Progress is slow but definitely still happening. Along with determining if silicone buttons are doable, I’ve been working on how I can produce cases at home instead of farming them out, or having to get up to techshop and the serious hassle that is to get time in on the laser. My CNC router has been put to hard labor and here are some of the preliminary results:
here’s an early test. many things wrong.
Here’s the results of about 3 tests later. Much closer. I’ve solved some of the hardest problems, now I just need to get a workflow going and I think I’ll be in good shape.
And then here’s the latest test of a new (to me) product from Smooth-on that has a much firmer feel than the test results we showed at Maker Faire Bay Area 2010.
And here’s how they look in this newest prototype case:
My camera (soon to be my *old* camera) somewhat exaggerates the brightness, but it’s still very readable.
I wasn’t able to de-gas the silicone, and it really really needs that to achieve the water-clear property it’s capable of, however, the bubbles serve as a very effective diffuser of the LED light from underneath. The only drag is that while I was able to get relatively few big bubbles in the casting, there were still some. Degassing would solve that, but it would be almost a thousand dollars in new machinery to do that. So I’m not sure if this is the direction I want to go in, but it’s a possibility. Testing it out has helped to at least answer the questions in my head about whether this is something we *should* do. The answer is still “Hmmmmm I dunno yet” but at least now that’s because we can try using the prototype and see how it performs. Maybe it will be an option we offer.