What are Silicone Rubber Keypads?

Silicone rubber Keypads allow designers to add shape, colour and form to any keypad design. With its low cost and exceptional engineering properties, keypad manufactured from silicone rubber offer extremely wide temperature range, Long life, and robust sealing capabilities, along with the ability to tune key response (tactile feel) in accordance with a product’s user expectations.

The compression moulding properties of Silicone Rubber allows the formation of an angled webbing around a switch, which uniformly deforms to produce a tactile response when the switch is actuated. When the actuation pressure is removed the webbing returns to its neutral position with positive feedback. The electronic switch is created using a carbon or gold pill placed on the underside of the switch which contacts onto a PCB when the web has been deformed.

UK based Design Team

Diamond HMI’s experienced keypad design team are available to support customers in the UK and Europe looking to create Rubber keypad designs for a new electronic product or looking to enhance a current keypad design. We have experience in taking designs from initial concept through prototyping and on to volume production.

During the design process we can advise on the overall construction of a final product using a Silicone Rubber Keypad, how to secure the keypad to ensure reliable operation and selection of a suitable tactile response for each switch. We can also demonstrate how to illuminate keys and key legends and add unique finishes to the keypad to really enhance a product’s appearance.

On completion of a design our team can offer keypad life testing as required by the customer and once a keypad goes into production, we can provide worldwide logistics support wherever your final product is manufactured.