I was looking to upgrade my current Apple keyboard, but nothing really caught my eye, I was just about to drop 150 bucks on the fancy space grey Apple Keyboard, when Youtube’s algorithm somehow sucked me in the rabbit hole of DIY mechanical keyboards and that is where the research started. First by gathering every cool build I’ve found (whichyou can view here). At first I’d set my mind to a keyboard layout without a f-row keys, a numpad on the left side and dedicated arrow keys, this because I use a pen tablet as a mouse, so my right hand is usually holding a pen and I thought I could do data entry with my left.
Searching around for options I’d soon found out that this isn’t really possible. Most Do It Yourself builds require a Printed Circuit Board (PCB for short) as a starting point and although you can customize the layout a bit, for me it left a lot to be desired. Most PCB’s are of the 60% variety and don't really support a number pad. While doing all that research I’d landed on a few brave souls who hand wired their keyboard and I was intrigued. I’d never soldered electronics, have no idea about hardware, but thought “why not seems like a fun side project!”
Although it looked like a fun at first, I’d also seen the price tags of some of these builds other people did (I’m looking at you Quinn from Snazzy Labs, with a build of ~300 bucks). Hand wiring the board means you’re already eliminating the need of a PCB which can save you some cash. I’d just pickup a cheap 3D printer and jumping at each opportunity to use it and hone my Fusion 360 skills, which means I can save even more and than just the cost lays with the keycaps and how fancy you want to go with your switches….
While doing all this research, in the back of my mind, I knew I wanted to 3D print the case, not only because again with the pre build cases and plates there is not much customisation possible, but I’d just bought a 3D printer and learned myself to work with Fusion 360 and viewed this as a great functional 3D printing use case.
This is the most fun part. While gathering all the supplies I would need, I’ve spend many of hours in the http://keyboard-layout-editor.com (KLE from now on). This tool lets you design any layout keyboard with any key you want. While building my layout in this tool I’ve also found the many of key switches with all their different kind of physical qualities (tactile, click-y, heavy, linear) and another rabbit hole I was sucked in to. In the KLE editor you can give different keys a colour, I’d set my mind to Cherry type switches (seemed the most accessible).
https://i.imgur.com/ihiuwg5.png
Browns for the click-y feel, but not that loud (I still work in a office with other people around, red switches for keys that where pressed often and rappitly: arrow keys, spacebar, enter, tab and of course AWSD 😉. I’m not a (not yet at least) keyboard snop, so I’ve just picked up some
cheap switches from AliExpress,
the brand is BGEKTOTHS and they seem great! You can really feel the click in the brown ones, the red ones go down smoothly and the black switches just feel a bit heavier to press.
In the end I’ve landed on building two keyboards, a almost 60% layout with a few extra function keys, dedicated arrow keys and a separate 5x5 layout numpad, which also functions as a gaming pad, but more on that later. I’ve chosen this because I still wanted my numpad on the left, but didn't know if I would like it, this way I can just switch it’s position if in the and it didn't suited me. Building two boards also had another reason, building a smaller numpad first meant I could test my skills first and fix any bugs with my first version before I began the larger project.
Now it was time to pick out some keycaps, be warned these will be expensive. I personally fell in love with a style called Dolch, it’s a styled borrowed from a older computer manufacture. And found this set that has side printed legends, has and ISO layout, also has a macOS set and is sold by KBDfans, a brand I’ve read a lot about during my research, so that was a no brainer. The keys are also PBT a stronger type of plastic (in contrast with ABS) and have a OEM profile (also something that seemed accessible). Be aware that for the larger keys like space, shift and enter you need stabilisers and all these special keys can have all kinds of sizes, while shopping for stabilisers you need to keep in mind what sizes keys you’re going to use, also I needed plate mounted stabilisers, not PCB mounted!
When you’re done with the fun part of the project, you’ll need to get to work. Hopefully you’re done with the tinkering on your layout in the KLE editor and it will be time to generate a base plate, here we’ll use another tool create by some fine people from the community http://builder.swillkb.com, here you can load in your layout from the “Raw data” tab over at the KLE site. For me keeping all the settings default and only changing “Switch type” to MX _t:1 and “Stabilizer type” to MX worked best. You can from here chicken out and order a laser cut base plate, but for the brave one under us you’ll be able to download a .dxf file which you can load in to Fusion 360. When you are all setup in Fusion I’ll through some numbers at you, but it’s best if you test and tweak this part for yourself.
Some numbers and tips
1.4mm, this is so that your switches have something to snap on to (and listen to that snap!)0.8mm worked for me. To offset multiple sketch lines at once, you’ll need to do a little trick described here
4mm thick. Because we’re working with plastic and not fancy aluminium we need to get our stiffness from somewhere. This seems to hold up (see the video above)