Cyberpunk Acrylic Keyboard Case [& Build Log]

[vim_commando]

TL;DR - I made a custom acrylic case with an integrated plate and some anodized aluminum hardware, it looks like this:



The Idea

First off, I want to acknowledge there are some nice sandwiched acrylic cases out there (Smashing Acrylics comes to mind); but I wanted to try something a little more intricate.

I knew when I ordered my BananaSplit60 PCB that I was going to attempt building my own case from scratch, so I skipped a plate entirely. I wasn't sure exactly what it was going to look like, but I had a general "electronic" theme in mind.

Since GMK Laser wasn't dropping for some time, I opted to pick up some "placeholder" keycaps, and I've honestly found them to be much more satisfying than I anticipated. So unfortunately that means a fresh build for GMK Laser 

After I got my keycaps, switches and PCB in, it was time to sit down and design something I could actually cut with my laser. After staring at some pictures on my Cyberpunk Inspiration board on Pinterest I came up with this:



I wanted the plate to include circuitry traces, but I knew drawing those out was going to be futile. Next I had to draw up the sketch into something digital.



My weapon of choice here is Affinity Designer. A great alternative to Adobe Illustrator if you're on a budget. I had a couple sheets of florescent green acrylic lying around, so I went with that for my first color scheme.

The First Cut

Admittedly, this is one of the more complex designs I've run on this laser. Not to mention I had just replaced the CO₂ tube because the original gave out and I had a jam-up which knocked a belt loose and caused some serious issues along the Y-axis.

After a few small test cuts, it was time...



A good action shot of etching the plate.



And all the pieces cut next to the original sketch.



Layers stacked along with the test cut.

The Assembly

With all the pieces cut, it was time to start putting it all together. Little did I know peeling the protective paper off the acrylic was going to be a project in and of itself. Seriously, having all of those trace lines cut up the paper into hundreds of small pieces. I also had to figure out the Cherry stabilizers; I really don't remember putting them together like this on my first build (maybe they were plate-mount? I'll have to look).



I was making some great headway, getting the stabilizers and switches installed on the PCB (no solder at this point, thankfully I wanted a full dry-fit first) and ready to put the two pieces together...



but if you've ever done this before there is something terribly wrong with the picture above. You see, the key switches need to go into the plate first. So I had to take all of the switches out of the PCB and start over.   

SO, I peeled off the masking paper from the top of the plate (really easy on this side, just one piece) and tried again.



Yeah, it was time to bring it all together. So I bused out the anodized aluminum screws and standoffs I had and got busy.



Nice. All of the screw holes aligned up perfectly, and all the hardware fit like it should. I was so glad my laser repairs were a success 

Now, keycaps!



This is a simple 104-key set I found on Amazon for under $25. They are double-shot typewriter-style black with a clear acrylic outer. I figured being black and clear they would look good with whatever color scheme I went with. The typewriter-style gave a great benefit for this build:



The extra space between keys leaves the plate details much more visible.

At this point, things were going great, a little too great. It was about time to see what Mr. Murphy had to say about this build.

The Adjustments

The first indication something was wrong was how the space and shift keys were behaving: they weren't popping up to full height. It took several times popping of the keycaps, checking the switches, and playing around with the stabilizers until I figured out what the root cause was.



Here it is. See that metal bar going across the top of the stabilizers? When a key is raised, that bar needs to extend beyond the bottom of the plate. See the notches at the bottom of the stabilizer cut-outs? Yeah. Those are where the bar is supposed to go.

So what happened? The BananaSplit60 PCB uses keys "upside down" from the Cherry default (LED holes facing towards you) and all of the stabilizers are mounted this direction too (except for the default backspace, which I'm not using). Interestingly swill's plate & case builder doesn't have a "flip stabilizer" cutout option. At first I thought I must've missed it, but I went back and double-checked and couldn't find it.

Since the rest of the plate was fitting great, all the switches were secure and well aligned, I didn't want to re-cut the plate... soo.... files. The metal kind.



Yup. A pinhole file and some elbow grease should fix that right up. Except it didn't. It was only a half-success. The keys were making it further up, but still felt somewhat sticky. Also...



The stabilizers were pushing the PCB away from the bottom of the switches (notice that gap on the right where you can see the switch pins on top of the PCB.)

Bottom line: Cherry switches are designed for a 1.5mm plate. The stabilizers are designed with this distance in mind. My plate is 3mm acrylic, so the stabilizers were keeping the PCB too far away.

The fix? More filing. Specifically making the stabilizer cutout large enough for the stabilizer to fit into the plate instead of under it.



Great success! All the stabilizer keys were now popping up to full height like they were supposed to, and maybe even more importantly, there was no gap between the PCB and switches anymore.



I've really appreciate how sturdy this PCB is, it helped keep this all-plastic build solid. 

Soldier Time!



With my trusty probably-older-than-me-hand-me-down soldering iron, I put my serviceable soldering skills to work.

The "Final" Result

You see it's really not final, but I took some photos anyway.









The Stats

So, here are some details for those interested.



Circuit Board: BananaSplit60
Key Switches: Greetech Blues w/ 50A o-rings
Keycaps: E-Elements Double-shot Crystal Keycaps
Case: Custom Laser-Cut 4-layer Acrylic with M3 Anodized Aluminum Screws and Standoffs

Acknowledgements

I have to give a big thank you to the Keyboard Layout Editor and the swillkb plate & case builder--I couldn't have done this project without those tools.

And of course evangs and arhipio for putting together the BananaSplit60 group buy.


There are a few more pictures I didn't post in the Imgur album

I wish I had access to a GMK Terminal set to put on this 

I'd love to do this in other colors too. I've got a couple updates I've done to the board to since I took these pictures, so I'll have to get some new ones taken. Expect an update to this thread.

