At the conclusion of our webinar, How to Un-Obsolete Your Legacy Keypad Design, several questions were submitted to our presenter, Steven J. Goodman, User Interface & Cable Assembly Product Manager. We have compiled these questions into a readable format on our blog.
Q&A From Our Live Webinar
Quick Links:
- I'm not sure what material these buttons I have are made of. Is this an issue?
- If we need 100 to 500 pieces made, is this quantity OK for your processes?
- Can you quote a keypad if all we have is a physical sample and no drawings?
- How do you test for long-term reliability, especially in harsh environments?
- Do you support fiber optic backlighting panels, and how much would something like this cost?
Watch the Recording Below:
Question: I'm not sure what material these buttons I have are made of. Is this an issue?
Answer: No, this is not an issue, but we would love to work better to understand any requirements and application information about these buttons. If you have samples that you can send to us, we can review and study those samples to try to determine what kind of material it is, or we can help recommend something.
So, it's not an issue, but we need to work with you in some way, shape, or form to get to some agreement on what that material needs to be if you don't have any information on it.
Question: If we need 100 to 500 pieces made, is this quantity OK for your processes?
Answer: One hundred pieces is no problem. Five hundred pieces is no problem. We're a high-mix, low-volume company, so that's a great fit for us. Our sweet spot is anywhere from 50 to 50,000 pieces. And obviously, 50,000 is a huge number for some military contracts, whereas 250 is a very small quantity for some industrial product applications. Everything's relative when it comes to quantities, but that's no problem for us. What it comes down to is are you willing to invest in the tooling that's needed?
And then, based on the quantities you're trying to make and what the product is, some tooling can be more expensive, but it produces a lower unit cost. And what I mean by that is earlier in the presentation here, I showed a slide of a compression mold, and you saw the number of cavities in it. The more cavities, the higher the initial tooling expense, but the lower the unit cost.
So basically, if we know the quantity you're trying to make and your approximate cost targets, we can work with you to develop a plan to quote 100 to 500 or even more quantities.
Question: Can you quote a keypad if all we have is a physical sample and no drawings?
Answer: Yes. Basically, if we have a physical sample, that's one of the best things and one of the most important things for us to be successful. We don't necessarily need drawings. They are helpful, especially if there are features or critical interface dimensions. But getting a physical part is among the most beneficial items for us to be successful here.
I should note, actually, that if we do use a physical sample to recreate a design, we're probably going to destroy it. We're going to take it and section it or cut it apart to better understand how it was built and some of the nuances of how to make it.
Question: How do you test for long-term reliability, especially in harsh environments?
Answer: That's a good question. It's a bit open based on the technology, but in terms of long-term reliability, really, what we try to do is utilize materials and off-the-shelf items and components that are reliable, that are high-fidelity, and are ones that we can use and have confidence in. For example, we solely use dome switches made of stainless steel. We do not use polydomes. We do not use domes made of other non-metallic materials. And the reason is because dome switches are not expensive, but they're a critical part of the assembly. And we believe using a high-fidelity dome switch is well worth the small costs that you need to pay above and beyond some of the less expensive carbon ink or polydome technologies.
So, how do we test this? We'll set up a jig and do cycle testing. We'll use our ESS chambers and other thermal chambers to run thermal shock, temperature cycling, and other testing to stress the device. We'll set up a counter and a small pneumatic piston to press a button 100,000 times and make sure that it's still falling into spec for switch bounce. So, it really depends on technology, but there are a lot of options that we have to test for long-term reliability.
Question: Do you support fiber optic backlighting panels, and how much would something like this cost?
Answer: Unfortunately, we don't support fiber optic backlighting panels, largely because that technology is obsolete. What we do instead of using a fiber optic method to backlight the panel is actually use other technologies, one of which is using discrete LEDs and some kind of light guide symbol or light guide panel or just individual LEDs with different films and diffuser layers to go act as that backlight, replacing the fiber optic.
So, unfortunately, we don't have a capability for fiber optic backlighting. It's tough for me to estimate what something like that would cost.
