I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanical keyboard

Re:I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanica... by dom96 on Thursday August 18, 2022 @09:56AM (#32509649)

Amazing job! The keyboard looks great. I have a couple of question for you regarding how you built the prototype and how you are planning to manufacture it. I am building something much less ambitious but also a hardware project and could really use some answers to these questions.

* How did you get the CE compliance? Did you literally just fork out a couple of grand and send the prototype to a lab to do it for you?

* How does creating the prototype vs. getting manufacturing going look like? Did you create the aluminium body yourself in your garage, then started getting in touch with Chinese companies to see who could manufacture it? How did you find the contacts for these?

If anyone else has tips for these kinds of things, I'd appreciate them also. The CE compliance in particular is quite daunting.

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Re:I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanica... by aemerson_ on Thursday August 18, 2022 @02:59PM (#32513522)

As @yeutterg says below it is possible to self certify CE.

For prototyping the body, I initially 3d printed it, then moved to 1 off cnc milling. For this I mostly used Geomiq (geomiq.com), which farms it out to various countries (mostly china from what I can tell), then they make it and send it to you. I plan to have the case manufactured in the UK — I found contacts for this because I happen to work in the automotive industry in the UK currently. The most difficult part of the case will be anodising which will require a lot of trial and error.

For the plastics, they are all 3d printed for prototyping, and will be injection moulded in the UK for production.

PCBs are printed in China for prototyping. Not sure where the production PCBs will come from yet.

I can give you more detailed info if you'd like.

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Re:I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanica... by dom96 on Thursday August 18, 2022 @05:00PM (#32514832)

That's great! Thanks for the info, Geomiq looks brilliant.

If you could go into more detail on the CE self certification that would be awesome. How did you figure out what testing you need to perform on the product to complete the self certification? The biggest source of confusion for me is this aspect of it. Sure I can self certify that all is good, but how can I be certain that I am not missing something that will get me into legal trouble?

For my own project the biggest source of compliance is related to the ESP-32 that I am using (because of the WiFi/Bluetooth radio). Of course the boards I get from Amazon and Alibaba all have CE written on them, but how can I trust that? I read that the seller has to give CE certificates but they always seem to have a serial number that appears fake (there was some database that you can look them up in and they always fail to show up). I also read that putting together components that are all CE does not mean that the full product can be considered compliant. So in general it seems like a massive undertaking.

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Re:I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanica... by ebastler on Friday August 19, 2022 @03:09AM (#32518249)

Some wifi/ble modules come pre-certified. The holyiot 18010 (nRF52840) on the prototype comes with FCC/RoHS certs from the factory, so at least the Bluetooth part is "guaranteed" to be conform, and everything else is so simple, it won't cause any relevant EMI either way (esp. not inside a metal shell).

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Re:I spent a year designing a low profile, minimal mechanica... by yeutterg on Thursday August 18, 2022 @01:37PM (#32512626)

For many products, including electronics, CE can be self-certified [0]. This is different from other testing and labeling standards, such as UL.

[0]: https://cemarking.net/ce-marking-knowledgebase/ce-self-certi...

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