[vim_commando]

[Reservationated]

[mogo]

Great job! I too had some "fun" trying to deal with stabilizer cutouts when lasering my acrylic plate. Are you going to put any LEDs in? Even if you don't, it looks great as is. 

[xondat]

Really cool looking project.

Those keycaps are horrible though; almost ruins it for me. I think GMK Terminal would look great here.

[vim_commando]

Great job! I too had some "fun" trying to deal with stabilizer cutouts when lasering my acrylic plate. Are you going to put any LEDs in? Even if you don't, it looks great as is. 

Of course, what was my wife's response when I showed her the end result? "You know that is going to need lights right?" 

My original plan for the build was absolutely no lights. Then I was leaning toward just under glow. Now I may want both 

Really cool looking project.

Those keycaps are horrible though; almost ruins it for me. I think GMK Terminal would look great here.

Totally understand. I had very low expectations with these keycaps. I've been pleasantly surprised by the overall feel though, they have more typing surface than DSA caps and aren't the obnoxious round style you see in most "typewriter" sets. The spherical depression is just enough to easily find the center of each key. For a budget buy, I'm satisfied.

If it wasn't for GMK Laser coming soon, I'd probably hunt down a Terminal set.

[Dan_Boulet]

So what happened? The BananaSplit60 PCB uses keys "upside down" from the Cherry default (LED holes facing towards you) and all of the stabilizers are mounted this direction too (except for the default backspace, which I'm not using). Interestingly swill's plate & case builder doesn't have a "flip stabilizer" cutout option. At first I thought I must've missed it, but I went back and double-checked and couldn't find it.

I ran into this problem too, recently. You can only accomplish this by editing the plate layout code directly. You basically find the part of your code which represents the key you want to flip, and add ,_rs:180 inside the brackets. Here’s the piece of code that I used to flip my spacebar upside down:

Code: [Select]

{c:"#5c6164",t:"#f7f2ea",a:7,f:3,w:6.25,_rs:180},""

[vim_commando]

So what happened? The BananaSplit60 PCB uses keys "upside down" from the Cherry default (LED holes facing towards you) and all of the stabilizers are mounted this direction too (except for the default backspace, which I'm not using). Interestingly swill's plate & case builder doesn't have a "flip stabilizer" cutout option. At first I thought I must've missed it, but I went back and double-checked and couldn't find it.

I ran into this problem too, recently. You can only accomplish this by editing the plate layout code directly. You basically find the part of your code which represents the key you want to flip, and add ,_rs:180 inside the brackets. Here’s the piece of code that I used to flip my spacebar upside down:

Code: [Select]

{c:"#5c6164",t:"#f7f2ea",a:7,f:3,w:6.25,_rs:180},""

Thanks for the tip! Nice to see the code base can at least handle it.

In my case (with the double-thickness plate) I also need to adjust the shape; so my plan is to do the modifications after the plate builder export and before cutting.

[ChitownM2]

This is an awesome build. The creativity of people on here is amazing.

[_haru]

How do you find the Greetech Blues? I personally like Greetech Greens very much but I haven't tried a full board with them yet.

[wolf]

I saw "Cyberpunk" and just had to look.  Was not disappointed. Not in the least.

Awesome!

[vim_commando]

How do you find the Greetech Blues? I personally like Greetech Greens very much but I haven't tried a full board with them yet.

I have been pleasantly surprised. I've never had a board with official Cherry Blues, so I can't give a direct comparison to those. The Greetech blues feel like they have a high actuation point with very little pre-travel, and they actuate at the same time as the click, with a nice crisp tactile feel. I'm not a huge fan of clicky usually due to the noise, but this board is distinctly quieter than the Razer with greens (that board has some serious resonance when bottoming out the switches.) I'm sure the o-rings help a little both with sound and a slightly shortened travel. I have not noticed any issues with quality consistency and the switches feel very even across the whole board.

In this build the black-bodied switches was a part of the look I wanted, so it was the tipping point against Gateron or anything else with a transparent top.

In the end, when I was doing my post-build typing testing, I hit a personal best and the first time I broke the 100wpm barrier 



So if someone already likes clicky switches, I can confidently recommend the Greetech blues.

[vim_commando]

This is an awesome build. The creativity of people on here is amazing.

I saw "Cyberpunk" and just had to look.  Was not disappointed. Not in the least.

Awesome!

Thanks guys! I'd love to do the same (or a similar case) in colors to match some keycap sets.

I'm currently debating filling in the open sides, and how much to adjust the thickness. The mini-USB connector is a little problematic, because most of the cable ends are pretty thick. I can easily shave off 3mm from the gap and still have PCB clearance, but I'd have to make a large cutout for the cable in the bottom plate.

[_haru]

I have been pleasantly surprised. I've never had a board with official Cherry Blues, so I can't give a direct comparison to those. The Greetech blues feel like they have a high actuation point with very little pre-travel, and they actuate at the same time as the click, with a nice crisp tactile feel. I'm not a huge fan of clicky usually due to the noise, but this board is distinctly quieter than the Razer with greens (that board has some serious resonance when bottoming out the switches.) I'm sure the o-rings help a little both with sound and a slightly shortened travel. I have not noticed any issues with quality consistency and the switches feel very even across the whole board.

In this build the black-bodied switches was a part of the look I wanted, so it was the tipping point against Gateron or anything else with a transparent top.

In the end, when I was doing my post-build typing testing, I hit a personal best and the first time I broke the 100wpm barrier 

(Attachment Link)

So if someone already likes clicky switches, I can confidently recommend the Greetech blues.

Interesting. I thought the same about my Greens (not the Razer Green, but their MX Green equivalent). Thanks!

[SamirD]

I just saw this board and omg is it beautiful!  Very well done!