Hello everyone, my name is Rex. I've been in the hobby for roughly 3 years now, and I've always liked tactile switches, but I was constantly looking for more pretravel before the tactile bump in my switches. I sort of always just put up with taller and taller bumps because there weren't any switches that did have low bumps. It was up until 3 months ago when I started to experiment and frankenswitch.
I
promise you this is not a recolour.
I also need to preface that
this my first projectThis switch will feature a bottom-out tactile bump, with the tactile bump at roughly 1mm before bottoming out. It will have 0.5mm of lenience for actuation.
As you press down on the switch, it will feel like a linear switch.
Near the end, a tactile bump will be present. Then, it bottoms out.
Once it bottoms out, it will actuate. At any other point in the switch, it will not actuate.
There's nothing to really compare this to, but if you've tried ergo clears and holy pandas or any of their clones, these will feature a similiar progression, moving the tactile bump lower than ergo clears.
I'm still looking for a manufacturer, but being hopeful, I won't need to make this manufacturer go through the pain of making new molds for every part of the switch.
Blueprints for the stem:
Force curve representation (not indicative of actual product):
Example:
Top housing: PC
Bottom housing: Nylon
Stem: POM
Travel distance:3mm
Spring weights:53g, 63.5g
Type: Tactile
Price: TBD (I will see if I can make it <.50$)I recognise this is a very ambitious project, and it's likely not going to go anywhere because MOQ for custom molds is very high and it's unlikely that manufacturers would do t his for me, . I am making a very early IC before I proceed and realise I've wasted a lot of time even if I do work things out. If by any chance this does go well, this will eventually cumulate to a group buy or if there's enough interest, I can sink money to make these long term, likely through vendors.
Filling out the google forms would be very much appreciated.
Thank you for your time.
https://forms.gle/TLhfcAQ1VdTZ8i5c8UPDATE:
17/10/2023: BSUN has just given me a quote 5K USD for the molds and an MOQ of 50k. So I'll probably sink the money out of pocket and take 10 cents off each switch, cover the cost for the molds and the rest will go to vendors that support the project. Not having high hopes for <.50$ per switch but it'll have to come down to what BSUN quotes me and how much of a cut vendors want to take.
