ANSI Keycap Storage - Stackable

[ Jan 21; update ] Printed a few sets, flaws detected, see below. Photos to follow.

This is a work in progress, I'm curious to your opinion.

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This is original work based on inspiration by the work by (MatthewRobo)[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3160774];

Instead of two parts to glue and two separate trays, I recreated the trays in OpenSCAD

as a stackable design.

The SCAD file should provide ample customization options.

The parts are

• "alpha1" for the left side of the keyboard
• "alpha2" for the right side
• "navnum" for navigation and number keys
• "extras" for all-sorts
• "cover" as a simple lid.

Printing a tower for multiple keycap sets?

You will probably only need 1 cover ;)

OpenSCAD Notes

The renders take A LOT of elements, had to set the element render limit to 10,000,000 (from 100,000 for the preview to work. Renders fine, slow renders take a few minutes.

The code is far from clean, but it works. Uses a roundedcube lib I found on the web. It has flaws, but in this use case, it works fine.

It is quite configurable; you can create more smaller trays, or larger ones, depending on your needs and available printer.

Take a look and have fun :)

Customizer

The customizer chokes on this Scad file, please try it if you must, but it will probably not work.

Please use the OpenSCAD application to customize.

Current design choices

• Went for a pyramid-shaped stacker/holes. Easy to stack, also easy to unstack, but they will not hold on; don't pickup at the top layer and expect the bottom not to fall ;)

This is because the pin-hole design had the issue of either not holding on, holding on too much or simply snapping off.

• Space between highest keycap and next layer is 1mm, not including the space that is caused by the tolerances of the stacker-points, approx 0.3mm) This can be adjusted in code.
• The pre-generated parts are based on OEM profile, you can set a different profile in code, or define your own.
• Cover is a solid (infill-wise) piece as a hollow piece would either leave too much room for the caps or be ugly to look at ;)

Future Improvement Ideas

• I am toying with the idea of parsing the struct generated by http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/. If I can manage that, generating the proper tray's would be a piece of pie.
• Thinking of the option to remove the stacker-pillars and go for a rack/case and use these trays as drawers.

Attribution

This is no longer a remix. There is nothing in my parts that are from the original designs.

But the work is inspired by the work done by matthewrobo, https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3160774

Category: Other