Introduction
While I've been in the hobby as a collector for a while, it was only about half a year ago that I started considering designing my own keyboard. I've gone through different materials, different form factors, and different specifications — but I was never satisfied. I quickly realised that if I wanted to satisfy that little voice in the back of my head, I'd have to make a CNC aluminum board.
I present, for your consideration: Jimi (机美).
Inspiration
The marketing-speak inspiration
Jimi (机美) is a linguistic amalgam of the three cultures/languages I grew up with: Korean, Chinese, and of course, English.
机美 means 'mechanical beauty', with 机(ji) coming from written Mandarin, and 美(mi) coming from spoken Hanja.
The idea for Jimi's side profile comes from 매화 (plum flowers). While the plum tree's flowers bloom into delicate curves, the tree's branches leading up to these flowers twist and turn abruptly, leaving hard edges that are best-expressed in traditional Korean paintings.
Custom keyboards are really nothing but hard-edged solid blocks of rectangular aluminum milled into rectangles, but with gentle curves like the Jimi's, they become so much more; something we care about and look at in admiration.
The actual inspiration
I love curves in keyboards. Rectangles are nice, but looking to the side of your keyboard and seeing something other than hard edges is an undeniably good feeling. The trouble is that these curves are really expensive to manufacture. My biggest goal with Jimi is to make a curvy board that isn't prohibitively expensive. In order to reach these two objectives, I'm leaving out the extra frills that define more premium keyboards: no external weight, minimal design work in places people won't be seeing most of the time, and a curated set of only a few colours.
Details
- Layout: Tsangan 60XT (WK or WKL options)
- Mount: Tadpole
- Materials: Aluminum 6063, Brass internal weight
- Typing Angle: 6 degrees
- Front Height: 18.6mm (~22.5mm EKH)
- Plates: Aluminum, FR4, PP
- PCB: Custom, uses C4 daughterboard
Mount and Layout Info
Tadpole mount cross-section
Plate with mounting points
PCB supports Stepped Caps Lock, 1.75U RShift, and split Backspace
Exploded view (updated 30/11/2023)
Pricing
aiming for $350, depending on interest
GB & Vendor Information
NA (Main Vendor): KeebsForAll
Ano Colours
Silver
Dark Grey
Black
Burgundy
Project Timeline
Interest Check
Prototype
Full Group Buy
Special thanks are owed to my friend ziltoidthealtoid, who designed the PCB for this board and tolerated me incessantly bouncing ideas off him, as well as lampmk, stinky, and chu for their help and guidance.
A big thank you is also owed to ImperfectLink for making KRK and taking so many steps out of the Blender process.
Live changes:
working on internal weight design, acoustics optimisation (29/09/2023)
Change log:
Added placeholder exploded view (01/10/2023)
Added WKL top case (not pictured yet) (01/10/2023)
Updated exploded view (04/10/2023)
Overhauled IC (30/11/2023)
Business inquiries:
@loganchoi on Instagram
logan.choi on Discord
