[IC] Proper ErgoDox case

[czarek]

Hi guys, I contacted local 3D printing house and they offered me 350 Euros for printing left and right top and bottom cases for Ergodox from the files available on ergodox.org.
I'm slightly shocked with the price of that to be honest..
I think I will design a simple CNC aluminium 2 piece case based on layered acrylic case. I do have quite a lot of experience with aluminium machining (I'm making parts for R/C models out of aluminium and carbon plates) and have the machines and tools to work with it and to be honest it would be much cheaper than 3D printing - I could source material for one case (left + right) and cut it for about 100 Euros + maybe 5-10 Euros for anodizing to any color.
What do you think? I'm not impressed with DIY looks of MassDrop acrylic case and would really like something better than that, but wouldn't like it to cost a leg...

[WhiteFireDragon]

Based on what you said, I'm assuming you own or have access to free CNC machines? Otherwise, aluminum CNC from a local company won't be cheap either.

[czarek]

That's right, I've got CNC mill (suitable for all materials up to steel, 50x30x5 cm working area) and lathe (wood, wax and rather soft materials, radius up to 10 cm, material length up to 150 cm), as well as CO2 laser (plastics and wood, 20x20x5 cm working area) and I'm planning on getting some decent 3D printer by the end of the year as the more I look at the 3D printing prices the more I think it will pay off soon
As for software I'm using rather hobbyist packages: ArtCam for organic stuff (engravings, reliefs) and CamBam for technical stuff (R/C parts mostly so far).

[thadood]

I may be interested - a metal case would be quite sweet looking, but wasn't available during the GB I got in on. Plus I heard the company Massdrop sourced had some quality issues with the metal case.

[___q]

Interested, assuming the design and finish are nice etc.

(Would also be more interested in a "full-hand" design than the standard small case)

[hoggy]

Interested to see what you come up with.

[Tarzan]

Full-hand stainless steel ErgoDox case?  Yes, please!

 

[tp4tissue]

Full-hand stainless steel ErgoDox case?  Yes, please!

 

Cnc stainless? prepare for $10000

[czarek]

Well I don't have interest in full hand case for now, but I prepared project for the 2 piece case (could be milled from one piece really but there is a lot of error margin and place for mess-up): http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=47420.0
I'm going to cut it on Saturday, for now from spruce wood but when my ergodox (round 4 massdrop) arrives I'm going to to do it out of Aluminium and get it powder painted or anodised in italian red (Alfa Rosso).

[Tarzan]

Well I don't have interest in full hand case for now, but I prepared project for the 2 piece case (could be milled from one piece really but there is a lot of error margin and place for mess-up): http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=47420.0
I'm going to cut it on Saturday, for now from spruce wood but when my ergodox (round 4 massdrop) arrives I'm going to to do it out of Aluminium and get it powder painted or anodised in italian red (Alfa Rosso).

The only TRUE Italian red is Ferrari Red (Rosso Rubino)!   

More on-topic; I actually thought you could use the CNC mill in lieu of a laser cutter, so the output would be the same number of layers, just in steel or aluminum instead of acrylic.  If you're considering a fully milled case, or even a three part (lower case/plate/upper case) I can see that would be quite a bit more complex.

Very interested in metal case options, even something in mild steel that could be powder-coated.  Looking forward to seeing your experiments!

[kurplop]

How will you mill square cutouts for the switches? I will be doing the same soon and am curious about the most efficient way to do so without having a small fillet left in the corners. I was considering overshooting the corners slightly on the last pass with a <1/8" end mill or hand filing to square. Is there a better way?

[Photekq]

How will you mill square cutouts for the switches? I will be doing the same soon and am curious about the most efficient way to do so without having a small fillet left in the corners. I was considering overshooting the corners slightly on the last pass with a <1/8" end mill or hand filing to square. Is there a better way?

If you're unable to do 0.012in or lower radii for the coners (cherry spec), then do something like this I guess :

[czarek]

How will you mill square cutouts for the switches? I will be doing the same soon and am curious about the most efficient way to do so without having a small fillet left in the corners. I was considering overshooting the corners slightly on the last pass with a <1/8" end mill or hand filing to square. Is there a better way?

I use small bit (1mm diameter) and a feature called over cut. Here's screenshot from CamBam documentation explaining it:

[kurplop]

Thanks guys for the response. Do you have much of a problem with tool breakage with that small of a bit in aluminum and how thick will the plate be?

[czarek]

Thickness is not a problem in CNC machining. If something is to thick to cut it in one go, you take more steps, that's all. In this design plate is 2mm thick, this should be no problem to cut it in one go with the end bits I have (3 flute, solid carbide). BTW whole case is going to be cut with 3mm bit (to save time) and 1mm bit is only going to be used to cut off holes for switches.

