TL;DR - I shaved 1mm off the total height of the SuperCTRLr, making it a much better fit for R3 OEM and Cherry profiles. I also changed the stem shapes, aiming for a more universal fit.
So I spent some time today tweaking the SuperCTRLr design. Overall I like the improvements, and hopefully it makes the keycap a better fit with wider compatibility.
The first order of business was to rework the stem shape:
I made my original stem shape, the
rectangle (left), as something that would "just fit" into a Cherry switch, and have plenty of strength and stability. Turns out it was a bit overkill.
As soon as I tried to make a keycap with stabilizers (the planet Saturn) I realized I needed a smaller stem; the
clover (middle) was born. I can't just use circles, because I need some way to prevent unwanted rotation when hand assembling the stems and plates. Also there is a vertical and horizontal bar of the plus shape, one is 1.1mm the other is 1.3mm, so if you are off by 90 degrees, it causes problems.
SO today I made the
lemon (right). Looking at several injection-molded keycaps, 'normal' stems seem to be between 5-6mm in diameter, with side walls that go all the way down to .5mm. I cannot go that thin when laser cutting without risking some serious warping and brittleness. This new shape still gives me more material than a stock stem (walls are about 1mm) with the vertical/horizontal cues easy to identify during assembly. This stem also performs
both main and stabilizer duty.
This
lemon stem is cut at 6.7mm wide and 6.2mm tall. Because of the V-shaped grove the laser cuts while, my first key with new stem ends up being ~6.3mm x ~5.7mm at the base plate. This
should put me into Novatouch territory (6.9mm circle). Since I don't have any on hand, I'll be asking a volunteer to test this out for me.
The next improvement I wanted to tackle was overall height. Most of my other keys were really designed for R1 use (Fn/Esc, numbers, etc.) with an acceptable fit on R4. My main reference boards have OEM keys most of the time (shameful, I know, but thats what happens when your daily typer is an Alps/DSA board.) so I thought the little extra height was ok. Turns out I was wrong.
Here we have the old plate/stem assembly next to the revised plate/stem assembly. I was able to shave a little over 1mm off the total height, and have stem left over to shave for an even fit. This should also reduce the leaning issues a few people reported.
While I've shaved off 1mm of total height, its actually down closer to ~1.5mm from the top of the stem. Some of the old stems left some gap after bottoming out against the top of the switch, this should no longer be the case. I am at the mercy of manufacturing variance in acrylic sheets, so this will vary a little. In this case the white sheet I cut the controller bodies out of is a little thin for a 3mm sheet. Overall the fit while using the key as an enter or shift is much nicer.
This should show the improvements fairly well. Its still a bit of a potato pic. I really need to get a better lens, and use a tripod
)
The angle may not be the best, but the new height is just about flush. There is still no slope to the key, and using this technique I'd have to get... creative... to even think of making that possible.
In the end I am happy with the improvements. Anything I missed?
