Tiny switches

[v6ak]

Hello,
I am looking for some tiny switches:

* Total width should be under 8mm.
* Height: no strict limit, but the less, the better.
* At least a bit tactile feel.
* While I am not much excited about rubber domes, they might be acceptable as a trade-off.
* Actuation force: Something that even pinky can handle well, maybe up to 75 g. So, probably no metaldomes.
* Price: I don't care much in my volume, unless it is something crazy like 100 USD/switch.
* They should be available in small quantities.

Could you suggest me any suitable switch type?

[Pyk_]

Hello,
I am looking for some tiny switches:

* Total width should be under 8mm.
* Height: no strict limit, but the less, the better.
* At least a bit tactile feel.
* While I am not much excited about rubber domes, they might be acceptable as a trade-off.
* Actuation force: Something that even pinky can handle well, maybe up to 75 g. So, probably no metaldomes.
* Price: I don't care much in my volume, unless it is something crazy like 100 USD/switch.
* They should be available in small quantities.

Could you suggest me any suitable switch type?

As far as keyboard switches, they are all the same basic size as far as I know. Kailh makes choc switches which are much shorter, but the same in the other two dimensions and there are a couple other short switches like them. So you are probably just looking for normal circuitboard switches. I don’t know the force to actuate, but I have seen miniature keyboards made with these:

https://www.adafruit.com/product/1010

These are the smallest switches I know of that have “key caps”. I believe most of these in circuit style switches require a bit of force to actuate, though. If you’re fine with this style switch but want smaller try adafruit and sparkfun.

[v6ak]

Thank you for suggestions. Unfortunately, it seems that tiny switches tend to requires higher force, starting over 100g, which can be inconvenient for a pinky finger.

So, I have bought some tiny switches that require high actuation force and started modelling a lever-based keycaps. This takes noticable amount of space in one direction, but I can afford this trade-off in one direction. (Yes, something like 8*25mm is better than 19*19mm.) It looks a bit like piano keys.

[Pyk_]

Yeah I had a feeling they were pretty high force. It looks like you might be able to take it apart and modify the mechanism?

[v6ak]

Well, I am not sure how to take it apart, let alone to modify it.

[Pyk_]

Ah, unfortunately I don’t have any on hand. They just looked like they were made of a two piece housing that might be held together by retention hooks and therefore could be pried apart without having to break them. No idea if that’s the case, though. And definitely no idea what the mechanism is, it may not even be possible to easily modify it.