DK1 Build Thread: Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 with Cherry MX Switches

[VoteForDavid]

Seven years later update: I finished it, I've been using it.  it works great.

Cliffs: I intend to mod an MS 4000 keyboard to use Cherry key switches.  For $0 thanks Jesus!  I'll call it the DK1.

The layout of the Microsoft keyboard is almost perfect.  The rubber keys are . . . not.  The feel during the key stroke is actually decent for my hands but the squishy touchdown, inconsistency and (therefore need to constantly be) bottoming out just aren't cutting it anymore after ~7-8 years and wearing 3 or 4 these boards out.  Durability is also a problem.

I *would* give $200 for this keyboard, but nobody makes a split, spread, one-piece ergonomic battleship with media and ten keys, with the fantastic swell in the middle, with mechanical switches.  This is a huge gap in a small market.  Come on, Capitalism!  Supply us!  ...uh, I mean...

I am trained as an electronics technician, and can do manual fabrication including plastics, fiberglass and some metal.  I work at a recycling center.  This is an ideal situation for the electronics hobbyist let me tell you.  We had come through (as low-value scrap) three Chyron Infinit! character generators.  These are big old video production equipment with lots of keys.  The first one had the wrong kind of switch but the other two have nearly-complete sets of what I am pretty sure are vintage Cherry MX Clears.  I stripped off 30lbs. or so of formerly-expensive housings and circuitry and came up with





The feel is somewhat better on the key press, and miles better at the bottom of travel, than the MS keyboard.  I asked the boss and he donated these to the cause, on the condition I let him see the final product.  And he laughed.  A lot.  Then he donated a Microsoft Natural 4000 keyboard to hack as well.

These were not exactly clean.  I let the caps soak in some soapy water until someone went to use the sink and spilled a couple down the drain.  I decided that was a good time to start and spent two HOURS wiping the caps off with Clorox wipes.



Those two hours were a clue this will take a lot of work.  I found these pictures http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=29551849&postcount=93
... and it looks like it will be possible to use sections of flat mounting plate for the central swell but they may need to be made from scratch.  I might be able to reuse some of the Chyron circuit boards, possibly cutting and bypassing the traces.

Long-winded blog posts on:
Motivation: https://votefordavid.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/i-may-be-dying/
Considerations: https://votefordavid.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/let-it-begin-the-perfect-keyboard-shall-be-mine/
More: https://votefordavid.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/problem-partially-solved/
More: https://votefordavid.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/virtual-progress/

to be continued...

[Lain1911]

Sorry whenever I see "DK1" I time travel to a warm safe place where I play Dungeon Keeper 1 on my 350mhz computer...but what you are doing sounds fun too

[VoteForDavid]

The curves which make wrists happy:


The tenkey is flat, but the keycaps have non-flat profiles

Mr Keyboard seems unhappy about being torn apart but that's what he gets for being a keyboard.




Lots of pictures of partial disassembly of a keyboard follow.  Some commentary on same as well. 

More

The unfortunate victim:





Screws from the bottom panel in their relative positions.  Longer screws at the sides, circled in yellow.  the unhappy face designates a stand-in screw, because one of these rolled off my desk.  I'll find it later.  Or not.



Pictures of screws because these are all going in a bag, possibly for re-use and I don't like to be confused as to what went where, or waste too much time organizing screws I may not reuse.

The wrist rests pull right off, and there are a few more hiding screws under the space bar.  I don't know why people recommend screwdrivers, paint can openers, removing nearby keys, etc. - I just plucked the space bar out with my fingers. :shrug:



Peel from the top edge and the keys come out with the top panel.



Very, very encouraging to me: the keys are held in place on FLAT plates.  This makes mounting my Cherry MXs on flat plates a much more reasonable thing to do.  I started this project wondering how I was going to do compound curves on a circuit board.



This, by the way, is all held on with nearly as many screws as the base.



