Phantom/QFR/Filco TKL 100% Open Source Acrylic Case

[MOZ]

They are uploaded in a post above, however I would not use it as I have since revised the designed with some welcome changes.

BTW the first board was cut and it was for Acantha. So big props to him for jumping into this, even when the design was not finalised (Although his is based off the redesign, but doesn't support QFR/Filco TKL)

I still have to add the QFR compatibility, just have to find them calipers.

Are there any PCB-mounted boards that I need to take into consideration to add support for.

[Glod]

MOZ you probably will be cutting out phantom cases before i ever get the acrylic case from takaki i already paid for

good work

[MOZ]

MOZ you probably will be cutting out phantom cases before i ever get the acrylic case from takaki i already paid for

good work

I have had that message in PM from a few members. acanatha should get his in a week.

[whiskytango]

I am with you Glod, I really wish I was not invested in a case from takaki or I would jump in on this now. MOZ, I will still probably want to get one of this design of yours at some point, I just can't spend the extra $$ on it now. Good work, looking awesome.

[MOZ]

Thanks guys, but it isn't correct to blame Takaki or yourself, you didn't know it would take this long for him to ship them and he didn't expect the events in real life  consuming so much of his time.

[whiskytango]

You're right of course MOZ, and I am just trying to state facts without laying blame. Hey, did you take any pics of the case you already cut? I would love to see it.

[MOZ]

I did, but the pictures are pretty bad. I hadn't removed the protective cover too, so it wasn't in its full glory. Hopefully acantha can take better pictures when it gets to him.

[dragonxx21]

Just posting here so I can keep up to date. Will be more interested once I start seriously thinking about making a phantom

[acantha]

I did, but the pictures are pretty bad. I hadn't removed the protective cover too, so it wasn't in its full glory. Hopefully acantha can take better pictures when it gets to him.

I have every intention of doing so. I'll post up a full build log! The pictures aren't as bad as Moz implies, though. At the least they confirmed to me that he found exactly the color i was hoping he'd find.

[MOZ]

Here is a new "budget" design which cuts on the amount of acrylic used drastically:



Basically cutting up the spacer layer into smaller parts which can interlock and then since they are all bolted, I don't know if it would really affect the sturdyness of the keyboard or not, but would cost less for sure.

[dragonxx21]

Do you have quotes on these builds?

[MOZ]

I do, however before doing a GB, I want to test the 3 scenarios:
1. Integrated acrylic plate
2. Phantom plate
3. Qfr plate + pcb

All of these are in someway or another in motion, so in around 2 weeks or so, we should hopefully have a GB for these.

[MOZ]

1. Got a test case in the budget style cut today, since this was a prototype and I want to keep costs low.

This is the latest revision which supports the QFR/Filco along with the Phantom PCB with(out) Phantom/uTKL plate.

2. I also tested a new bolting method to keep things cleaner, basically the top and bottom of any bolt joint, would have an engraved circle in which the flat head bolt can fit and be flushed with the acrylic. In the middle layers we will have brass stand offs, so the flat head bolts/screws can both screw in two the brass standoff and sandwich all the layers in between with a completely clean look and allow one to use rubber feet. Even here I measured the sample brass stand offs I had from eBay wrong and the stand off hole cut outs were a little small.

3. Now, my acrylic guy was away so I went to explore with a new worksman and the guy kept fiddling with the settings to find the best solution to have those deep engravings for the screws, however it came out to expensive (~$1 per screw hole), so I abandoned it half way. However my regular guy gives much better pricing on engraving so it shouldn't be a problem. To test this concept, I will just half drill the remaining screw holes. The case it self is fully functional and this is the main thing, the only thing is the new bolting technique could be tested to the best. I will do some bolting only prototypes soon and report.

4. The other problem was lack of brass standoffs available offline. If someone can hook me up with some cheap online dealer shipping to India for M3 size 5mm, 8mm, 10mm brass standoffs, it would be great.

5. Similarly a source for rubber bumpon feet at a cheap price for a large order, would be awesome!

[MOZ]

Forgot to mention, I got acrylic samples for you guys, so now we can see what colors we have available and make some nice combinations.

