Refreshable Braille, Etched in Copper

A refreshable Braille cell costs more than it should because of what moves the dots — piezo bimorph reeds, individually assembled, hundreds of dollars per cell. I'm replacing the actuator with the PCB itself.

Each dot sits on a multi-layer planar spiral coil etched directly into the board. Current through the windings pushes a small neodymium magnet against the dot cap; an H-bridge flips polarity to latch it up or down. No moving assembly, no hand-built mechanism — the actuator array is the fabrication step, priced like any other PCB.