The angled plates come out easily after their screws are removed



The silicone bits:
Overall
Showing the angles of the keys a little better
Media keys
Shocking number of traces by the calculator key
Spacebar contact



The actual switch membranes still in place
They are tacked together in one spot with an itty baby plastic weld.  Other locations are established with locating pins elsewhere in the base
The zoom toggle is a gussied-up pot with a little slip-in connector all its own, also part of the membranes.



The controller lives in the huge void between the banks of keys.  Four screws, three of which are tensioners for the membrane-to-PCB connection



Speaking of which...



Part numbers on the larger parts

Note that a couple are marked DJ1.  Amusingly, depending how you count, this is one before DK1, which is the name of the project 

The populated bottom plate
Left and Right rear support plates for the angled keys
Screws for the zoom toggle
Routing for USB cable



The membrane-to-PCB connection is clamped with a (silicone?) strip between steel braces.



The Curve is a LIE!  Angles, all the way down.



Key caps all snap into their mounting plates.  These should come off with pliers or stiff tweezers fairly easily.  I was impressed that the media keys are discrete sliding parts also, not just plastic spring arms tacked on the sides.



My lunch time ended as I was wondering what-all else comes apart.  The top plate has clips and screws to ...itself?  This needs further investigation and may have interesting implications for custom painting the MS 4000 even if that's all you want to change on yours.

[heedpantsnow]

Wow, seems like you can pull the sliders, cut holes, and hot glue in your switches?? 

[VoteForDavid]

If you wanted to hot glue them, I guess that would be the fastest way to get the construction finished.  I would much rather be able to service the board as required later, so hot glue is currently a method of last resort for this project.  What would be sweet is if my calipers tell me the round mounting holes are the proper size to cut out a 0.55" square from the middle of each, and slap a switch in the existing plate.  I consider that unlikely at this point but we'll see.

[heedpantsnow]

If you wanted to hot glue them, I guess that would be the fastest way to get the construction finished.  I would much rather be able to service the board as required later, so hot glue is currently a method of last resort for this project.  What would be sweet is if my calipers tell me the round mounting holes are the proper size to cut out a 0.55" square from the middle of each, and slap a switch in the existing plate.  I consider that unlikely at this point but we'll see.

Hmm, better build a Dremel jig of some kind then. You have a lot of tedious cutting ahead of you!

[SpAmRaY]

Just a note there's an old thread on here somewhere in which someone did this mod before, might help you.

[rowdy]

Just a note there's an old thread on here somewhere in which someone did this mod before, might help you.

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=10510.0

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks to the three of you.  Too bad the pics are gone from that thread

If (big IF) the holes are close to the right size, a hot square shaft could maybe be forced through to get the holes square.  i doubt that but it needs measurement.  Right now it looks like it might not be that much effort to make new mounting plates .  The plates in the MS board are not all that big.  A dremel jig is another idea but alignment could be tricky, and cutting fine corners would be HARD with a round bit.  Maybe a series of shavings with a chisel in a manual arbor press could be used to expand the holes?  In case y'all can't tell, I am hoping to figure this out as I go along.

As I type it occurs to me that if I am using plastic, i could go ahead and make a little lip around the outsides of the key holes for spill protection without too much additional hassle.  Have to be careful of key cap clearance though.

I'll have to do something for the media keys.  Maybe microswitches on baby circuit boards?  I don't see it being very likely that I can maintain the membranes for JUST those keys.

[invariance]

Using this board at work and it is the closest thing to something reasonable that will be supplied for free in a workplace.
Even have the front 'riser' which clips on underneath below the board to give a negative tilt which I am really liking.
It was getting well worn, feeling scratchy and some of the legends rubbing off, so I stripped it down, sanded the letters off and lubed the stems.
Besides using too thick a grease (which is slowly breaking in and becoming easier to press) it has made a reasonable RD into a slightly better RD. 
Looking forward to see how you go with this project!

