Author Topic: Designing another custom keyboard.  (Read 2536 times)

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Offline Moralless

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Designing another custom keyboard.
« on: Sun, 19 October 2014, 01:49:27 »
Hello everyone, after designing and building my first mechanical keyboard a few weeks ago, I have another urge to build yet another custom one. This time I have decided to make one based off one of my favorite layouts: the Leopold FC660M/C. You can look at the layout HERE. With the nonstandard spacebar stem spacing, this issue alone deterred me from buying a leopold and decided to just make my own.

I have again decided to use a layered case with a mix of either aluminium/steel and acrylic as it is cheaper than getting a CNC milled case made.

Here's my progress so far:
80201-0
80203-1

I'm trying to get rid off the "floating keys" effect that usually comes with layered cases (here's an image from my first custom) and make it more look like a KMAC (similar to this or this)

I just have a few questions:
1. How thick should I make the cover to achieve this effect? I don't have access to accurate enough measuring tools and would like any info on this by anyone with experience on this.
2. I'm planning to get the metal parts anodized black. Would you recommend to use steel or aluminium.
3. For the co-star through holes, I've increased the height by 0.317mm as previously when I had my other plate cut it was too tight and pushed the stabs in which didn't allot the inserts to go through so I had to mod it like this do you think this will solve thr problem?

Also I'm planning to hand wire this again, but if any experienced pcb designer could design a pcb for this layout with teensy and in-switch LED support I'd be more than happy to compensate for your time and effort.

Here is a download link to the cad files for anyone interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u54vnowum8zo37h/V2ALL.dxf?dl=0
« Last Edit: Sun, 19 October 2014, 01:55:52 by moralles »

Offline dorkvader

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Re: Designing another custom keyboard.
« Reply #1 on: Sun, 19 October 2014, 11:19:48 »
I think the cover should be at least as high as the switches above the mounting plate, so the cover should go up all the way to the bottoms of the keycaps. This will depend a little onwhat keycaps you have, but in practise it works out pretty well for a variety. My skeldon top piece is about 5.5mm above the plate. I think this is a good value.

steel cannot be anodyzed. I recommend steel because of its strength and cost (not too much more). You can get steel powder coated.

I think the costar stabilizers were designed for a 16 gauge plate, so that thickness is the one you want.

Offline Moralless

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Re: Designing another custom keyboard.
« Reply #2 on: Mon, 20 October 2014, 06:44:55 »
I think the cover should be at least as high as the switches above the mounting plate, so the cover should go up all the way to the bottoms of the keycaps. This will depend a little onwhat keycaps you have, but in practise it works out pretty well for a variety. My skeldon top piece is about 5.5mm above the plate. I think this is a good value.

steel cannot be anodyzed. I recommend steel because of its strength and cost (not too much more). You can get steel powder coated.

I think the costar stabilizers were designed for a 16 gauge plate, so that thickness is the one you want.

Hi, thanks for the response. I'm thinking of using some mild steel for the cover for powder coating, but I am unfamiliar with powder coating, I checked online and it says that powder coat application to a flat plate would add 1-3mm in thickness. What kind modifications to the CAD files should I do to ensure that the switches will still fit, screws will go through, etc. ? Because I'm not sure if the inner parts of the plate, cover, screw holes will increase in thickness causing the parts to not fit.

Offline Neebio

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Re: Designing another custom keyboard.
« Reply #3 on: Mon, 20 October 2014, 15:47:18 »
Your units for thickness of the powder coat are way out of wack.  A powder coat is definitely not 1-3mm thick.  I did a quick search and came up with between 1 and 20 mils thick.  Now I'm Canadian so I've never seen this unit of measurement before, but it seems to be thousandths of an inch.  That said, a powder coat would thus be something like 0.03 to 0.5mm.

TL;DR: Powder coat won't be more than 0.5mm, and will likely be closer to 0.1mm.

As for compensating for a powder coat, don't.  It won't add enough thickness to matter, and if it does (tight fitting switches/bolts) you can just sand/file the coating down to get a good fit.
« Last Edit: Mon, 20 October 2014, 15:49:00 by Neebio »
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Offline Moralless

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Re: Designing another custom keyboard.
« Reply #4 on: Mon, 20 October 2014, 16:43:28 »
Your units for thickness of the powder coat are way out of wack.  A powder coat is definitely not 1-3mm thick.  I did a quick search and came up with between 1 and 20 mils thick.  Now I'm Canadian so I've never seen this unit of measurement before, but it seems to be thousandths of an inch.  That said, a powder coat would thus be something like 0.03 to 0.5mm.

TL;DR: Powder coat won't be more than 0.5mm, and will likely be closer to 0.1mm.

As for compensating for a powder coat, don't.  It won't add enough thickness to matter, and if it does (tight fitting switches/bolts) you can just sand/file the coating down to get a good fit.

Oh wow can't believe I didn't pick up on that...

But thanks for the clarification on that, totally forgot that mils was a completely separate unit of measurement from millimetres.

Offline Neebio

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Re: Designing another custom keyboard.
« Reply #5 on: Tue, 21 October 2014, 13:33:43 »
I don't blame you, apparently it's only those shifty Americans who use 'mils', rest of the world seems to use 'thou' or 'thousandths'.
RK9000RE w/ Raindrop & DDR arrow keys
Cherry G80-11900LUMEU-2 w/ Red/Black SA keys

Offline abtrout

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Re: Designing another custom keyboard.
« Reply #6 on: Mon, 09 February 2015, 18:06:06 »
Hey, any updates on this? I've been thinking about attempting a DIY plate/case for my fc660m. The plan would be to desolder all the switches (I actually already did this once (swapped blues for clears (good decision / worth it)), heh) and use the fc660m PCB.