FW13 - Hinge Shim + Bezel (Also, steping back from tp keyboard electronics)

Hey!

After a long time of being away from modding my laptop I am back… I had to step away after some personal circumstances. That being said, I have been working on a few things.

Firstly, with all the work that C_Scott_Ananian has been doing on the fw16, I have stopped working on the electronics for the keyboard. Honestly, it was a little to out of my reach. At least working from it from scratch. I hope to modify the work he has done for the fw13 (assuming he is ok with it).

Now, one of the issues brought up in early conversations on this was how to add height between the display and keyboard. I think 1-2mm of additional height should be good enough but this requires creating shims for the hinges, a new bezel (or at lease part of a new bezel). So that is what I have been busy at. I have started learning FreeCAD and started to clone the bottom part of the bezel.

Here is my work so far:


Now the physical version looks a little longer but that is only because I cut one side of the bezel off to get more accurate measurements. Also, the frame was already damaged so no working bezels were harmed in this process.

The bezel dose fit the laptop quite well but can pop out. I think because the top part (that connects to the flat part of the bezel) is too long, as in this version I haven’t added the tabs that slot in. In the model above, it dose have them (at least one side) and I am waiting on a print to finish so I can test. Also the metal on the back is a little recessed so won’t be making any connection. That should be a easy enough fix of just melting the plastic down. That will also have the added benefit of holding it in place a little better.

I hope to upload my work soon. I assume the framework team are ok for this sort of thing to be created but don’t want to step on any toes so I will reach out to them via email (Or if they give the OK here then I will upload it)

At the moment this is mainly a duplication effort as to give a stepping stone to create a modified version that allows thicker keyboard.

Lastly, here is a image of the modded bezel on my framework:

Thanks,
Harley Godfrey

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