Guide to the Different Electric Rubber Contact

Electric Rubber Contact

Electric rubber contact also called as rubber contact, rubber contact strip and digital piano keyboard.

Electric rubber contact is made of elastic silicone as raw material and processed by compression molding, which take full use of the high resilience of silicone, can be processed into a variety of shapes.Electric rubber contact offer a tactile feeling. You can feel the keys return to their original position. Pressing a key will deform the key. When you release your finger, the key will spring back up.

In order to meet the needs of different users, electric rubber contact can be divided in to several types according to different processing.

-Backlit rubber contact/rubber keyboard

Electric rubber contact can have multi-colored keyboard lighting, which is achieved by laser etched graphics or semi-transparent keys.That’s because the raw material and raw color is transparent. The process enables the integration of a light channel in each individual key. This light channel is absolutely isolated from the rest of the transparent button and achieves a precise focus of the light beam. Electric rubber contact with this technology can not only be backlit, the individual buttons can also show status displays.

-Dual color / multi-colored rubber contact

There are several ways to achieve multi-colored rubber contact.The two main ways are keysetting electric rubber contact & overmolded electric  rubber contact.

Differences between keysetting rubber contact and overmolded rubber contact are different processing and different appearance.

Procedures of overmolding electric rubber contact are more complicate than keysetting.

Overmolding rubber contact requires two sets of compression molding, one for different color buttons, one for whole set rubber contact overmolding and key positioning tool.

First, process the the color buttons and whole rubber contact separately, then place the color keys on top of the key you want.

The purpose of key positioning tool is to fix different color buttons into mold cavities for overmolding.Therefore, overmolding rubber contact is also two-shot molding.

Electric rubber contact by keysetting is only one-shot molding, which means keysetting only need one set of compression mold.In production, different color material is placed to the mold cavities at the same time and then compressed at the same time.

The second difference is that overmolding parting line of different color areas of is clear.While in keysetting process, different color of rubber contact will bleed into different area.

                      Overmolded Piano Rubber Contact                               VS                          Keysetting Piano Rubber Contact 

-Light guides / light pipe rubber contact

For rubber contact with requirement for light indicator function, most designer will choose light pipes.The material of light pipe can be clear plastic, glass and high transparent silicone rubber.

And there are different manufacturing methods of rubber contact with light pipes.As mentioned above, keysetting process and overmolding process and the main methods.Another method is achieve the function by secondary assembly.