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I am trying to build a big push button in the shape of a rectangle. I have 4 springs at each corner (below the plate), but the problem is, that because of button's size, if I press down on one of the corners, only the spring closest to that corner will compress.

I am looking for a mechanism that would allow me to somehow "connect" those 4 springs, so when I compress one of them, all others will also compress. I've looked online, but I feel like I'm missing some core terminology here and I am unable to find anything useful.

I think that I could probably solve this by simply getting a very big spring and placing it at the center, but at this point the springs are getting very expensive, and I hope that there is a more clever way of doing this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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  • $\begingroup$ Some idea of the scale of thing and intended usage would help. What is the stroke, what is the force? how big is the button? $\endgroup$
    – Greg Locock
    Dec 24, 2022 at 0:42
  • $\begingroup$ @GregLocock Currently the button is around 7x7cm, I used 10mm diameter springs, regarding the force I am not sure, the intended usage is to simply press it using fingers. I would like to make a bigger one too, about 15x15cm maybe but I would like to resolve this issue first. $\endgroup$
    – Adam
    Dec 24, 2022 at 0:48
  • $\begingroup$ look at how computer keyboard spacebar works $\endgroup$
    – jsotola
    Dec 24, 2022 at 5:01

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The only very simple mechanism to do this is a post in a hole, which naturally leads you to using one spring (which must be cheaper than 4, Shirley).

Otherwise you can try to fab a parallel motion linkage, but you'll need a lot of depth to fit that in.

In summary if the user pushes on one corner you are going to have the Devil's own job stopping the thing tilting and (possibly) jamming due to the sticking drawer problem.

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