How would YOU go about....?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) General Bar Sport
2

I wouldn't be so crazy as to do this unless I had no choice, but something that could be tried:

  1. Get a 2 or 3 liter bottle, remove the label and any glue residue, cut the top and bottom off, and a slit down one side of the resulting tube.

  2. Use an oven to heat up 2 pieces of 1/4" sheet steel to around 246 C (250 C is the melting point of PET - we just want to soften it).

  3. Carefully unroll and place the piece (you might have to cut it into smaller pieces) of the 2 liter bottle between the two pieces of steel, and continue to heat in the oven for a few minutes (this would require some experimentation, and I am not sure you would want to use your home oven for this!).

  4. Remove the "steel/PET sandwitch" from the oven, and let cool. You should end up with a pretty flat sheet of PET material.

  5. Cut three squares (or whatever shape) of the PET material out; they should all be roughly the same size and shape.

  6. Take one piece, and use a hole punch (or other tool - a tarp grommet punch will work; you ultimately want clean edges to the holes) to punch holes where you want your buttons.

  7. Take another piece, and lay out strips of alluminum or copper foil where the button will be; do the same for the other piece, but run it perpendicular (this is important if doing a grid of buttons - also, remember that one side with the foil will face up and the other down).

  8. Attach wires as needed.

  9. Make a sandwitch of one of the foil sided/trace PET pieces, then the punched hole PET piece, then the other foil sided/trace PET piece, aligning the pieces properly.

  10. You could glue the pieces together, or use an old soldering iron or other heat source to melt the sandwitch together, or use nuts and bolts, or screw it down to a backing material (wood, metal, plastic), or rivet it together (there's even plastic rivets!).

  11. You would probably want to paint or otherwise indicate where the "buttons" are on the upper PET piece. In theory, if you used some form of resistive contacts, you could make a "touch" variable resistor, or a variable resistance "button", etc.

:slight_smile: