It seems I'm always grumpy about switches. I've tried lots of switches and mounting strategies. Too big. Too expensive. Too flaky. Hard to mount. Nothing made me happy. With the arrival of a 3D printer, I realized I had another opportunity to fight the switch monster. So here's what I built.
The attached text file is an OpenSCAD program. Rename it "AVBay.scad" and open it in with the customizer enabled. You'll get a little UI that lets you design the support structure that lives in your AV bay. You can design a structure with 3, 4, or 6 faces. It can have 1, 2, or 3 threaded rod collars. And, you get a fairly flexible way to lay out the contents of each face. The designer contains descriptions of about 20 altimeter boards, 6 kinds of switches, 10 trackers, batteries, and custom-shaped circuit boards and batteries. Each of these elements has an associated tag. e.g. "raven3", "rrc3", or "9v". The elements on a face are stacked in a column. The column elements are listed from the bottom to the top, separated by semicolons. A column with two vertically stacked 9-volt battery boxes is described as "9v; 9v". Each element of a column can be a row of horizontally arranged elements, separated by vertical bars ("|"). A face with a Raven 3, two #6 screw switches, and an RRC2+ is described by "raven3;ss6|ss6;rrc2". The program will evenly space the elements vertically and horizontally over the available area of the face. If you need fine control over where elements are placed, you can add a number that is the edge size, in inches, of a small empty square. A face description of "schurter" will place a hole and collar for one of those 120/240V rotary switches centered on the face and raised up enough to bring the switch close to the AV bay wall. But if you need the switch to be 4 inches from the bottom of a 6-inch long bay, the description would be "3.65; schurter; 1.65". The switch itself occupies a 0.7x0.7 inch square.
Back to those dreadful switches. The program will generate supports that raise your switches up from the face plate to near the AV bay wall. The program can also generate the structures needed to build your own screw switches! These switches are based on the design by Ridge Houmes (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3226776). You just need a machine screw, a couple square nuts, some wire, a drill, and a soldering iron.
Enjoy!
The attached text file is an OpenSCAD program. Rename it "AVBay.scad" and open it in with the customizer enabled. You'll get a little UI that lets you design the support structure that lives in your AV bay. You can design a structure with 3, 4, or 6 faces. It can have 1, 2, or 3 threaded rod collars. And, you get a fairly flexible way to lay out the contents of each face. The designer contains descriptions of about 20 altimeter boards, 6 kinds of switches, 10 trackers, batteries, and custom-shaped circuit boards and batteries. Each of these elements has an associated tag. e.g. "raven3", "rrc3", or "9v". The elements on a face are stacked in a column. The column elements are listed from the bottom to the top, separated by semicolons. A column with two vertically stacked 9-volt battery boxes is described as "9v; 9v". Each element of a column can be a row of horizontally arranged elements, separated by vertical bars ("|"). A face with a Raven 3, two #6 screw switches, and an RRC2+ is described by "raven3;ss6|ss6;rrc2". The program will evenly space the elements vertically and horizontally over the available area of the face. If you need fine control over where elements are placed, you can add a number that is the edge size, in inches, of a small empty square. A face description of "schurter" will place a hole and collar for one of those 120/240V rotary switches centered on the face and raised up enough to bring the switch close to the AV bay wall. But if you need the switch to be 4 inches from the bottom of a 6-inch long bay, the description would be "3.65; schurter; 1.65". The switch itself occupies a 0.7x0.7 inch square.
Back to those dreadful switches. The program will generate supports that raise your switches up from the face plate to near the AV bay wall. The program can also generate the structures needed to build your own screw switches! These switches are based on the design by Ridge Houmes (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3226776). You just need a machine screw, a couple square nuts, some wire, a drill, and a soldering iron.
Enjoy!
