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geekhack Community => Ergonomics => Topic started by: bmiww on Sat, 15 December 2018, 18:12:47
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Hey ya'll!
Been dropping by from time to time ever since I split My keyboard in half,
and since I'm slowly beginning to descend into madness,
I've been slowly getting bad ideas about trying My hand at prototyping a keyboard myself.
But I'm not doing this post as a making stuff together (not yet at least) - I'd like to ask if anyone here knows of the existence of commercially accessible mechanical keyswitches boasting a smaller diameter?
I've been reflecting on My daily kb usage and I'm feeling like one of the improvements I could be making - would be less travel distance for the pinky finger,
and it feels like the pinkies wouldn't suffer too much of a precision loss on a smaller key.
Maybe someone has already experimented with this?
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Welcome to Geekhack!
Many switches could be put a little bit closer together, and don't need 19.05 mm. (3/4"). A Cherry MX switch is really 15.6 mm wide. An Alps switch is 14 mm on the vertical.
... But the real issue is getting keycaps for it.
Matias made smaller-height keycaps for the Matias Ergo Pro (http://matias.ca/ergopro/pc/)'s cursor keys, but he does not sell them.
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I’ve used Cherry ML switches several times. Their key caps are made for .7” spacing vs the .75” standard.