As you already have the switch mounting plate, could this be cut to fit?  What would it entail as you mention the MS plates are not that big?
Would be cool if there was any way to integrate the media keys.  Quite a challenge to see where they are incorporated into the matrix  though.  If possible, maybe even use FPC connectors to wire into the keyswitch matrix.  But if you don't really use them...........meh, leave them disconnected.

In one of your blogs you mentioned about the spacebar, which made me think one option could be to reduce it to a smaller key (2-3U?) or if you are likely to use the left thumb occasionally, then two separate smaller spacebars.  Would entail having to source the keycaps though.

[VoteForDavid]

LOL I have hundreds of caps review the images in the OP!  The problem is which ones to use, and this is a good problem to have. 

The Chyron plates are metal, and would require some quality time with a Dremel which is not a problem.  The also have a regular arrangement of keys, which in some cases is a problem for the MS layout.  Then there would be either brazing or welding the plates together again if necessary, and that is one more thing to deal with.  I have some good flat fiberglass sheets that may be the right thickness to use for a mounting plate if I can't work the MS plates to fit the new switches.  I intend to keep the media keys God willing; I intend to grok this matrix and they are part of it.  Mounting a few microswitches will be much less of a problem for me than the Cherry key switches.  I might even be able to score some switches on circuit boards like from an old VCR or something, who knows?

Lunchtime progress report:

I cut the matrix apart and made decent pictures of the layers.  I'm working up a .psd file with layers of the layers, with different colors for the traces.  It might be useful to make a .gif that alternates between the individual layers and the composite, but that will have to wait.  This file should help to see exactly what switch goes to what without having to press "buttons" to figure out the matrix with a magnifier and multimeter.  This will take some time.

There are two keys in the matrix that must be for sum dang furriner layouts.  Three key switches under left shift and main enter, but only one of each of them used. 

I took most of the keys out and found (in addition to funky profiles on a few) that the Fn row has narrower key caps.  I took pictures as they came out, so I'll have an idea what MS was thinking when they laid out the caps.  Surprisingly the main Enter key was not stabilized.  Some of the stems are drastically different lengths, and some keys (especially left Shift) are curved (along the length of the key) to a surprising degree. There is the possibility that I will be doing some custom or modified key caps.  I am not specifically aiming to use the MS keys, but it would probably end up looking nicer if I did.  I'll have to scrounge some better keys if I go that route though, as this victim has some worn-off legends.       

I measured the holes for the keys on the MS plates.  From where the bevel angle begins off the back of the mounting plate, the regular key holes are pretty much exactly 0.55" diameter which is a magic number for Cherry MX lovers.  They are 3/4" on center and I will have to do some research to figure out if that is going to be adequate for my existing MX-compatible caps.  The big keys on the bottom row of the keyboard have funky larger square sized holes and square stems and will need some creativity to reuse if I go that route.  I will have to relocate and/or rework at least a few key holes anyway, as I have some plans for (slightly) modifying the layout to be revealed at a later time.  At least the cutouts for stabilizers on these plates are small which may make this a little easier.

In addition to the snaps on the top panel, there are yet more screws under the keys.  The silver border around the keyboard IS the mounting plate.  The black parts around the keys are a skeleton frame.  These could be painted to suit one's preference without too much trouble, and have a REALLY pleasant effect.

[CPTBadAss]

I've been saying that a 4K with mechanical switches would be my ultimate office keyboard for a while. What actually drew me to the Cherry G80-5000 is my opinion that the keyboard is the closest thing to a 4K as I could find. I'm excited to see how this project turns out.

Also you work at an e-waste recycler and you're into keyboards???! Lucky!

[heedpantsnow]

I've been saying that a 4K with mechanical switches would be my ultimate office keyboard for a while. What actually drew me to the Cherry G80-5000 is my opinion that the keyboard is the closest thing to a 4K as I could find. I'm excited to see how this project turns out.

Also you work at an e-waste recycler and you're into keyboards???! Lucky!

Yep. One of these days he'll start a thread entitled "So we got in a pallet of Kishsavers at work today..."

