junior week apr. 9, 2026
two weeks because of good friday, so no school on that day.
random shop stuff
more donuts were made last week, made from platinum this time.
also tried figuring out how to create custom SMD pad shapes on PCBs, testing with a "bullet shape." for some reason, this is a lot harder than i expected. i eventually followed a tutorial from a while ago which provided steps for creating custom shapes, which ended up working.
originally, these pads were normal rectangles, but i increased the size and created a "bullet" style.
testing with a button, i soldered one end and then probed it to check if it works (which it did).
keyboard stuff
sanded the rest of the keycaps and did a few more rounds of painting and curing. i think i'm finally done with the main set?
the spacebar is still broken. my 3rd resin print didn't work out, so i just didn't bother re-running it yet. mr. l told me he bought some silicone, and since the friction fit pad is generally made out of silicone and the TPU one didn't work, i decided to try creating a mold for it.
matt showed me how to create a silicone mold and helped me a lot with editing and giving feedback, as he also created a small silicone mold recently. in the end, the entire mold ended up looking like this abomination:
i started 3D printing it; however, one side got warped during the print.
with all of this done, i moved onto the only thing left—making the actual case out of aluminum. obviously, i don't want to start machining before everything else works, but i started looking at CAM tutorials and trying my best to understand toolpaths and the different machining processes.