[kurplop]

When I recently decided to get a mill, I decided against a CNC because I wanted to use one manually first and I thought it would be an easier transition from my other manual fabrication disciplines. No regrets, but thinking about cutting 78 square holes makes me realize what a timesaver learning to use CAD-CAM will be some day. Thanks for the insights.

Reflection-
Back around 1980 when I still had a real job,I was hired to build a large wall unit. I got a great deal on 500bd. ft. of 4/4 rough birch. Armed with a smoothing plane and scrapers I thicknessed and surfaced about 300 feet of  it and turned it into a nice bookcase. I think it took about 3 weeks of evenings after work to accomplish it. Shortly thereafter I bought a thickness planer. Now every time I use a planer I am grateful for it.

[czarek]

I'd rather go straight into CNC or get a manual mill and convert it to CNC (that's what I did with my first mill). You can still control it manually, or semi automatically if you want.
And when we're talking about the cutouts for switches in a plate, the holes are not square - they're more like that:

This makes it really painful to cut with manual mill, especially when you want to make sure corners are over cut...

[kurplop]

Well, I just learned something new. I didn't know that you could override the stepper motors.

[daerid]

If this turns out well I'm definitely interested.

[czarek]

Ahhh little update on my project. It didn't turn out well so far. I measured material thickness wrong and pocket turned out to be through holes… I'm going to get new wood and try again.

[czarek]

Another update… I tried again with proper thickness of wood (10mm bottom and 8mm top) but it seems spruce is just not strong enough and breaks too easily, especially on a plate
I will try with PVC next week. It should be nice and cheap alternative to Aluminium, whole board 2000x600x10mm costs around 100 Euros and that should last for quite a few cases. It's also easier to machine so we can save time machining. So far it takes me about 30 minutes per piece (there are 4 in total: bottom left, top left, bottom right and top right) and each is machined from 200x230x10mm piece of wood.

[agodinhost]

interested
+1

[wiredPANDA]

Interested to see how this turns out.  I only got acrylic from MD on round 1, but I'm less than impressed on the case.  Seems like both cases I received are really misaligned and will take some manual work to get the edges flush.

[TheSoulhunter]

Interested!

[kurplop]

Another update… I tried again with proper thickness of wood (10mm bottom and 8mm top) but it seems spruce is just not strong enough and breaks too easily, especially on a plate
I will try with PVC next week. It should be nice and cheap alternative to Aluminium, whole board 2000x600x10mm costs around 100 Euros and that should last for quite a few cases. It's also easier to machine so we can save time machining. So far it takes me about 30 minutes per piece (there are 4 in total: bottom left, top left, bottom right and top right) and each is machined from 200x230x10mm piece of wood.

Hard maple and steamed beech are two common woods that would likely hold up well to fine scale milling.

Somebody tried using red oak and while it was strong enough, the open grain didn't lend itself to fine details.

[czarek]

I finally cut it from PVC. It's 2 plates, each 8mm thick. Top plate is just a masking for switches and cover for electronics. Bottom plate is a plate + cover for PCB. This should be covered with one more plate from the bottom. Also I used slightly too long bolts to join the pieces together and you can clearly see the bumps on a top piece as a result
For the next try I'm going to use 20mm thick PVC plate and cut it 2 side from one piece. Kind of like a unibody macbook. I think this would work well with aluminium too, although 20mm thick plates are rare and quite expensive, especially for prototyping.

[phetto]

Looks very nice!

[czarek]

I'll make better pics tomorrow next to white MacBook and the iPad. This PVC looks just like Apple hardware.

[Photekq]

Nice! Btw, what are those domes on the top surface along the edges?

[czarek]

Nice! Btw, what are those domes on the top surface along the edges?

They're from the too long bolts I used to screw the pieces together.

[kurplop]

It looks great. How thick did you make the plate and is the PVC stiff enough for the plate?

[MOZ]

Nice, looking forward to the next try.

[lcs]

Looks awesome!

[BliTzKiN]

That looks really clean, cant wait to see the next proto.

[czarek]

It looks great. How thick did you make the plate and is the PVC stiff enough for the plate?

