Hi,
the keys already arrived and so I've made some new pictures and did some soldering
.
Pictures of the keys (Cherry MX1A-E1DW, clicky, with diode, with pins):
http://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1807.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1808.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1809.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1810.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1811.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1813.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1814.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1815.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1816.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1817.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1818.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1819.JPGSo, even though you see the keywells fully filled with keys, I've had to change that later on. Turns out, you can't really get the PCB to stick on all the keys when you have all of them in.
But, step for step, how to build your own keywells
1) Place the first, third and fifth row of keys on the keywell
2) Stick the PCB onto it, start with the middle of it, then go downwards. After all those keys are in place (you can see all 4 pins clearly, double-check this as they tend to bend), fixate them with gaffer tape, then go upwards. Same procedure, fix them with gaffer tape.
3) When you got the whole PCB on it, take a breath and get ready. I strongly recommend you to solder this with another person, it will REALLY make things much easier, as someone has to press down the board, while the other one solders.
4) First solder the critical points. These are the most upper row and the row on the bottom. Of course, remove the particular piece of gaffer tape before soldering
.
5) Solder all the other keys.
6) Insert the missing keys (row 2 and 4) and solder them.
7) Check if you soldered properly and insert the keywells into your Kinesis. You should be able to type as normally. If not, check the connector cable.
As you noticed, I did not mention any hot glue. Kinesis did this probably to be able to work a bit faster by first gluing the PCBs onto the keywells, but I did it the clean way.
Also, order yourself at least 10 keys more than you need (the kinesis has 6 * 4 + 4 keys on each keywell and 6 keys on each thumb, making 68 keys in total, so order 80. You will probably screw some up. (We replaced 4 keys)
So, let some pictures speak (I didn’t make pictures of the process itself. If I do this again, I will
):
http://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1820.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1822.JPGhttp://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1823.JPG (original keywell from Kinesis)
http://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1824.JPG (ours)
http://twice-irc.de/misc/IMG_1825.JPGBest regards