This and all the prototyping cost me $60 today itself, so you guys better have plenty of orders ready to compensate me!

[SpAmRaY]

Well post some pics then

[MOZ]

With my phone cam? Really? Let me find a relatively better camera first.

[SpAmRaY]

With my phone cam? Really? Let me find a relatively better camera first.

Yeah, probably a good idea

[JPG]

Forgot to mention, I got acrylic samples for you guys, so now we can see what colors we have available and make some nice combinations.

This and all the prototyping cost me $60 today itself, so you guys better have plenty of orders ready to compensate me!

Make sure to include the prototyping cost in the total cost. Also, will you do the 60% case and GHpad at the same time?

[whiskytango]

Forgot to mention, I got acrylic samples for you guys, so now we can see what colors we have available and make some nice combinations.

This and all the prototyping cost me $60 today itself, so you guys better have plenty of orders ready to compensate me!

Make sure to include the prototyping cost in the total cost. Also, will you do the 60% case and GHpad at the same time?

I also had a thought about this. I know you are working on the budget style case right now, but if you do a TKL case and a 60%, you could use the inside areas of the middle body pieces for the TKL to do peices for the 60% / ghpad cases as well and save some material that way. That is if you don't go only with the modular material saving design for TKL.

[MOZ]

Forgot to mention, I got acrylic samples for you guys, so now we can see what colors we have available and make some nice combinations.

This and all the prototyping cost me $60 today itself, so you guys better have plenty of orders ready to compensate me!

Make sure to include the prototyping cost in the total cost. Also, will you do the 60% case and GHpad at the same time?

I also had a thought about this. I know you are working on the budget style case right now, but if you do a TKL case and a 60%, you could use the inside areas of the middle body pieces for the TKL to do peices for the 60% / ghpad cases as well and save some material that way. That is if you don't go only with the modular material saving design for TKL.

Yes, I would be doing case-ception. Don't worry, but all depends on the color schemes people want.

[MOZ]

This is what I meant by having flat head screws flush with the keyboard (Again, sorry for the bad pics, only have a phone cam):





How the acrylic has to be etched, the flat head screw and the brass stand-off:


The sandwich:



The layers for the Phantom/Filco case:


The "puzzle" parts of the budget case assembled:



One shot of the acrylic sample chips:

[SpAmRaY]

How thick is an assembled case, maybe it's the angle but that thing looks tall.

And the area around the countersunk holes will it cleanup?

[MOZ]

How thick is an assembled case, maybe it's the angle but that thing looks tall.

That is actually quite tall because it is 10x3mm layers, however, the Phantom with integrated acrylic plate would be 5 layers only, Phantom with plate = 6/7 layers, Filco/QFR would be 8/9, because of that stupid controller mounted on the top of the PCB. I hate this costar design, where they have the connector at the back and controller in front, thus increasing width unnecessarily at the back of the PCB and the front. ><

And the area around the countersunk holes will it cleanup?

As I said, this wasn't my regular guy so he wouldn't listen and removed the protective paper before etching, I leave it on so that the the residual powder doesn't stick to the surface when it is hot due to the laser, like it has in the pictures above.

[SpAmRaY]

Ok cool!

[MOZ]

I forgot to mention, I did a little experiment as well, which "should" allow you to use plate mounted stabs with the Phantom on an acrylic case without having to glue them in. This was again accomplished be etching the area around the stab cut-out on the plate where the stab locks in.

Works for costar, yet to test Cherry.

[CalmB4tehPwn]

Ooph. Great design, well executed, but not what I'm looking for.

Maybe I can hit you up on the side and see if you can help me work out a design for what I need.

I will not be purchasing one of these when they go up for sale, unfortunately, but great job, and good luck with the future GBs

[Badwrench]

Ooph. Great design, well executed, but not what I'm looking for.

Maybe I can hit you up on the side and see if you can help me work out a design for what I need.