It's a hard PVC and it's really stiff material, it is resistant to chemicals and UV light and relatively easy to machine. Early IBM Model M cases were made from it too (although those were injection moulded, not machined).
The plate for switches is now 3mm thick. I don't know if it's not too thick but by looking at other case designs it's just about right. It feels very sturdy, because it's integral part of the rest of the bottom case, similar to HHKB.
I really want to try to do the whole thing out of single piece of material, like Apple's Unibody. I've got some thick wood and I'm currently waiting for a longer bits for my machine (to finish cut the edges), if the wood mockup turns out well, I'll give it a try with aluminium (one block of 20x300x300 costs around 30€ so it's not a cheap material for mockups).

Here are the better camera pics, but the light conditions are still crap. I don't want to use the flash as it will ruin the pics.




BTW. Here's a nice description of a hard PVC as a material:
http://www.ehow.com/info_8664407_differences-between-hard-soft-pvc.html

[Tarzan]

That's a good-looking case!  I like the smooth, seamless appearance, very sleek!

Just a random thought; if this is PVC, can you get different colors?  Or is white the only option?  I think a black case with few/zero visible seams would look positively futuristic.

[czarek]

As for colors, there are more colors available for foamed PVC. Hard PVC tends to come in white (RAL 9010), semi-translucent and grey (RAL 7011, similar color to water pipes in most homes). The problem is I'm looking for plates that are 18-20mm thick but the thickest I can find are 10mm and even those are not in stock in most places...
I think it shouldn't be a big deal painting or laminating it either.

[BliTzKiN]

I honestly din't expect them to be as white as they are in your pictures. Any chance you might be creating a full hand version of the case if the protos for this one goes well? Those look so good I already want one now

[czarek]

The thing is I'm not sure how ergodox fits in this case as I'm still waiting for my one to arrive. I'm a little worried about the top part not being able to fit the switches and the PCB. I have ordered 10mm thick sheets (pack of 4 which is 8 square meters of 10mm thick PVC to play around) but I have no idea when will they arrive. I'm looking for a company that sells aluminium cheap. My current supplier charges 35€ for a block which is 250x250x20 mm, that's what is required for one side of the case, so the total for the aluminium case would be 70€ just for the material.
I also found a company that does a powder painting services very cheap, even by Polish standards.

[Larken]

wow, this looks great.

just a note, if you have a couple of spare switches and stabilisers lying around, you might want to try how it fits. The plate thickness aside (costar stabs are spec for 1.5mm) but it looks like the current cutouts wouldn't allow the stabs to be used properly even if you cut the stabs down and super glue them in. (the original layer from the acrylic ergodox case was drawn with errors). Since you're making a new case and might be doing further prototyping, you might want to test that out before going further.

[yicaoyimu]

Looks way better than acrylic! Very interested.

[AKmalamute]

I could be interested, but it would depend on details ... like how my bank account feels after all the other fun stuff I've bought recently!

Also, I'm in the states, so I don't know how badly that would confuzzle the situation if I were to try to get in on such a group buy.

Once your boards come in let us know how they fit together 

[mashby]

With MKB selling the white ErgoDox PCBs, this would make for a nice match. Really nice work.

[czarek]

Ok so I got myself a vintage MX Black board from which I scavenged the switches. Here's how they fit in my case. Apparently the height of the bottom part is OK! Here's how it looks:

[CalmB4tehPwn]

Can't wait to see it decked out with keys! It's gonna look sick.

[czarek]

I'm working on a unibody design. Since it won't need any screws it will be slightly slimmer, it also means less material needed. It seems like whole keyboard (left + right) can be cut from 2 blocks of aluminium 230x200x18mm. I have made a query to my provider checking if they can cut such blocks and how much would they cost. I already confirmed I can get them powder painted for peanuts. It seems like the whole cost of unibody aluminium case will close down in about 100 - 120 euros.
If anyone is interested in drawings for this 2 piece case and the 1 piece (unibody) I' currently working on, here they are:
https://github.com/cezaryfalba/ErgoDox-CNC-Case

[daerid]

A Unibody? How would that work? Would there be a separate plate and cover for the connectors/electronics? I'm having trouble visualizing it.

[czarek]

Nope. Top, plate and bottom will be machined out of one piece of material with cutouts for the connectors. Same as this:
http://images.apple.com/macbook-air/images/design_unibody1.jpg

[CalmB4tehPwn]

Nope. Top, plate and bottom will be machined out of one piece of material with cutouts for the connectors. Same as this:
http://images.apple.com/macbook-air/images/design_unibody1.jpg

I don't understand how you'd get the PCB in there if the bottom plate (covering the bottom of the PCB) and the top plate (holding the switches in place) are inherently connected.

Unless the bottom will be open? The PCB exposed?

[czarek]

No no, just like with macbooks or mac mini, bottom cover is a separate part. For the aluminium model it will have to be some plastic to prevent shorts on a PCB.