I got more time to work on this in the past few days. I did a little more grinding and sanding and got the plate more or less straight.
Next, I put the Originative 58g springs into the clear switches, popped them into the board, and took a picture to attempt to paint match at Lowe's. An app on my phone called the color of the plate "Sunset Red", and I found a paint made by Olympic called "Sunset Skyline" that seemed to match really well. I should probably get a better-suited paint for this, but for $2 and change I don't mind if it doesn't work out. Turned out just about perfect color-wise, though just trying to sand and paint stainless doesn't work that well. However, I say good enough!
Next came the fun task of soldering on diodes. So many diodes. I got caught up in it and didn't take a picture until I'd put some of the rows on too.
Of course, I'd realize later that I'd put the diodes on backwards... yeah. I swear I referenced a billion images and I still got it wrong? I know I can just flip the rows/columns in the firmware, but I'm not very comfortable with the available options other than the Easy AVR method. Another issue I ran into is that I ran out of solder and tried to use this solder that came with some sort of kit, the stuff was atrocious. I had to stop and wait until I could get some more. So based on a recommendation somewhere I picked up some Kester 44 60/40, and this stuff is like magic. No wonder I added so much damage to the PCB with the solder I was using before.
Done! So proud. So innocent.
At this point I tried to program the board and obviously failed, and after messing around for way too long realized that the issue was the diodes. So, I ripped them all out. I didn't take any pictures until I was done because I was pretty angry at this point. I decided that rather than try to rebend all the diodes I'd just shorten them and use copper wire ripped out of an old TV coax cable, which worked out quite well and added a little heft.
As I was dealing with this, my Teensy order arrived so I wired it up with some ribbon cable. Looks pretty decent for a first time if I do say so myself!
So now I could program it, easy. Of course, one column is misbehaving badly and activating most of the keys in the respective row, so after trying to find the short for over an hour and finding nothing, I just decided to redo the wire to the column. Seemed to fix it!
Alright, now all that was left was to fix up the bottom case. I traced the size of the plate onto it and cut through the plastic with a dremel, it was a lot easier than I expected to keep it accurate, and a little grinding lined it up really well.. I sawed off the front tabs with a hacksaw, this time not perfectly of course - cut a little deep in the middle. But, after some shaping with heavy sandpaper and then sanding with ridiculously fine sandpaper it looks pretty good, and I'll have a wrist rest there for the most part anyways. The case also needed some tabs that supported the PCB snapped out of it, it was easy to do with pliers. Again I kinda did all of this in my anger over the diodes, so no pics of this part, pretty self-explanatory though. I found some aluminum threaded posts at the big box store so just used those to hold the case together after drilling out the post holes in the case a little wider, threw some packaging tape around them so they don't short out anything and they're working pretty well. I just sanded the tops to help them hold a bit of paint, but they actually look pretty cool as paint starts chipping off.
A little paint to touch up, then threw on the original keycaps to see how it looks:
Pretty solid! I'm waiting on the Gateron keycaps to make it nicer. Oh, and the arrows are using numpad keys because my lady friend is using the arrows on a foot keyboard while her wrists recover from surgery. I'm definitely happy with the look! The paint color is almost a perfect match too, as you can see in the next pic.
Color might be a perfect match if I could lay it on thicker, but I think that'll promote peeling. For now I just have a USB cable running out the side, I have a breakout board somewhere but I can't find it... the more I work on this project the less organized I am. Plus I have a couple more projects going making a big mess.
Glued on some feet, front ones are original, back ones are from a ridiculously old Apple IIe 5.25" floppy drive that was getting thrown away, they're the perfect height.
Glory shot! Low profile, no top case, and looks pretty good for my limited skills and first go-round. You can see the imperfect cutting at the front of the case here. Other than that and the lack of a side, it looks pretty professional.
Feels good typing on it right now, a little stiffer than I'd anticipated. They feel a bit stiffer than Browns which is a little surprising, but I probably have to wear in the springs a bit. A couple times I've run into the fourth row going haywire with repeated T's and such, but I think it was just the row shorting out and I (hopefully) figured out the issue.
Feels really good to have taken what I once would have thrown away and turn it into my first TKL, first custom switches, and first real teensy board! All in all, a pretty good board came out of it, and it's important practice for when my Neutrino kit arrives. GH what are you doing to me, you beautiful creature!