I will not be purchasing one of these when they go up for sale, unfortunately, but great job, and good luck with the future GBs

I don't believe these are meant to be for sale.  This project is an ongoing refinement for people to use these files to take to their local acrylic place (or hackerspace), and build it yourself in the colors you choose.  Very cool as you can have multiple colors made at once and switch out when you change out your caps 

[dragonxx21]

I do, however before doing a GB, I want to test the 3 scenarios:
1. Integrated acrylic plate
2. Phantom plate
3. Qfr plate + pcb

All of these are in someway or another in motion, so in around 2 weeks or so, we should hopefully have a GB for these.

Ooph. Great design, well executed, but not what I'm looking for.

Maybe I can hit you up on the side and see if you can help me work out a design for what I need.

I will not be purchasing one of these when they go up for sale, unfortunately, but great job, and good luck with the future GBs

I don't believe these are meant to be for sale.  This project is an ongoing refinement for people to use these files to take to their local acrylic place (or hackerspace), and build it yourself in the colors you choose.  Very cool as you can have multiple colors made at once and switch out when you change out your caps 

Pretty sure he's planning on doing a GB some time in the future.

[MOZ]

Ooph. Great design, well executed, but not what I'm looking for.

Maybe I can hit you up on the side and see if you can help me work out a design for what I need.

I will not be purchasing one of these when they go up for sale, unfortunately, but great job, and good luck with the future GBs

Can you tell me a bit more about what you were looking for, maybe I can help.

As for this thread, the idea is to create a universal case or one that is modular enough so you have to make minimum adjustments to fit any of the popular TKL boards.

Since everybody doesn't have access to a cheap laser and I would like to compensate costs for the various prototyping and experiments, let alone my time, I will do a GB once I am confident about the design. However I am willing to use my access to cheap laser cutting service and acrylic to help anyone get anything they want. Just PM and we will work out the details.

[Badwrench]

I do, however before doing a GB, I want to test the 3 scenarios:
1. Integrated acrylic plate
2. Phantom plate
3. Qfr plate + pcb

All of these are in someway or another in motion, so in around 2 weeks or so, we should hopefully have a GB for these.

Ooph. Great design, well executed, but not what I'm looking for.

Maybe I can hit you up on the side and see if you can help me work out a design for what I need.

I will not be purchasing one of these when they go up for sale, unfortunately, but great job, and good luck with the future GBs

I don't believe these are meant to be for sale.  This project is an ongoing refinement for people to use these files to take to their local acrylic place (or hackerspace), and build it yourself in the colors you choose.  Very cool as you can have multiple colors made at once and switch out when you change out your caps 

Pretty sure he's planning on doing a GB some time in the future.

Ooph. Great design, well executed, but not what I'm looking for.

Maybe I can hit you up on the side and see if you can help me work out a design for what I need.

I will not be purchasing one of these when they go up for sale, unfortunately, but great job, and good luck with the future GBs

Can you tell me a bit more about what you were looking for, maybe I can help.

As for this thread, the idea is to create a universal case or one that is modular enough so you have to make minimum adjustments to fit any of the popular TKL boards.

Since everybody doesn't have access to a cheap laser and I would like to compensate costs for the various prototyping and experiments, let alone my time, I will do a GB once I am confident about the design. However I am willing to use my access to cheap laser cutting service and acrylic to help anyone get anything they want. Just PM and we will work out the details.

whoops......inserts foot in mouth.  Totally missed that.   

[MOZ]

So I did a second run with the new bolting method for the GHPad, and things didn't look good. The main problems were:
1. Engraving was not consistent as far as depth is concerned.
2. Engraving was not clean enough.
3. Some acrylic sheets have plastic protective cover instead of paper, this causes problem during laser cutting/engraving because the plastic gets in the crevice of the acrylic sheet and prevents clean cuts (Learnt this the hard way by botching up some red acrylic for my Pokemon case), this means one has to remove the plastic protective cover, then the residual powder from engraving gets embedded on the surface of the sheet where acrylic is engraved due to heat. This looks very bad.
4. General inconsistency in engraving.

The solution and what looks best IMO is to have a larger hole cutout, about 5mm or M3 bolts with head diameter 6mm on the top and bottom most layers, I got to test this thanks to SpamRay and his special request. So this the technique I would recommend for the cleanest look.

