Gluing work on DSKY substitute

DSKY SUBSTITUTE FOR THE AGC

Keyboard

I bought some gel superglue, to give me enough setup time to maneuver the cardboard shims into place in the honeycomb. I had designed the shims and had them laser cut to ensure repeatable and exact sizes for all of them.

Laser cut cardboard to serve as shims inside the keyboard

Working with tweezers and the superglue, I carefully placed each shim in place and provided some side pressure on the key plunger until the glue began to set up. Soon I had all the interior shims installed. They keys no longer wobble around - this should provide the smooth movement I expect from the keyboard.

Shims inserted, but dependent on side support to completely support the keyplungers

Because of the design of the enclosure, forced by the narrow margins between keys and the edge of the DSKY, one side of the cell holding the keys on the left, right and bottom sides are formed with milled relief on the aluminum enclosure. I then superglued the remaining shims to the enclosure itself, thus providing the needed side support for those keys.

The last area needing support is the top of the upper row of five keys. My honeycomb is open at the top, thus I need to make and glue some supports to give the final side support. I am still designing that top support and haven't glued it on yet. It is not straightforward, due to a post that supports the faceplate sitting just above the top of the honeycomb.

Display

I ran the special version of the DSKY firmware with scripted events, allowing me to align the light dam for the plus/minus signs and glue it into place. That is the anchor around which I organized all the rest of the layers on the EL panel side.

The next step was to install the electroluminescent wires, using the light dam as the end stop for each wire segment. I lined everything up and epoxied the wires down. Cleaning up required insulating the wiring the joins the three segments and gluing down the cabling.

Glued down light dam for plus/minus sign plus EL wires