There's a bit of good and a bit of bad news xD
First of all, the good news:
I know exactly how to do the L and R buttons. I received my squishy tacts from the BOM and made little brackets to hold them. I have posted the files for the brackets under 3D design if anybody wants to use them. I'll update it as I make more revisions, but for now the one uploaded is just the basic structure that you can mount however you want.
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These are the basic brackets.
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And these are the brackets I'll be using. It holds 3 tacts instead of two, and has a flat base on one side to lay on. The larger half of it is double tact modded while the smaller side has only one. I'll upload this as well as the same thing but with the base on a different side so they stand vertically.
The plan is to use these as the L, R, Start, and Z buttons. Look familiar?
it's a chopped up ps2 dpad.
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I already pre-frankencased two of the buttons in. Unfortunately, I broke off a part of the hinge that holds the lid. There's no way to reattach it that I would feel was secure enough (I'm going for compact and sturdy this time, no shortcuts allowed), so I'll just replace the shell.
That's the bad news. The replacement shell I have is larger so I have to order a new one. Plus since there are two very similar sizes, it'll be hard to tell which one I'm ordering so it might take twice as long.
On the 3ds dpad front, it like like two screws is enough to hold the abxy buttons, so I'll add a third and some support just for safety. I'll order some screws as well because I need ones for the actual dpad as well as the joysticks.