Creating the FLipMouse
This section of the wiki describes you how to gather all the parts for creating your own FLipMouse. If you don’t want to order all the parts on your own, please consider buying the construction set. Currently only via e-Mail orders (office@asterics-academy.net), but soon there will be an online-shop.
We need 2 different types of material:
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The mechanical parts for the case, the mounting and finally the mouthpiece carrier.
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The electronics, consisting of the PCB (printed circuit board) and its small electronic parts
You can find all the parts in one list in the repository: FLipmouse_Bill_of_Material.
The BOM (bill of material)
This file is usually created by the PCB editor (Eagle in our case). It contains an ID (column 'C', 'Parts') which describes the location on the PCB (the counterpart ID is printed on the PCB). If you want to order the parts, you need the amount (column 'E') and the ordering number. We will extend the list by different distributors to enable shipping all over the world.
The columns 'K' and 'L' are listing the pin count (it is easier to determine the pieces if you know at least their pin count) and the information if it is important to place the part in the correct orientation.
Electronic parts
Currently we order the electronic parts mainly via Farnell. If you don’t find your country on their homepage (farnell.com), please try to find your local distributor on this page: export-portal. Notice: you need to register either as a company or a student there.
Some parts are only available on Digikey or other stores. You will find information in the corresponding columns.
If you have problems ordering any parts, please send us a report via the GitHub issue tracker (https://github.com/asterics/FLipMouse/issues).
Mechanical parts
The main challenge of manufacturing your own FLipMouse is the acrylic case. It is not common to have a laser cutter at home. Therefore, you either buy the acrylic parts or the laser cutter. We are currently working on a 3D printed case, which is much easier to produce today. All the construction manual steps are tailored to the acrylic case, so please be careful if you want to use the 3D printed case.
A high-quality laser cutter will cost around 10000$ (without the exhaust fan/filter system). You can buy one on eBay for less than 500$, but you will have some disadvantages regarding precision, security and some more.
If you want to buy the parts online, following list provides some companies which manufacture the laser cuts for you.
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FORMULAR - charges around 20$ https://www.formulor.de
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Polulu - charges 2,5$/min (we need 10min for 2 FLipmouse) - https://www.pololu.com/product/749
Another solution to get the acrylic parts may be one of your local maker/hacker spaces. Some of them have their own lasercutter but probably all of them have encouraged people to help you. There is a list of many different hackerspaces all over the world available here.
We strongly recommend to use our Construction Manual, simply because it has very nice illustrations.
If you use this manual, please read the errata file BEFORE starting, because it contains all additional information which is not contained in the pdf file yet:
This wiki page contains additional information (if available and necessary).
3D printed version
The current construction manual shows only the acrylic case building. If you printed your own case, a few steps are different compared to the acrylic case:
- You can skip all steps of glueing
- You need to put 6 M3 thread-inserts (4 to the sensor carrier, 2 to the main case) into the plastics (with the solder iron). This video shows you how to do that.
- The 4 springs are attached with M3 metal screws instead of M4 plastic screws.
- You can solder the 5 pin female header to the sensor carrier before gluing both parts (sensor PCB and sensor carrier) together
Necessary tools for building
If you have ordered a FLipMouse construction kit, you need following tools to build it:
- Solder iron with a 1mm tip
- Tweezers (a self-gripping one if possible)
- Wire cutter (a small one)
- Pointed pliers
- Sticky tape (also known as Scotch tape)
All other tools, parts and the glue are already provided with the construction kit.
Tools to assemble a construction kit
If you want to build your own construction kit, one expensive additional tool is necessary:
A laser cutter.
It is recommended to use one of your local hackerspace, if available. Otherwise you may use a company that provides a cutting service. If none of that options fit your needs, you might have a look at these links to cheap laser cutters:
The links to the shops are necessary if the other links to the laser cutter itself are outdated. We tried cutting FLipMouse cases with these cheap laser cutters. It works, but you have to adjust the laser power by try & error. There is no setting possible, despite the potentiometer on the cutter.
Other laser cutters from Epilog, GCC or Trotec are better, but they are very expensive. You might want to contact your local distributor for further information.
In addition, you need a M3 and a M4 thread cutter.