(What will eventually be) A full, detailed breakdown on how to mod cheap baolian arcade buttons into genuine alternatives to sanwas with aggressively reduced Z height allowing for much thinner builds and gaining the benefits of keyboard switches!
Initial concept of hand filed MX mod by me, iterated upon by Ebin to suggest internally mounted choc switches, and then taken by me to Hadoe for assistance in designing PCB. All PCB work performed by him, he is a saint and I straight up would never have seen this mod through without his expertise and patience. GO BUY HIS RECTANGLES, https://htangl.com
DISCLAIMER Right now, this is a disaster dumping ground just to get these files and guides out to the public. This is very painfully a work in progress and I desperately need more than 24 hours in the day to get all the things done I'm working on right now, so please accept the files herein as being extremely raw and without context. Even my little picture showing the steps is out of focus lmao, I have so much to do
A button on its own:
A prototype build using a full set of these buttons:
Each of the approximate stages in modding a button:
For a quick visual aid on the process of the mod, you can head to YouTube to view Sonia's short vid doing the steps needed: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Zv_CO94l2CY
Here are the KiCad files for this stuff (it's blurry and I'm sorry I need to retake it): Choc_Arcade_Button.zip
Here are the files you give to JLCPCB to order the PCBs:
For 10: Choc_Arcade_Button_Panel2_Gerber.zip
For 20: Choc_Arcade_Button_Panel4_Gerber.zip
For 30: Choc_Arcade_Button_Panel6_Gerber.zip
For 40: Choc_Arcade_Button_Panel8_Gerber.zip
For 50: Choc_Arcade_Button_Panel10_Gerber.zip
For 100: Choc_Arcade_Button_Panel20_Gerber.zip
Here's the listing I used to order a set of 50 white slotted buttons: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32817156907.html
IMPORTANT NOTE: I cannot guarantee that any other colours or even another order of whites will be slotted or slotless. The product pictures in the listing are inconsistent. Slotless are less than useless, so be warned.
If you have Qs (tbh wih how scuffy this is you should have at least a few), ping me in Crane's discord, found at https://craneslab.xyz/discord