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Packaging the Badges

A project log for CoinOp Badge

Hardware badge inspired by my favorite Coin-Op video game

mike-szczysMike Szczys 08/08/2018 at 00:400 Comments

These badges need a lanyard and battery to be fully functional. If you're going to be handing them out at a big event you don't want to deal with this with every interaction so I decided to pre-bag every badge.

I designed the badges to use key rings through the PCB which will give the lanyard a connection point. The key rings were 1 cm in diameter and are quite robust. A quick internet search found a great little trick, use those claw-like staple removes you have in your desk drawer to separate the key ring to get it started, then use a need-nose pliers to finish it off. Here are the badges with rings:

From there I added a lanyard to each and wrapped it nicely around each badge.

I orderd ESD bags that were 10cm by 15cm. Since by PCBs are 9.6cm by 9cm you would think this would be perfect. The gotcha is that the bag measurements are outside dimension and not inside dimension. To my dismay the badges did not fit.

I already have the bags in hand and instead trying to send them back and buy new, larger bags (which is more wasteful since these are likely to be thrown away), I cut a slit along half of one side and the nose of the badge sticks out. The slit is sealed with tape after the badge and battery are inserted:

It didn't take long to package 50 badges (I have 59 but only ordered 50 bags). It was an easy job over part of one evening.

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