On the Shoulders of Giants: Half plate Alps TKL Remix
Boring background stuffMy first keyboard as a child was an Apple Extended Keyboard with SKCM Orange, so the sound and feel of Alps is very nostalgic for me. I’ve come to favor linear switches these days, particularly Cherry MX Blacks, but a linear Alps TKL had been on my to-do list for a while. Ever since I saw the old GH/DT posts from Delirious (
here and
here, respectively) about a half-plate Alps TX-84, I knew I had to try it myself. I referenced their post extensively while working on my build and I couldn’t have done it without their work. This log won't be quite as extensive and has less extensive photographic documentation than the original, but will still hopefully provide useful information to anyone else determined to pursue this project.
Build logThe case I used is a dark grey Freyr TKL by CherryB Works, a Vietnamese keyboard maker that recently went out of business in a very shady and disappointing way. The board itself is a pretty standard older Korean-style TKL, winkeyless with an 8 degree typing angle. It uses a modified Jane V1 plate and has no alignment tabs on the case top and bottom, but it's a really solid (if basic) board.
I had quite a few SKCL Greens on hand, but most of them were in pretty rough shape. After boiling and waxing, I was impressed with how much better they felt until I got my hands on some NOS greens and realized just how far from greatness those waxed switches really were. NOS Greens have a light crispness to them that’s absent from waxboiled Greens, which feel a bit heavier and ever so slightly sluggish in comparison.
The NOS springs were incredibly pingy, like Model F levels of ping that nearly drowned out that oh-so-special Alps sound. I’m typically very hesitant to disassemble switches just to lube springs, but I knew once the keycaps go on, they’re probably staying there until I desolder the switches. Easily lubing the springs later was out of the question.
The PCBFor the PCB, I initially planned to use a Hiney h87c because Hiney PCBs are well-designed, easy to build with, and the holes for the switch pins aren’t too large, but at some point along the way I decided it simply had to be a thin PCB. It seems thin variants of the h87 are significantly harder to come by than the thin h88, but as I was planning the build the Alpine PCBs by Zykrah and NeonKnight were released. I chose the Alpine FL for this build for the obscene amount of flex cuts - I wanted near-meme levels of flex, or at least a very soft bottom-out.
The final plate designI created the half plate by editing Hiney’s Jane v1 Alps plate, although you could easily do it with a hobby knife if you already have a POM full plate handy. The plate was cut in 1.6mm POM instead of the 1.2mm I had specified but I still made it work. Slightly filing the stab cutouts allowed them to still clip in without putting too much strain on the plastic clips.
The goodsDelirious’ build used a sort of ‘alignment comb’, a plate-like piece of POM for horizontal alignment, along with in-switch LEDs as makeshift fixing pins to maintain vertical alignment. I could do that…but tbh
I’m a lazy stoner and drilling additional holes in every bottom housing seemed like way too much work. Besides Instead I decided to just….not use the LEDs and hope for the best. #YOLO 🤪