[VoteForDavid]

I'm not so much into keyboards specifically as into having tools that suit my preference.  A membrane keyboard for a daily driver has finally gotten too old to ignore any longer (and yes, this is a good place to work at times like this).  I have a lot of custom stuff I made because it suits me.  My desk chair is based on a coil spring from a truck suspension, my bench has just-so lighting and drapery for photography, the vents on my laptop are modified oversize.  Heck even my oscilloscope sits at a useful-but-ugly angle. 

People shake their heads, but then they go back to their bog-standard equipment and don't even realize they are suffering

meanwhile...

I spent two and a half or so more hours working out the traces in the matrix.  The bottom is simple enough, a single layer.  The top layer is double-sided.  The top of the top is all one common trace and does not connect to anything but the USB shield ground.  I guess this is for RFI shielding, which makes sense as a lot of the traces are good lengths for radio antennae.  The bottom of the top is a whole 'nother set of traces, and it connects to one of the connectors for the bottom layer.  The contacts for HALF of the bottom sheet of the matrix seem to directly overlay and touch the contacts for the top half.  I'm not sure why they did this, but it makes figuring out the matrix harder.  I've scraped off the shield layer on the top of the top sheet and combined a picture of *just* the key switch traces into my .psd file which is several tens of megabytes for the time being.

Someone is wondering why I don't just use a standalone controller and wire up a normal matrix of switches.  I would spend as long figuring that out as I will figuring out this matrix, and then I'd still have to buy (or scrounge) and impliment the controller.  The next person who has this (specific revision) MS4K keyboard will in theory be able to look at what I've done and do the same.  Pro bono publico!

ETA: I'd never heard of a Kishsaver but it looks like a nice alternative to a standard scissors-and-membrane laptop keyboard.  It also looks loud and I've selected my laptop keyboard for quietness out of consideration for a wife who falls asleep while *some of us* are still up and doing.  We do occasionally get in some old clicky IBMs, but they generally are worth the effort to resell (so they are resold).

[Zustiur]

The top of the top is all one common trace and does not connect to anything but the USB shield ground.  I guess this is for RFI shielding, which makes sense as a lot of the traces are good lengths for radio antennae. 

That seems likely. They do make a wireless version, so they're probably using a lot of the same PCBs for both boards. There's a good chance you'll find some traces that head off to where the batteries would be stored also.

[VoteForDavid]

With a solder sucker in need of lubrication, it took two hours to depopulate one of the larger keyboards of all its switches.  These things need washing!  A decade or so of studio use left some debris under the mounting plate.

Another couple of hours tracing out the matrix.  My image is 3000 pixels wide, and I'm using 1 pixel wide brushes to separate the traces, it's crazy.

The spacing of the microsoft keys is highly variable; it will take mocking-up a BUNCH of switches with caps on them to be able to tell if the spacing will allow using MX-compatible keys.  I am not really against the idea of modifying the stems of the MS caps to fit MX switches, but it would be a lot of work.  It would probably look better in the end if I did.

[berserkfan]

MY jaw dropped, fell onto the floor and started burrowing underground.

That said, why don't you look at Kurplop's Alumaplop keyboard thread? I think the two of you are very similar in terms of capabilities, and you might find it worthwhile to incorporate a mouse while you're at it.

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=67467.0

[Dihedral]

The switches look kinda grotty, are they still smooth?

[VoteForDavid]

I looked through the Alumaplop thread with some interest.  It is a road too far for me to machine away 9+lbs of aluminum (and my machinist friend was rightly shocked as well! ) but his keyboard looks nice.  I have toyed with the idea of integrating a pointing device of some kind, but that remains to be seen.  I kinda like IBM/Lenovo's little baby joysticks on their laptops, and I have seen those available as standalone modules.  I also like a well-done Alps touchpad.  There is probably room between the banks of keys for *something* especially if I go for a split space bar.  ...But I've been using Kensington Expert Mouse series trackballs for longer than I've owned computers and that's a good long time now.  It's not on the front burner to integrate a pointing device, but it's not off the list (yet) either.  Thanks for the suggestion!

