Back from vacation, some updates:
PCBFinal PCBs have been made and are verified working, including all the layout options, with both the solder and hotswap version
I will do some tiny tweaks before the final version, such as cleaning up some silkscreen label positions, fixing the BMR logo (we ended up changing the "R-leg" to be longer).
Flex Plate (& teal plate color!)Prototypes of the flex plate arrived. I made them from aluminum and took the opportunity to order them in the teal color that are part of the hammerhead colorway. I also got them bead-blasted. They look and feel great!
Again, I should credit hiney for his
alice three-quarter" plate design on which this is heavily based on.
As you can see above, it's designed to be more flexible due to the added cutouts and - if you want - you can snap of the center and be left with a half-plate for even more flex.
And it's definitely more flexible than the regular plate. I've done some side-by-side comparison between the original plate and the flex plate, both mounted with four screws indicated in red below, and both using hotswap sockets (which may not be ideal, but it's more convenient for my testing):
Just using 4 screws also makes the regular plate a little flexible (as we already found out in the review of the prototypes), however, with the flex plate there also is some flex on the outer keys:
First the full flex plate (bottom) vs the regular plate (top):
https://imgur.com/2HrDZZRSnapping out the center part for a half-plate design makes it even more flexible:
First the full flex plate (top) then the half-plate (bottom):
https://imgur.com/ODZATJqIf (enough) people are still interested in this, I'm happy to add it as an extra option, but I also don't want to sell snake oil to you.
To make the effect visible on camera, I'm pressing a little harder than I would when typing, and personally, the difference between the regular and the flex plate is not as obvious as you might think.
However, I can easily tell the difference between the regular plate and half plate!
One concern that I had with the half plate was crooked keys, but absolutely no issues when using PCB mounted switches for alignment even with the hotswap sockets.
Maybe other plate material would give a greater effect, but I think the flex is now mostly held back by the PCB, not by the plate.
So there is some potential down the road to try it with a thinner PCB, or for someone to add flex cuts and re-route the PCB, but this won't be part of the GB...
Group BuyI want to get this going in mid September. Will post some more updates later this week on how I am planning to organize it.
