26 – Making a Keyboard Protector (6:33)

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Welcome to another Lightblade Learning Lab

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today for a change it’s not going to be very technical it’s not going to be very

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difficult and it’s not going to be very long. If you remember the last time we’ve

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had a session I pointed out that this keyboard here is getting a little bit

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tacky and I needed to protect it as I had done on my other machine over

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there and so what I’ve done I’ve been away and I’ve designed a keyboard

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protection scheme for this particular machine now it’s different than the

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style that I used on my China blue machine but the essence of it is exactly

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the same. We’ve got a little flexible plastic film here which is going to

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cover and protect the keys now we’ll go straight in and we’ll start cutting the

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design that I’ve already prepared and then we’ll go through the manufacture of

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it and you can see how we fit it. We’re cutting this keyboard out of three

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millimeter thick material and I’ve got my air assist turned on and I’m

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going to turn it roughly half off because I don’t want too much air for cutting

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acrylic. just some

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Well there’s the two pieces that we need just rip the plastic film off

Transcript for Laser Cutting Project – Keyboard Protector (Cont…)

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okay so the first thing that I’ve got to do with this is to put a M5 tapped hole

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through there very easily and I can do that with a tap wrench or as you can see I’m

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using a drill chuck. Now I happen to… I’m using that size you can use any size you

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like but I happen to use that size because I’ve got some I’ve got some very

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short M5 screws they’re six millimeter long and we’re going to put that piece

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there like that and then we’re going to put this piece here like this

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I hold the two pieces together

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with the screw like that so now we’ve got an invisible cover sitting on the top there

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at the moment there’s nothing in there but what I’m going to do I’ve got I

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think it’s probably polyester film and it’s about 0.2 ~ 0.5mm

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thick and it’s the sort of thing that you get on a presentation box

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this came off a box of Christmas cards and I was sensible enough at Christmas

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to think ah I might have a use for that and I kept it so that would be my

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protective film that’s going to sit underneath this keyboard frame that I’ve

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produced here and the frame can’t go anywhere because it’s locked around

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these two buttons that we’ve got here so the positions of the buttons on your

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machine might be different but hey it’s the idea that you need and I shall put

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this DXF file onto the Thinklaser of website so that you can use it as a

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basis for starting, starting your own keyboard protection. Right now I’ve kept

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this the correct way around when I’ve taken it off because what we’re going to

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do now is to apply to the back of it some double-sided industrial-strength

Transcript for Laser Cutting Project – Keyboard Protector (Cont…)

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tape now this is Taser four nine six five which is a very high bond strength

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industrial tape I’m gonna stick it round the outside of the frame there okay no

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it’s a matter of trimming it off neatly all the way around

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well there’s that double-sided tape on there

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so now we’ve got to peel that off right so there’s a double sided tape peeled

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off but I haven’t cut the hole in it at this moment in time that’s going to be a

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little bit tricky so I’ll leave that till after I’ve attached this so we

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might as well just pop this on flat like this

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attach it on nice and strongly get rid of all the air bubbles

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so as you can see it’s not difficult to do this it trims out very easily with a

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knife okay so I’ve just created that hole out

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with a drill and we’re all ready to go so the first thing I’m going to do is to

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make the keyboard like new by peeling off the protective films and there it

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is back to absolutely pristine condition

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we shall now pop this on oops wrong way

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we’ll pop that on

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we’ll put the screw in and if and when it gets a bit mucky

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well next Christmas you can get another piece of film and make a new one well

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this is definitely the star of the show today but I thought I’d try and get in

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on the act as well just so that I could say cheerio and I’ll see you next time