downloadable pattern

“Pearl’s Palette” custom keycaps

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I recently built myself a macropad inspired by the Palette from the upcoming Splatoon 3 Side Order DLC.

Doing so required making some custom keycaps. The tops of the keycaps were cut from 3mm translucent acrylic and the stems were cut from 3mm clear acrylic, which was then sanded slightly to fit into a kailh choc switch.

I’ve attached the files I used to make the keycaps. Note that they’re designed to be aligned off-center from the middle of the switch; you can see from the PCBs above that the LED is placed immediately below the keycap allowing the colour to illuminate directly through.

You could certainly try designing your own board to use a centered keycap though you may need to consider how to lay out the LEDs for even illumination.

The keycaps DXF file comes with black, red and green lines. The black lines are set as a lower power cut, defocused so that the line comes out wider. The red and green lines are normal cut power/speed.

keycapsDownload
stemDownload

Laser cutting files for hat and turtle aperiodic monotiles

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A friend recently alerted me to this very nifty shape. We decided to tessellate together both the “hat” and “turtle” forms of the tile in order to laser cut them.

Attached are the files we used for cutting. They’re designed for use on a 300x400mm sheet, but the patterns can be repeated as needed for larger areas. They include a curved line through each tile that can be helpful for visualising the aperiodicity of the tiles. The curve is based on a design by Dan Piker 

You can see a sample of some of the cut tiles in this Twitter post my friend made!

Files:

hatted-turtles.svgDownload
hatted-turtles.dxfDownload

Laser-cut Nintendo Switch Webcam Rig

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Over the December holidays I played a game with John called Aliisha: The Oblivion of Twin Goddesses; an asynchronous co-op game that uses two Switches communicating wirelessly. One player plays in docked or tabletop mode using joycons for occasional motion-controlled inputs and the other plays in handheld mode, taking advantage of the touch screen interface.

Since the players have separate views into the game world, I wanted to try recording the handheld player’s screen. I’d previously built a rig for recording gameplay from the WiiU tablet, which we used during the Splatoon 1 era to record the minimap, and I was able to adapt this into a Switch brace.

To attach the rig, remove one joycon from the console and slide the brace over the tablet. The brace is then locked in place with a piece that fits into the notch at the bottom of the console. I then slot my webcam – a Logitech C920 into place.

I have included the files in DXF and SVG format if you’d like to make your own. The files were designed to be cut from 3mm MDF with a .1mm kerf. You may like to try customising this to fit your needs or hollowing out part of the middle section to make the rig lighter.


switch_webcam_stand.svgDownload
switch_webcam_stand.dxfDownload