The switches aren't as grotty as the mounting plates!  The switch actuation feel is somewhat variable but none of them want to make me throw a switch across the room.  None of them are buttery smooth but probably none have ever been lubricated.  They all need to come apart for cleaning because there is bound to be some debris inside from all those years of use, especially as dirty as the rest of the keyboard is.  That works for me, because they also are probably going to get a spring swap to "ergo clear" if I can lay hands on some springs.  I'd also like to have a look at them up close for a microscopic inspection (various microscopes are available at my work).  There are enough switches here to be able to be choosy and reject any that have any obviously-bad aspects at all to them.  I am probably already going to reject a few bases for having corrosion on the pins from (?) spilled soda or whatever.

Amusingly: there is one key on both of the boards that had a stopper and was possibly never actuated.  I'm not sure if they're good or bad, but it's different.

Another 2ish hours in Photoshop dealing with the traces on the switch matrix sheets.  The top is done and ready to be worked with to find out what switches connect to where, but the bottom is only maybe 1/4 done.  I would have done some side-by-side mounting plate comparisons during the day but I spent pretty much all day working on a J&L 30" optical comparator - a 1985 version of this:  http://www.jlmetrology.com/remanufacturedproducts/29.html which is pretty amazing stuff to play around with.

[VoteForDavid]

Pictures of various parts of the Microsoft keyboard, disassembled, with comments, below the jump!

More

The key caps on most of the board, except the media keys and the two central plates.  Note the different profiles including the waved tops.  The keys slope up on the bottom row, down for the next two rows, then up again, then flat on top.  A few have different stem lengths to keep the curves smooth across the board.



This is one of the tilted central plates, held upside-down so the caps drooped, and then inverted in Photoshop. 
Note the multiple curved edges on the N key
And the P key with different angle on the sides/different widths from top to bottom of the cap
I am not sure how problematic this will be when it comes time to put caps on my Cherry switches.  I think at best there will be funky gaps with normal square-edged caps.  At worst it will not work at all and the caps will crash into each other.



The media and other top row key caps plus the back and forward buttons.  These have dramatically different stem lengths and angles to meet a curved top plate from a flat switch matrix membrane.  They look like they should push straight down fairly reliably no matter what's under them, and microswitches are my first choice.  I may have to modify the ends of these caps to actuate whatever switches I use.  We'll see.



The top of the Top Cabinet.  If you wanted to change the color of the silver trim on the Microsoft keyboard, this is the thing to paint.



The bottom of the top cabinet.  Also, see the tiny holes for stabilizers on long keys.  I don't think these line up properly to use a Cherry stabilizer but it remains to be seen.



It's married to the top cover with more screws.  They work of course but I am surprised to see so many screws in a keyboard.



The Top Cover.  This is where you're looking to mount any custom pointing devices. It's nice in a way because you can work with this separate from the key mounting plates . . . and it's not so nice also because of how far you have to break down the keyboard to get this out.  Because the Microsoft F row keys are so skinny, this may have to be modified to accept Cherry MX-compatible caps.  I hope I don't also have to modify the Top Cabinet much (if at all) to fit standard sized F row caps.



Now for some possibly-good news: the majority of the key mounting holes are well and truly a good diameter to modify for a Cherry MX: 0.551"!  Make it square and you're most of the way there!  There is also the matter of plate thickness, which is hard to measure at this point.  It would be a blessing to find it 1.5mm thick exactly but this remains to be seen.  The holes for larger switches are substantially larger in one direction; whether they are also usable also remains to be seen

...to be continued...

[Dihedral]

I think youre going to have a hell of a time modifying those plates - might be best to consider just getting plates made.

