UK would sit on day one

Well, I hope that things work out for you either way (and that the taxes are not geting too high on imports). But maybe that whole Brexit thing get's turned around again. I mean, it is not jet finaly decided, is it?

Anyway, on the topic of cuting aluminium metal sheeds with adhesiv on the back: that should be doable by any lasercutting company. I guess, if the metal is not too thick, even a cardbord laser cutter is strong enough.
I know of two german companys of the top of my head, that would do that. @evildreagon I will send you the names.

 

[matzesu]

The News sounds good, i wouldnd need a tinner Heatsink as i anyway use pants whit big pockets, so one mm more or less dosnt realy matter..
Better shoulderbuttons are also cool, ..
The Logoplate isnt something i look at the whole time, as its on the Back of the Screen, so the Screen is much more important for me..
As long the Logoplate dosnt fell of, im also dacord whit clue

 

[crazyhorse]

Sounds good that hardware refinements are being made whilst the software is being worked on.

 

[carlberry]

Not as twitchy as brexit is making me at present, and that would likely be the same whether I was a pre-preorderer or a plain pre-orderer or just someone planning to buy one in the future really. I've not been able to find out what rates computers and phones and things would attract under WTO rules. I did find this old press release that suggests the default could be as high as 17% but many nations reduced this to 0% by the year 2000, but it's not clear to me where the UK would sit on day one.

The way the parliaments going about it at the moment the Pyra will be with us long before Brexit (and the Pyra's replacement CPU board, and the Pyra 2 and ....)

 

[sepulep]

While the standard one we used so far fits well, we still have 1.5mm more space for the width,

This sounds like not a good idea at all. Nobody will miss the 1.5mm more heatsink (can you quantify the difference this makes?) vs adding yet another supplier and fail mode, extra cost, extra risk...

 

[Bernd]

Regarding cutting the aluminum with an adhesive layer pre-applied. Laser cutting, stamped - but there IS a 3rd option that I am aware of. Water jet cutting. No significant heating and it can be nearly as precise as laser cutting. These machines are CNC based and can be found or contracted through most medium to large size machine shops.

Regarding specific custom sized heat sinks. I'm assuming you are pursuing copper or aluminum for these. The same water jet cutting facilities should be able to cut these out of copper or aluminum sheets. The process works for stock from 0.02mm to 300+mm thickness. The catch is that these cut in 2D, so one of your dimensions needs to match the chosen stock dimension and the result will have squared edges to that dimension. So, maybe one visit with the right machine shop could solve both of these issues through a single supplier?

It's not possible to cut the heat sinks with laser.
The main reason is that the material conducts heat.
An additional problem is that Copper is to reflective when molten and would damage the laser optics.

Its possible to cut aluminium with lasers, but this thickness needs special machines and the result would not look that good.

Water jet cutting is one of the most expensive cutting methodes.
It would only be useable for small prototype batches but likely not for multiple thousand parts.


For the custom heat-sink would be molding them one of the cheapest solution.
If the heat sinks could be sold as Raspberry compatible heat sinks, they will be even cheaper because of higher production numbers.

I know one Austrian foundry company which do aluminium molding (gearbox-housings) for the company I work for.
But I don't know if they're able to cast parts this small.
If ED's interested, I could provide the company name.


Sadly I'm not able to offer my help to ED because the company which in I work does only milling & turning job order production.
And milling the custom heatsink out of an solide block would be to expensive for mass production.

 

[paralabamba]

Hi everybody,
I don't know if it's useful, but in France it's a specialist for adhesive cutting, they could make a tool for special form, just send a plan and a quantity
www.adezif.com
Let me know if you want I can call them. I have a bit of time since June, so why not if I could help this amazing pyra project ? I guess you already know that in France it's always weird especially in industrial stuffs
Not hesitate contact me if it can help...
And congratulations for the work already done. Interesting times coming soon

 

[PowerGod]

None of my friends understood why the Pandora was awesome... and while waiting for it the worst thing was them constantly joking around about how I was screwed... and at last, when finally I had it, they were comparing it with their last Samsung/iPhone...

I just spoke to them about the Pyra only once, like 4 years ago, and they still sometimes joke around about the "Pandora 2", I don't even have the will to correct them... I will never show them the device when it finally arrive...

