geekhack
geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => Topic started by: Eszett on Sat, 01 August 2020, 18:19:34
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Dear makers! I was lately introduced to "compliant mechanisms", which is basically mechanics without pieces, just one piece of plastic functioning like a complex mechanism. Which lead me to the question, why not have a compliant mechanism for a keyboard switch? Would that be possible? On-off-switches do exist and that's nothing difficult, but a bouncy and tacticle switch may be a challenge, if you try to create it from one single plastic piece? But if it's possible, this would open a whole new world: way cheaper, easier to maintain, printable by any john doe, customizable, and and and ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliant_mechanism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliant_mechanism#:~:text=In%20mechanical%20engineering%2C%20compliant%20mechanisms,from%20rigid%2Dbody%20joints%20alone.)
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I feel like I’d be wary on the basis of.. wear. Key switches have potentially may thousands of actuations per day. Springs are capable of handling that, as is a rubber dome, but a compliant mechanism, hmm, I wouldn’t rate it on the basis of this con from that wiki article:
“This, combined with the fact that mechanisms tend to perform cyclic or periodic motion, can cause fatigue and eventual failure of the structure”
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Maybe one of those on-off-switches combined with a metal spring? That would decrease the risk of wear-out ...
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(https://media.tenor.com/bWReUmQ1WPIAAAAd/it-crowd-memory-is-ram.gif)
membrane keyboard IS compliant mechanism (http://snorps.net/stuff/jeff-emote.png)