Elastomer Keypad

Elastomer Keypad

Elastomer keypad, silicone rubber keypad, conductive rubber keyboard, always designed and applied for medical/healthcare devices such as diagnosis, infusion pump; industrial devices such as flight management computer, aircraft keyboard, rugged keyboards, display machine; and consumer electronics such as MIDI music instruments, digital piano rubber contacts, remote control, POS terminal, telephone, laptop, calculator, and etc., commonly formed by solid/liquid silicone rubber compression molding, many customized designs such as conductive or non-conductive silicon keypads, backlit/printed keyboard, key webbing/non-webbing keypad, multiple colors/pure color switch, quality service and manufacturer guide provide ideas for you.

Elastomer Silicone Keyboard And Design Optimization

Silicone keyboards are made of silicone rubber material, with features of soft, durable, safe and non-toxic, good elasticity, resistant to high and low temperatures, not easily deformed, a long service life, comfortable switch feeling, beautiful appearance and resistant to electromagnetic interference. It also has good waterproof performance and can be used in some special environments, such as outdoor instrumentation, medical equipment, etc. Plastic buttons are made of plastic materials, usually ABS, PC and other plastic materials, with strong corrosion resistance, and can resist the erosion of some chemical substances. The touch of the plastic buttons is relatively rigid/hard, and a certain amount of force is required to use them, so always as a keycap for rubber keypad. In order to have a better press rebound feel while keeping the key surface hard and easy to press, a design of plastic key cap + silicone key substrate can be used. The key cap and key body are molded separately. The plastic key cap is injection molded and the silicone key body is compression molded. Finally the formed keycap and key body are assembled to form a P+R keyboard with optimized feel and appearance.

Silicone Rubber Elastomer Keypad Design - With Key Webbing Or Not

For most keypads, it is required to design a thin slope between keycap and conductive base/pad, the angle of inner slope is within 45 degree, the thickness of the slope is 0.3-0.6mm, generally use thickness 0.5mm, the slope is key webbing for keyboard.

Key web/webbing design is necessary or not depends on device entire designs, generally speaking, if the rubber keypad applying domes/tactile switch (these two ways have had own click structure) as conductive way then the keyboard web is not needed again. On the contrary, key webbing is necessary to create click/switch feeling for keyboard.

What Are Conductive Types For Silicone Elastomer Button?

Rubber Conductive Black Carbon Pills (different resistance ranges from low to high; two surface types: smooth pill, and textured/graphic pill).

Conductive Ink Printing: lifespan is not good as carbon pills, but cheaper and without limit of shapes, but carbon pills only have solid round shape and ring shape.

Conductive Nickel Pills: low resistance, higher price than carbon pills and ink printing, long service life.

Conductive Golden/Copper/Metal Pills: extremely low resistance, high quality, always used for medical/healthcare/aircraft devices. Expensive than the other types, need to locate each metal pill in mold manually.

Metal Dome/Dome: made of stainless steel, in the shape of a thin metal membrane, round, square, rectangular, or any other shapes. Directly touch with PCB and form electricity, with click tactile feeling, but not flexible as key webbing of silicone keyboard. Generally need post processing, need to apply adhesive and assemble the adhesive domes to back of silicone keyboard cap.

Tactile Switch: a separate pressing structure like a single button, with click pressing feeling as well, generally only need a silicone keyboard cover/cap without key webbing design.