hackpad

Finished the PCB, so this round was all about the case. I went with a sandwich design: a bottom shell that holds the PCB and a top plate with 14mm cutouts the switches snap into, bolted together with M3×16 screws into heatset inserts.I modeled the whole thing myself in Fusion 360 — bottom case, top plate, and the full assembly. Everything’s dimensioned around the real part measurements: 0.2mm tolerance on the mating surfaces, a USB-C cutout on the side wall for the XIAO, and openings for the encoder knob and the OLED. Six standoffs inside keep the board from flexing.Exported all three parts as .STEP (Bottom.STEP, Top.STEP, assembled-model.STEP) — STEP keeps the exact geometry, and the print team converts to STL on their end. Whole thing fits well within the 200×200×100mm limit.Case = done. Next up: firmware.

I installed Fusion to design a case for the PCB; I calculated the dimensions and entered them into the parameters list to streamline future work.

I have finished designing the PCB board. It was my first time doing this, so it was tough constantly searching and asking AI, but I am glad to have completed it anyway.

Start PCB layout — Create a 19.05mm custom grid and arrange 9 switches in a 3x3 configuration, placing diodes D1 through D9 below each switch in the same direction. Place the XIAO, encoder (SW10), and OLED header (J1) around the grid (detailed positioning in progress).