I looked around but didn’t see anyone else doing this yet. I just finished up my first prototypes of a touchpad spacer. I personally wanted the following:
Black anodized aluminum.
A double spacer (removes one crack in the palm rest)
Stainless steel (stiffer) spacer.
A wood veneer spacer (can be stained whatever you want.)
Once I get tolerances perfect on the plastic parts I will upload some pictures.
Does anyone have any other requests? Preliminary pricing seems to indicate that at low quantity orders they would be about $35 each before shipping. Is that too much?
Finally, Once I make up my costs for design I will open source the design and vendors.
Transparent could be tricky as I don’t feel like polishing plastic. Maybe laser cut purple acrylic would be the way to go?
In other news, first prototype of a wooden (Maple) one: (Having trouble holding tolerances on such thin wood with my cnc… It tends to warp during machining. Has a decent panel gap and warped up a bit.)
Odd thing is, the wood one feels stiffer than the stock framework aluminum one. (I did laminate a thin piece of spring steel with epoxy in the center and a backer to help with this.) Now to stain it. I am thinking some nice walnut stain with a high gloss finish.
I like the black anodized aluminum idea. I also would love transparent plastic parts but given the trouble framework has with that I understand your hesitation. But I want clear plastic everything so bag that I would pay more than $35.
The other hesitation I have is that the only visible thing below the palm rest is a piece of (nicely laser etched) aluminum. It isn’t like you can quite see the main framework PCB. Now a fiberglass PCB would be cool. PCBWay even has full color silkscreen now!
Anyone want a fully custom printed pattern on their expansion modules? I am thinking about placing the attached “Zilog Inside” logo on one:
(Maybe solder a modern Z-80 to the underside just to make it true.)
I kinda want to play with the i2c port and see if I can add a classic lenovo trackpoint