Also I had hexagon cutouts for the stand off in all the layers besides the top and bottom. In the next revision, I'm going to keep this only for three layers after the top, as these larger cutouts require the user to align the layers themselves, thus making it harder to get a clean look.

Other than this, the other things i have learned and which should help other people is:
- For 3mm, make sure cutting sped is less than 25 for transparent and 10 for opaque.
- Make sure acrylic doesn't warp, this is one of the reasons why the engraving for the bolts misaligned.

[MOZ]

Besides this, the latest revision of the case worked great with QFR, and should work well with the Phantom. We'll know soon.

The only change I see is that the bottom strip in the top piece that covers the back cutout for the Teensy, needs to be thicker, as it is too flimsy at the moment. (I know this probably doesn't make sense to much people, but posting so that I remember the changes I need to make in the next revision).

[SpAmRaY]

I got to test this thanks to SpamRay and his special request.

Just call me guinea pig!!

[agodinhost]

I just got two phantom PCBs from mechanicalkeyboards.com and I would love to test this case!

[MOZ]

I'm pretty much done with the testing. QFR/Filco is fully compatible.

We'll know about the Phantom with and without the plate by next eek hopefully, although, since these were based of dimension from originsl files used for production, the chance of errors is much less, I'd still like to wait though.

That reminds me, I need to post pictures of various bolting technique I tested yesterday.

[MOZ]

I have solved the bolting dilemma, you cna see the solution in my latest post on the GHPad thread. Pheh!

Now just waiting for some guinea pigs to report back

[agodinhost]

Here is a new "budget" design which cuts on the amount of acrylic used drastically:

Show Image

Basically cutting up the spacer layer into smaller parts which can interlock and then since they are all bolted, I don't know if it would really affect the sturdyness of the keyboard or not, but would cost less for sure.

Moz, please, do you have the dwg of this one?

[MOZ]

Ofcourse I do, and I will upload it soon, however I am waiting on someone receiving the case and their feedback on it.

[agodinhost]

Ofcourse I do, and I will upload it soon, however I am waiting on someone receiving the case and their feedback on it.

It was exactly what I had in mind ...

Can I help?
I do have some savings this month to make one or two prototypes.

[MOZ]

I think we are almost done with prototypes. Thanks for the offer

I will do a flash GB in a day or two.

[TLSC.wipeOut]

I think we are almost done with prototypes. Thanks for the offer

I will do a flash GB in a day or two.

What is your current estimate on the cost of this acrylic case Moz? =D

[MOZ]

Below $60 shipped.

[agodinhost]

I think we are almost done with prototypes. Thanks for the offer

I will do a flash GB in a day or two.

As you wish Sir.
Any chance to get it done in alu ?
I mean - into the GB - I would be immensely interested in!
8-)))

[MOZ]

I still haven't found a good source for getting alu or steel cases done. Still exploring that option.

The MOQ are crazy for alu/steel here unlike acrylic case from what I have gathered so far.

[mr. rampage]

Below $60 shipped.

Wow that's a great price! When's the GB for this! 

[agodinhost]

I still haven't found a good source for getting alu or steel cases done. Still exploring that option.

The MOQ are crazy for alu/steel here unlike acrylic case from what I have gathered so far.

I'm kinda afraid of the acrylic plate breaking too easy - I think that I read somewhere in the forum JDCarpe mentioning his experience ...

I'm dreaming here with the bottom layer and the plate in alu, it would be soooooo cooool. I think that it would not be so expensive as one drilled case I'm right?

Anyway, thanks Moz - awesome design.
Just anxious to see the start of the GB.
I'm in.

[roadblock2thesun]

Sorry if this is a silly question, but how does a 3mm plate work? Doesn't the cherry spec call for a 1.5mm plate?

[MOZ]

The plate is only to keep the switches oriented correctly. With a 3mm plate, the switches don't look in, but are held in place.

For stabs you need to glue plate mounted stabs.

[keymaster]

Have you thought about making a case for a RealForce TKL?

[MOZ]

Have you thought about making a case for a RealForce TKL?

I need dimensions and lots of pics of internals, datasheets if possible.