Key Button with Sloped Boundary Surfaces for Soft Touch
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing key buttons in electronic devices often compromise between aesthetic value and soft touch, requiring additional procedures to achieve both, and may protrude sharply, affecting user experience.
Innovation Solution
A key button design featuring an upper surface, side surface with specific slopes and varying shortest distances between them, manufactured using a method that adjusts the working tool's offset to minimize sharpness and enhance aesthetics without additional procedures.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If the key button has a simple geometric shape for easy manufacturing, then manufacturing precision is improved, but aesthetic value and soft touch deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by creating worked surfaces with specific slopes only at the boundary portions between the upper surface and side surface, while maintaining other areas with different characteristics. This localized modification achieves both aesthetic improvement and soft touch without requiring complete redesign of the entire key button structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces curved worked surfaces with specific slopes at the boundaries between the upper and side surfaces. These curved surfaces replace sharp edges with gradual transitions, providing both aesthetic enhancement and soft touch sensation while maintaining manufacturability through standard working tools.
2Shape
If additional working procedures are added to improve aesthetic value and soft touch, then aesthetic value is improved, but device complexity and manufacturing time increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the aesthetic enhancement function and soft touch function into a single working process. By forming worked surfaces with specific slopes at the boundaries, one manufacturing operation simultaneously achieves both aesthetic improvement and tactile softness, eliminating the need for separate additional procedures.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the geometric parameters of the key button by introducing worked surfaces with specific slopes at the boundaries. This parameter modification is achieved through standard working tools with adjusted offset amounts, allowing aesthetic and tactile improvements without adding complex manufacturing steps.
3Ease of manufacture
If the key button has uniform dimensions for simplicity, then ease of manufacture is improved, but aesthetic value deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by creating worked surfaces with specific slopes only at the boundary portions between the upper surface and side surface, while maintaining other areas with different characteristics. This localized modification achieves both aesthetic improvement and soft touch without requiring complete redesign of the entire key button structure.
Data Source
AI summary
A key button and a method of manufacturing the same are provided. The key button includes an upper surface, a side surface formed at a certain height along a border of the upper surface, and at least two worked surfaces formed to have a certain slope in a boundary portion between the side surface and the upper surface, wherein at least one first worked surface and at least one second worked surface are formed such that a shortest distance between the upper surface and the side surface differs from each other.