SPRiT 60% Custom Build
For me, shipping was a painless experience. SPRiT was patient, communicative, and super awesome to work with during this entire process.
Everything arrived packaged neatly and generously wrapped with pink bubble wrap. Contents of my order:
☐ FaceW PCB 60% with pre-soldered diodes, resistors, and smds.
☐ Model 2S acrylic case with the following: matte top plate, semi clear middle, clear bottom
☐ Boomerang feet + model 1 feet
☐ 70x white leds
☐ RGB leds
☐ 62g gold plated springs
☐ 78g gold plated spring sampler
☐ Gold plated stabilizer wire set
☐ misc other items like screws, bumpons, stickers, etc.
The case came pre-assemble to let you what it would look like once complete. Simple and clean, great design.
Clipped stabs for extra stability and minimize the mushy feeling. I used wire clippers to clip the legs and then a knife to shave off the edges and make it flush with the sides. This was pretty easy, but be careful! Nothing major here, just make sure you have a set of stabilizers you can reference (or take pictures before you take them apart) to make sure you're putting it back together correctly. I messed up twice here.
Mounted plate to the PCB, inserted some stock clear switches with keycaps to see how placement/fitment for the keys would stabiizers would feel. Ran into a couple issues here. The spacebar felt unbearably mushy and was sticking. This was unacceptable to me. I tried swapping out my clipped stabilizers for unclipped ones. Same result except it felt even worse. I tried swapping out the wire, but unfortunately the way the plate is designed, it does not support the usual cherry spacebar stabilizer wire with the bump in the middle. I began to be dismayed, thinking that this was going to hold up my project indefinitely, until I could order replacement wires from either GON or SPRiT. As far as I know, they are the only vendors who sell this style of stabilizer wire. Note: Ivan now carries these stabilizer wires.
The following day, I returned to my project with renewed determination. I laid out a normal stab wire next to the gold one and noticed that upon closer inspection that my spacebar stab wire was bent out a little too much. I used a wooden block to stabilize the wire while I bent it with some pliers. After bending it back a few mm I tested the spacebar and viola! No mushy feeling! No sticking! It bounced back with an acceptable springiness - albeit it wasn't perfect in my eyes. But at least, the project could move forward! I could always order another stabilizer wire and put it in when it arrived. Thanks for SPRiT's plate design, I could remove the stabilizers from the plate hassle free.
Since I could now move on, here's what I did next.
Spring swap: swapped out stock vintage clear springs for gold plated62g SPRiT springs. Added a minimal amount of lube to the sides of the switch sliders. This was probably the most time-intensive part of the whole build. Each switch had to be opened, disassembled, spring swapped, lubed, and then put back together. My thumb and forefinger cramped up a few times - probably because I was holding the slider too tightly while applying the lube. After that, I decided it was enough work for one day and was going to tackle the soldering the next. It's important not to rush these things as that's when mistakes are made, and I didn't want to make a mistake while soldering the PCB!
The next day came and it was Memorial Day weekend. Yay! Lots of free time to work on my keyboard.
Time to solder! This was my first big soldering project - I'd desoldered plenty of boards before but never soldered anything large-scale. The process itself was actually really easy and fun. After I soldered each switch, I tested that it was working before moving onto the next row.
Added LEDs. Only 3 ended up not working, so it was only bit of a pain to desolder the LEDs but I eventually got all LEDs to work.
Clean up PCB with isopropyl alcohol
Inserted PCB into case and added keycaps.
Ran into another problem: the switch for the enter key leaned backwards a bit and wasn't seated completely flush to the plate. Therefore when I soldered it and put the keycap on, it rubbed against the '|\' key and so I had to desolder the switch and have someone else hold the switch firmly against the plate while I soldered it back on.
Overall I love the feeling of the keyboard. There's something really nice-sounding about the switches and PBT keycaps mounted to an acrylic plate. The case itself feels solid and the bumpons add to the stability of the case while I type on it.
Todo: remap FN layer to include media keys. Replace bottom row LEDs with color changing ones.
Typing video to come!
Commence photo dump:
Artisan for fun!
Ice, Ice, Baby
Also . . . stay tuned for some other goodies/easter eggs!
