Korry-alikes

My decision to build an A320 overhead of cours brought also the demand of having backlit push buttons which also act as annunciators to reflect statuses.

In real aviation the most known vendor for them isKorry electronics. That's also the reason why on searching for them you will sooner or later get to something like "home cockpit korry switches". Of course there are also other vendors but they ain't much cheaper.

And as I anyway decided to build my home cockpit on Pilatus PC12 size, it's simply impossible to put a real-life-sized A320 Overhead in it.

And as I scaled the overhead panel down to 75%, I also had to scale the korry-alikes down to fit well into the backlit Panel at the right positions.

The korry button

The tactile push button

is a cheap 6x6x5mm tactile micro push button which I ordered in hundreds as only my overhead panel requires already 93 of them.

The korry-alike body

is designed as two part in standard. One is the button 'cage' and the second one is the inset which is pressed.

Both parts are really easy to print. I'm printing them with PETG as I can archieve a better layer adhesion and robustness then with PLA.

The backlit button caps

laser engraved caps

first I tried it with one side spray painted 2mm acrylic sheets which I laser-engraved.

Pros 

• excellent light blocking
• relatively cheap
• extremely scratch resilient as the backside is painted and engraved

Cons 

• chiping paint on cutting if build in the wrong direction
• high effort for the mirrored text engraving as thicker lines/letters need to be hatched manually.

The sticker sheets

Finally I ended up with sticker sheets I ordered ataufkleberdrucker24.de.

Cutting the button caps from 2mm acrylic plates:

Pros

• easy to use
• quality and precision of the sticker sheets is great
• service and support at aufkleberdrucker24 is really great

Cons

• They don't block the light completely
• Not so cheep on first look. But if you take into account what you have to spend for good quality spray paint... Not really an issue.

Assembly

The Korry-alike button stl

for 3d printing can be downloaded here: korry-switch.zip