"Final" laptop design

Post date: Dec 30, 2016 12:21:21 AM

Barring any glaring issues I find, I think this will be the laptop design I go with. Before I start making chips, I'm posting the CAD walkthrough.

The lid, sans screen and antenna

First up we've got the lid. It's basically a chunk of metal to hold the screen and antenna, plus connection points for the hinges. There are a couple of new things here. The blue arrows point to indents where some magnets will sit to help latch the lid closed- seems like a nice feature, though I have no idea if they'll be strong enough.

The red arrow is for another magnet- this one for activating the lid sensor, so the computer knows when the lid is closed. This was part of the original case design, and I figured I might as well keep it.

The green dotted lines are where the LVDS and antenna cables go. They both come up through the hinge and go the LCD and antenna (not shown), respectively. I've milled out cutouts for them to sit in.

Lastly, the yellow piece will actually be steel, unlike everything else- it's just a cover for the cable cutouts. There are come cutouts below it for magnets to hold it in place, since tapping short blind holes sounds like a bad time.

The keyboard tray, with and without the keyboard

Next up is the keyboard tray. Again, not too much of note here- it's got a big old hole for the keyboard (flanged to keep it in place), plus a bunch of honeycomb pattern on the bottom to keep it stiff. There's also a power button, because you usually want one of those. This whole assembly screws to the base piece (shown next).

The base. Lots of wasted space here, but the batteries wouldn't fit under the keyboard

Finally we've got the base piece, which is where most of the interesting stuff is. Obviously there's a bunch of space for mounting various things- boards, batteries, drives, ... There's also a bunch of wasted space that's just filled in with a honeycomb pattern. This isn't entirely wasted, since it supports the keyboard. Nobody likes keyboard flex.

There's also the cooling system, which is an aluminum slug that sits on the CPU and a heatpipe running to the edge of the case. It should follow the red dotted line, but I was too lazy to draw the nasty 3D twisting shape in CAD. The CPU should stay under 5W, so using the case as a heatsink should be fine. In my limited testing, just the heatpipe alone is enough to keep things cool.

The other couple boards are the lid sensor and a USB board, to which the keyboard will be attached. And the SSD, I guess.

Anyway, that's where things sit. There may be more tweaks, especially after I realize things don't fit together like they should, but I think I'm out of ideas otherwise. The current design is about 3 lbs of metal. I don't know what the other parts weigh, but it shouldn't end up being too heavy.

Time to get to CAM-ing, then making some chips!