 

[levi]

It's not possible to cut the heat sinks with laser.
The main reason is that the material conducts heat.
An additional problem is that Copper is to reflective when molten and would damage the laser optics.

Its possible to cut aluminium with lasers, but this thickness needs special machines and the result would not look that good.

I think you might need to update your understanding of laser cutting. These days apparently they have lasers that are so powerful that they don't work by the thermal method of heating stuff up and melting it, they actually smash the electrons off the atoms, such that they can cut transparent materials like glass apparently now.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002z2z

 

[Grench]

Another idea... What dimensions x,y,z do you want for the 'ideal' heat sink? Maybe there is a close-to-size bar stock on 2 of the 3 dimensions that could simply be length cut to order.
[doublepost=1554490001,1554489771][/doublepost]I have had a thought, that if I get overly ambitious about modding a Pyra, that I might make a wax mold of the heat sink cavity then make an 'optimized' cast silver one.

 

[Failbert]

Sealing: @EvilDragon if You could please post here a .dxf (or any vector graphic, it's no big deal to convert them) to describe the shape of the sealing, or at least tell us the inner and outer size of a rectangular approximation, then starting monday I'd be happy to volunteer and ask around moderate-sized print houses, ad agencies and metal shops about cutting it mechanically, by laser, or stamping it out.

A really "proper" option is to ask companies like the one from this video, but I have no idea if we wouldn't have a too small production run for them:


Heatsinks: if You have a design or a general idea and +/- dimensions, then why not share it? Forum users could show it around and who knows, maybe there is a cost- and time- effective source somewhere in Europe.
Here, particularly close to the German border, a lot of small and medium companies live off exporting such components like Pyra's and logos or heatsinks to Germany, I sure can ask around here and others can ask at their place.

@Grench and the others beat me to suggesting an inquiry of Waterjet, but then again @Bernd is right that it's not the cheapest (Cutting 10mm steel is 7-9€ per meter for really small runs by waterjet). I wonder if it'd be cost-effective at all, to order custom heatsinks at all, if stock ones are made of extruded or die-cast aluminium already.

Logos: Do we have all the logos already or just some sample ones? I am freshly unemployed and taking it easy this week on job hunting still, so for me it's no problem to send a dozen inquiries here and there or even drive around and ask around personally this week.

(spoiler tag because there is a wall of text of thoughts on sourcing the logos- please ignore if we already have them)

Spoiler

If there is still a need for logos, and it's acceptable to have them sourced elsewhere than Greece, below is a screenshot from an online calculator of a random supplier I found for laser cuts (the calculator takes account of the total length, not bounding box size I checked it by uploading just 2 rectangles and the price was lower). I assumed that the bounding box height of the logo is 40mm. In such case probably well over a 1000 logos could fit on a 2,0x1,0m standard aluminium sheet. In a previous thread You mentioned anodized aluminium as a desired, but not really obtainable material. If powder coating the logos is an option, there are some nice looking Eloxiert-Optik powders available at just about any paint shop that does painting for extruded profiles

I am not aware however of a ready-available material that would consist of aluminium or inox with an adhesive on the back that's not the rather tacky 0,3mm brushed aluminium + adhesive "sponge" dibond composite plate used for door signs.

 

[levi]

ED posted some pictures of it on the last news thread, such as

He attached an alleged dwg file from which you can apparently get dimensions.

Edit: I managed to install librecad and view it in that. Apparently the width is from -22.87 to +41.18 so a total of 63.1mm wide or thereabouts.

 

[Failbert]

ED posted some pictures of it on the last news thread, such as

He attached an alleged dwg file from which you can apparently get dimensions.

Edit: I managed to install librecad and view it in that. Apparently the width is from -22.87 to +41.18 so a total of 63.1mm wide or thereabouts.

Oh I thought what is needed is a heat sink like a "radiator", that ribbed kind of thing. This looks like a heat pipe, sorry for the confusion I could cause with my previous post and it's unneccessary excitement.

I'm so embarassed to have missed it. Thanks for the link. Also ED mentions sending it to mass production so it's as good as done I think

Just so You check Your LibreCAD configuration: dimensioning the heatpupe in AutoCAD presents it at a rather easier to memorize 64mm x 50mm, with the most "precise" dimensions at 0.5mm (5.5mm), the smallest side (the little notch): 1.0mm.