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geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => Topic started by: RockWood on Sun, 04 April 2021, 11:41:39

Title: Designing a .5u case blocker for a 65% Spacing
Post by: RockWood on Sun, 04 April 2021, 11:41:39

Sorry if this has been posted. This is my first time designing and I want to make sure the spacing is correct.  So if someone check my math that would be fantastic.

I'm designing an acrylic case for my quefrency and I like to use a .5u right side blocker.

 Using matt3o's guide I lined up the 1u keys making them 18mm(size of a keycap).  I centered them on the holes of the switch plate.  That took care of the arrow keys and gave me a rough estimation where the right side of the blocker should be.  Half of a blocker should be half a keycap 9mm but I took that measurement from the macro column on the left size of the board since it measured 8.75mm.  As for checking the left side of the blocker, this is where it became difficult since i didn't have 14mm switch holes as reference point as the plate file allows for crazy compatibility.  Here is where I start making up stuff.  So I created a plate file using swill keyboards layout editor with the 2.75, 1.25 and 1.25. the measurements of space need for the keycap are 2.75*19.05=52.3875 and 1.25*19.05=23.8125.  I subtract 1mm from this number because that's essentially what we did for the 19.05 1u keys when we approximate the keycaps size as 18mm.  So I have 51.38mm and 22.81mm and this should give me the left side of the .5u blocker.  As far as height I just lined it up with the top of the keycap height. 

Am I doing this right?   

Title: Re: Designing a .5u case blocker for a 65% Spacing
Post by: reticent on Tue, 06 April 2021, 17:45:06

Not sure if you need help still but I think you're going about it in a more complicated way than necessary. Take a look at this one I made.

[attachimg=1]

The dashed line is what I drew then the solid lines are from the offset tool. The 57.15mm is 19.05mm x 3u. Then there's the 0.46mm offset on the right side. Most people have between 0.4mm-0.525mm offset since (19.05mm-18mm)/2 = 0.525mm to make the gap between keycap and the case the same as the gap from keycap to keycap. Then the 9.525mm is 19.05mm x 0.5u. Then I used the offset tool which created the solid lines.