Here are the adjustments I’m having made to the structure.
Currently, our switches are a tight fit for gang-boxes that have a mud-ring attached. They have to be installed perfectly centered and that’s a tough task, especially if there are a ton of wires in the back.
Here’s an example of some that I installed down in Florida for a company.
I thought I took a better picture, but apparently not. You can kind of tell from the picture that the switches are not flush with each other and these were impossible to push in fully as the mud-ring was scraping the sides of the switch and there was no wiggle room.
This is what I’m referencing when I say mud-ring btw as I actually have never heard of these.
I went to the drawing board yesterday to see what could be causing the issue and found that there was zero free space when two switches were installed next to one another:
Even the corners had zero clearance:
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So, then I deconstructed the switch and found that there was absolutely zero space on the PCB to move things in a bit to free up space on the sides. My thought was to move in the sides a bit as shown below:
The issue here is that it would cause the screws to have to be moved on the front and there was no room for this.
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Back to the drawing board and it was not looking pretty because I didn’t want to make them redesign the PCB for a minimal use-case. But I also didn’t want to give up on it because there has to be a way to make it work and it’s a good selling point for B2B (and our customers).
I was about to call it quits for the day, when I noticed the “lip” where the front metal plate overlaps the plastic siding and thought, “what if we made this flush”?
It may not be best case scenario, but it would at least free up the switch a bit to move around a bit left to right as the plates were touching when there are two next to each other.
Should be an easy fix (SHOULD… lol).
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The next part was trying to round off the corners a bit on the back so it wasn’t so tight.
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The final part has been something that has bothered me for a while, but we’ve never been able to fix, which is the ground screw being either flush with the top or recessed. Not a huge problem as it’s already pretty low and it doesn’t interfere with most gang-boxes, but if we can improve it, that would be preferred.
In the mud-rings, the ground screw is awfully close to the metal:
This one I spent a lot of time on it and came up with this idea:
But… it was ultimately not possible per the feedback. The engineer said he could potentially get it down 1mm (to make it flush, it’s like 1.7mm), so unfortunately, we’ll have to table this one again.
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The good news is the first two modifications can be done and I’ll get the new file tonight or tomorrow so we can confirm the structure design (target date to complete is Oct. 20, so ahead of schedule).