Hello. I’ve been thinking about building a custom keyboard for myself and would like to use a mounting plate, but cutting-out all those holes by hand seems like it would be a lot of work. I was wondering if anybody knows of a chassis punch that would work for punching these out?
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Nah a punch would deform or break whatever material you are using for a plate. Plates are pretty much exclusively CNCed, water jet cut, or laser cut IME. There are a few places that have a good amount of experience cutting plates though, like LaserBoost. I would point you in that direction unless you are hell bent on making it yourself.
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I haven’t seen anyone punch it before, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work other than that it would be really hard to meet the tolerances. Im more curious how you would do it by hand? what material are you working with? Laser cutting seems to be the cheapest and easiest method ime
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Thanks for the advise, I was thinking there would be some prototyping before I settled on a final layout and that punching holes in a sheet of aluminum would be a good inexpensive way to do it, if there were existing punch and die sets.
For Cherry style switches, the square is usually measured at 19.05mm x 19.05mm, (0.75" x 0.75"). If you can get a square punch and die at that size, all you’d need to do is clean up the sides to clip your switches in.
I think there should be some 3/4" square punches, although the cost of having a plate made is probably less, but this option does seem to exist if you want to try it
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