So late last year (2017) I discovered that building your own keyboard was a thing(!), and I subsequently fell down that particular, technological, rabbit hole. As a result, I ended up ordering various parts, from various places, especially China in the form of AliExpress. The picture above is what I ended up building.
4 or 5 weeks later everything had arrived, after a week or two of umming, ahhing and watching YouTube videos (including livestreams of people assembling these keyboards, on camera) I finally bit the bullet. Firstly I put the a few switches in place and soldered them, to hold the pcb and plate together. I then inserted the rest of them.
Once the groundwork was laid I could crack on, and solder the rest, but only after I'd made sure they were all fully pressed down into the pcb. Apparently this is why you buy plate mounted switches as they make this part easier, as they don't have the extra plastic pegs, that have to be forced into the pcb. My hands are throbbing with the memory of the pain that forcing the switches in caused. Eventually I could get on and solder everything in place!
After failing to realise that one of the switces in the bottom left corner was misaligned for the size of the keycaps I had, I ended up having to desolder it and move it across slightly before resoldering the whole thing back in the correct place. I was pleasantly surprised that this turned out to be the only physical issue I had making the keyboard.
Once all of that was done it had to be fastened into the case, the keycaps had to be added and the software (describing it's layout) had to be flashed to the board, and then it was all good to go.
I had a brief hiccup working out the correct designations for the characters on the key to the left of the z key on my layout (a fairly standard UK one) but eventually tracked one down online.
So I've built one, a 75%, or 84 key one. I currently have all of the parts for a 40% keyboard, but haven't had the time to do anything with them yet. This hasn't stopped me from ordering parts to make a second, different 40% one, everything except the keycaps which I'm sure I'll get round to soon. I also have stuff to build some usb cables to go with them, but haven't gotten on to that either.
The mechanical keyboard bug has well, and truly bitten me.
My name is Dave Ames. I've been a teacher for 25 years and for the last few of those I've been teaching both children and other adults, especially teachers to program in a variety of environments, but mostly Python.
I guess when I get round to building my next keyboard, or those cables I mentioned, then I'll post about them too.
Nice keyboard! I discovered this hobby more than a year ago but and I'm up to 4 keyboards now but only 2 were DIY projects. I recently featured one in a blog post here on Steemit.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Nice, I've just been and found your post. That's a nice keyboard that you featured. I realised reading through it, that I forgot to talk about the switches, on this keyboard, which I'm actually typing on now, I chose Gateron Browns (and have enough for a couple more keyboards) and have been really happy with them.
The keycaps were just an OEM set in Dolch, but when I got them I discovered that UK layouts don't match US ones and that I needed some extra keys for the bottom row (the 3 to the right of the spacebar), one for the top row (delete at the very top right) and a different sized right shift key. Each row has a slightly different profile, so I couldn't use the ones that I got in the set, I found a site that did a minimal set of just the ones I wanted, and it wasn't until they arrived that I discovered they were made of a different plastic and were a slightly different colour, but I quite like the overall effect, and it doesn't bug me, so I'm sticking with it for now.
I now have two 40% kits (well parts I've put together into kits) to put together, but because of the nature of the key layouts, each one has a full set of keys already. I just need to get to a point where I've got a couple of hours free.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Massdrop has a really nice looking set right now: GMK Red Samurai: https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-redsuns-gmk-red-samurai-keycap-set#description
It might be pricey shipping to the UK though.
Do you think there are more mechanical keyboard enthusiasts here on Steemit?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
looks like a fun soldering project... i too am tempted to partake of this.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Each switch has 2 pins that have to be soldered so just the 120 to do on that one. It probably took me about 90 minutes of soldering all told, and was actually far more straightforward than I was expecting.
I haven't done one yet that's backlit, but that apparently requires soldering an LED onto each switch, doubling the number of solder joints required. For the true soldering adept (or masochist as they're more commonly known) you can always make a handwired keyboard which doesn't have a pcb, you end up soldering a load of diodes to it too.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Haha like 9 levels above where I'm at. I've soldered approximately 3 mod-chips back in the day of console modding. Is that still a thing?
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
You're really taking DIY to a new level here. Cheers!
The mechanical keyboard I bought stopped working reliably after a couple of years - a few of the keys would only register a press half of the time. Maybe if I had your soldering skills I'd have been able to take it apart and fix it.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
If the switches inside are a standard type (for instance Cherry MX compatible) then assuming the problem was with the them, you could "quite easily" desolder the existing switches and replace them with a fresh set. Alternatively, if it was a fairly standard design and the problem was with the PCB, you might still desolder the switches, to reuse elsewhere, buy a fresh PCB and resolder your existing switches onto that. The possibilities are quite large. For instance, there are people who find old keyboards with Mechanical Switches inside, and harvest them for parts or refurbish them to sell on.
And to be fair, soldering is a lot easier than you think. It just takes a minimal amount of practice to get reasonably competent at.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit
Well I haven't gotten rid of it yet - I've been using it to make graphics like this:
Maybe I'll buy some soldering stuff and use it as an opportunity to learn. thanks for the info.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit