Off-The-Shelf source for thru-housing tactile button caps????........ - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 30, 2022, 01:05:16 am
content: I need to have some user buttons, and it's not acceptable this time to just pick a tactile switch with long plunger and have the end stick out the side of the case.I thought for sure it would be easy to find some off the shelf options for those little plastic/metal caps that are typically captive between the housing and the board mount switches... You know, the ones that always fall on the floor and get lost when you take something apart....Something like these....Obviously the ones they use on high end phones are all custom, but I'm surprised there isn't a category at Digikey, or at least it's not easier to find a supply of these things that get used on all the cheap Chinese gadgets. Am I just completely missing what the right search term is to call these things? Anyone help me out here?::EDIT::.. and yes I know abouthttps://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/accessories-caps/210but I'm not talking about giant brightly colored caps. Pretty sure that would be worse than just the bare tactile switch plunger sticking out.....

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2022, 09:20:30 am
content: I guess you can just add the buttons as part of the mold gates/sprue, but that won't work if you are using a machined housing, or modifying an off the shelf housing.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2022, 11:09:23 am
content: Design exactly what you want. For small quantities, 3d print them. For large quantities, get your design injection-molded.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 01, 2022, 08:20:59 pm
content: Quote from: Nusa on February 01, 2022, 11:09:23 amYa. That's pretty much what I'm doing in this case. Printing these little buttons doesn't work very well because of the required clearances, but I'm trying. The bench is a PLA graveyard of revisions at this point. It will probably work out since I'm looking at decent quantities this time and at least one part needs to be injection molded.But...I could see how the $4000 mold NRE could be way too much for a smaller low volume project if nothing else needed to be molded that you could add the buttons to.Then there was also the observation that pretty much every device has buttons like this that are about the same size/shape, so that struck me as something that at least the cheap Chinese device market has standardized on and might just buy off the shelf.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2022, 12:14:04 am
content: The digikey link has some black ones too, not all are bright.Plastics can be machined for <$500 NRE in small quantities, if its a round part it can be made on a lathe.There is also various online 3D printing services that would be able to make them with SLA/SLS/etchttps://www.aliexpress.com/item/32888964798.html(glue required?)

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2022, 09:42:00 am
content: I hate amazon as a supplier for anything, but they are the first ones that actually have a product available that meets this sort of description:https://www.amazon.com/RhinoShield-CrashGuard-Smartphone-Additional-Customization/dp/B07TXQG9HZ/

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 03, 2022, 12:17:56 am
content: Ah so you wanted the rectangular style. You can probably find them for most popular phones.The rhino ones look nice though, dual injection.https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000013043127.html(silicone?)https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001566481445.htmlhttps://www.aliexpress.com/item/32962784589.html

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 03, 2022, 11:06:19 pm
content: Cool. So the trick looks to be searching for spare buttons for specific device models.