So I just got more garage space assigned to me at my apartment and I can finally start doing things towards making artisans and other keyboard related things. I'm going to be building my CNC, setting up resin casting and various other tools as I need them.
Due to real life stuff I'll only have time on weekends and it'll be a slow process to get started. Probably a month or two before I get anything going in resin, at least three months to build the CNC (probably five to six). Still, I'm a very patient person.
I'm also working on an
"Atentus", a hinge-tenting Atreus.
Writing up these ideas serves a couple of purposes. First, it helps keep my motivation as I set up the space. Second, it helps me think through what I need in the space. Third, it lets me get feedback on ideas before producing them and finding out who is doing similar. Finally, due to my personal time constraints there's now way that I will be able to produce these to the same quantity and low price that other makers can. One of my goals in this project is to prototype ideas and techniques for others to utilize so that the caps get out to the community. If reading this gives someone else inspiration that makes me happy.
I plan to focus on wood, especially inlaid with other materials. I will do some resin work simply because it's relatively easy to work with but by that same incentive others have been able to do a lot of innovation. As I gain the capability I also want to try experimenting with casting metals.
IdeasAnything that I say as an idea for a case should also be considered as a design idea for a wristrest.
I want to a lot of work towards getting high levels of detail using the CNC, especially details on multiple sides. Combining differing degrees of V bit and creating designs with this in mind will be required here. The goal is to see how much I can do without jumping to an expensive five axis machine. While this will require manually rotating pieces, by doing multiple pieces at the same time I can hopefully have long enough run times per side to not be tedious.
Wood caps with inlaid legends or other designs will be one of my first projects. Take a standard cap design, then use a V bit to create the valley for the legend. Fill in this valley with any variety of materials. Resin should be relatively easy. I'm hoping to also get into using aluminum, copper and other metals, though this will require experimentation to make sure it doesn't burn the wood (or that if it does, that it looks cool). For any material I'll need to experiment with how to best keep the material from popping out. With most I should be able to rough up the walls of the valley to give the inlay something to bond with. For others I may need to etch lines into the valley for a proper locking grip.
Inlaying materials into wooden cases is the other big initial project I want to tackle. I want to take a standard wooden case, then inlay chunks of marble, granite, metals or resin into it for designs. I also want to look into using fiber optics to create cool underglow or inglow from the case.
Though milling marble or granite is too difficult to manage with most CNC bits I'm hoping to do flat-bottom cases with materials like these. Take a slab of marble, cut rectangles out of it, nicely polish it, properly set screw inserts. Should make for one badass case bottom. It'll also make for a sick matching case/wristrest if I use a single piece so that the grain matches when used together. I can also combine this with existing techniques, like inlaying magnets to the case and wristrest to hold them together while in use.
Other designs into wood are a goal as well. Namely, Lichtenberg figures. There are two prongs to this - large designs for cases and smaller fractals for individual caps. If I can reliably get a straight line I want to do a Lichtenberg spacebar or shift/enter keys. If it's feasible I want to do groups of keys cut from the same larger figure. As others have done with Lichtenberg figures in other art I want to look at resin filling deeper burns, and I also want to see how light of burns I can get.
Datamancer has thankfully already begun production on the "tupperware" style case that I wanted to do, so I can learn a lot from their design. I want to continue with what I originally wrote in my Slanck thread where I first brought up the idea (obviously others thought of it previously, but it's not exactly a unique or novel concept). My goal is thinness and portability. I want to try inlaying magnets so that the straps aren't needed. I want to make the walls thinner, potentially inlaying metal edges to a wood case for strength, so that weight and size can be kept as small as possible. I want to start designing for boards like the Let's Split and Ergodice, where instead of having top/bottom half of case you just stick the halves of the board to each other.
On the more practical side I want to come up with a good process to cast stems from various materials so that they can be used as bases for other artisans. This will be key for producing caps out of glass, since it's basically impossible to reliably create single piece glass caps as the glass changes size as it cools.
I eventually want to get into creating my own keycaps, in a similar style to DSA and XDA. The CNC should be good for rapidly prototyping key shapes. I hope to also be able to set this up to help others create new cap profiles. While wood or acrylic doesn't feel quite the same as injection molded PBT or ABS, it should be close enough to give a general idea. The real fun will be experimenting with creating the caps in aluminum, as this will be required (I think?) to easily create molds for later plastic injection.
The CNC can also be used for creating PCB's, though I will have to see if I have the accuracy to do that. Though they will not be great PCBs and good PCBs are already quite cheap the turnaround time will be in the realm of hours instead of days or weeks. Good for rapid prototyping.
The most solid case in the worldConsidering a lot of options for "recycled" materials, using existing items to turn into keyboard related things. For example, cutting out and flattening a soda can to use as a case, or a decorative layer on a plate.
