Cases with screen protectors – or, at least, hard plastic surrounding the screen – often have an opening that is only slightly larger than the active area of the tablet screen.  These screen protectors also rest directly on the tablet’s glass, leaving no space for slide-in tabs. 

The picture below is of the Smartbox Talk Pad 8, which has one of these hard plastic surrounds:

The surround also has a sloped face:

One option for mounting a keyguard in this case is to use raised tabs.  Unfortunately, these keyguards are often too easy to pull away from the tablet. 

Another, better option, is to match the edge of the keyguard to the slope of the screen protector:

You can then use micro-suction tape or clip-on straps to hold the keyguard securely in place.

Sloped edges are added by setting options in the “Sloped Keyguard Edge Info” section of the Customizer:

along with a few options in the “Case Info” section:

You’ll use these options to describe the specifics of your screen protector border.  This picture shows a tablet, case, and screen protector in cross-section:

Specifying a Keyguard with a Sloped Edge

Here are the Customizer options that are used to describe the case and screen protector:

Note: To create a keyguard with sloped edges, all of these measurements must be identical on all four sides of the case opening.

It’s possible for both the “case to slope depth” and the “sloped edge starting height” to be zero if the screen protector is shaped like this:

There are two options for a keyguard with a sloped edge.  First, the keyguard can extend outward to the place where the screen protector and the rest of the case meet:

Or, if you set, “extend lip to edge of case” to “yes”, the keyguard will reach all the way to the edge of the case:

This is what the underside of a keyguard with a “lip” will look like:

To extend the keyguard to the tablet’s edge, enter the overall case size (height, width, corner radius) in the Tablet Case section of the customizer.

Mounting a Keyguard with a Sloped Edge

You can use two different mounting methods to attach a keyguard with a sloped edge.  You can use tape (i.e., the No Mount method) or Clip-on Straps.

You can only use Clip-on Straps if the “keyguard thickness” is greater than or equal to the “case to screen depth”.  Note that the “screen area thickness” can be smaller.

You can also use micro-suction or double-sided tape to attach the keyguard.  If the tape is thicker than about 1/2 mm, account for this additional thickness by adding a gap between the sloped edge of the keyguard and the screen protector and case edges.  You do that by adjusting the value of two options. 

If your tape is 1 mm thick, begin by adding 1 to “case to screen depth” in “Tablet Case”:

Then add 1 to “sloped edge starting height” in “Sloped Keyguard Edge Info”:

It may also be necessary to add 1 to the “keyguard thickness” in “Keyguard Basics”:

If the last step makes the keyguard too thick for your client/student, you may be able to offset this change by reducing the “screen area thickness” by an equal amount.

This image shows two keyguards with sloped edges superimposed on each other in slicer software.  The green keyguard is the original design, while the orange keyguard has all of the above modifications:

Printing a Keyguard with a Sloped Edge

You should consider 3D-printing your keyguard on its face, rather than on its back, like a traditional keyguard.

If there are features of your keyguard that prevent you from printing it on its face, you will have to turn on supports during the printing process.  Depending on the size of your tablet and the overall size of your keyguard design, you may end up needing a significant amount of support material:

Because the keyguard pictured above has a recessed screen region, it can’t be printed on its face without creating a rough surface where the support material and the cell rails meet.