[VoteForDavid]

The spirit of this project is such that there will be no "getting" things made if it can be avoided.  I have noted that some of the holes in the MS plates are awfully close to the edges in the middle of the board, but the tenkey and arrows look positively usable.  I'm thinking some back-of-the-mind thoughts about some thin flat sheets of fiberglass in the garage for making up custom plates.  Some head-scratching was done and it looks like the way to make mounting holes in the MS mounting plates might be a DIY square broach.  I'd like to be able to use a square mortising drill bit but a) I don't have one and b) 14mm doesn't seem like a common size for those.  There's also the idea of a punch/die set, but it would suck to get one all made up and then find out it cracks the plastic!

In an amusing twist of irony, working so much on the circuitry images has given me a warm fuzzy feeling inside - inside my wrist!  Working on my anti-RSI project has led to RSI!  SOMEBODY must be doing this wrong   Instead of hours in photoshop, I did some comparisons of the physical parts and other stuff and will probably be working on either the physical parts of this project or some other less computer-intensive projects for a while until my wrist is all the way calmed down.   

As the four buttons over the tenkey area are to be unused in my design, I think I will be safe using their mounting plate areas for experimenting with hole-making for mounting Cherry switches.

I did a quick 'shop of the layout and I think I like this:



areas highlighted in green are changed.  The original layout, for reference:

More

I have access to a bunch of old lenovo laptops and I think I like the idea of integrating the trackpoint from one of them.  It would be cool to have left and right click buttons also, for full mousing operations from the middle of the keyboard.  I'm right handed so an offset of the trackpoint to the right would be nice.  It might be cool to have a scroll WHEEL in the keyboard too;  I'll have to think about that a bit.

This starts to raise problems with cabling.  The keyboard has a USB cable.  The trackpoint hopefully will have cable, so there's two.  If I can't get a trackpoint that lets me connect buttons to it, then the buttons will likely come from a scavenged mouse for simplicity's sake so three cables.  A scroll wheel could probably be from that same mouse, so still "only" three.  I don't mind this number of cables, and a braided cable could even be made attractive - but some people will have problems with all these cables coming out of one device.  A USB hub that's small enough could be rigged up to fit inside the keyboard, but you either still have two cables, or you have a keyboard that may not wake up fast enough to be useful for pressing buttons for menus during computer POST and boot.  This is broken IMO so I think I'd like to have the keyboard remain "just" a keyboard on its own cable.

I've put about 17 19 man hours on this project so far, and it's all R&D.  JUST the key switches are going to be 400+ solder joints, plus cable work.  Once I figure out what to do for mounting plates, it's going to be several hours making mounting plates.  This is going to take ... a while.

ETA: yes, cables.  I can hardly stand the thought of wireless input devices for all day every day use.  And yes, permanent cables.  I've worked on enough electronics to know that good cables fail less often than connectors.  Especially small, scavenged connectors!

Edit 2: 2 hours more down the rabbit hole, and I think I have a pinout for a scavenged Lenovo Trackpoint.  Just now, it's PS/2 from an old laptop keyboard.  It would be nice to have a modern version with USB support built right in but we're still right at $0 so far.  If I can get a PS/2 cable installed on this trackpoint module and talking to a computer through a USB converter, that will be good enough.  If money were no object I'd go buy a "Thinkpad USB Keyboard with Trackpoint" and hack that up.  That will have to wait until I've got a preorder for a $600 keyboard from some GH member with more money than time for this sort of thing.  That, of course, will have to wait until I can get the prototype working 

[VoteForDavid]

(partial)VICTORY!  I got one of my scrap trackpoints pointing over PS/2 bus to a PC.  Then I scrounged up an active PS/2 to USB converter, and it tracks like normal over USB!  I want to figure out how to get switches going with this trackpoint, and then comes mounting which is a whole 'nuther set of challenges.  Of course when I broke into the converter it used the same wire colors for different purposes, but wire colors are arbitrary anyway and don't really matter I guess.

Pictures of the trackpoint board and the wiring:

More

Top:


Bottom:


Bare bottom:


Wiring for a PS/2 connector.  Note this is the male end of the connector, as I was using a keyboard PS/2 cable.  PS/2 pinouts are all over the internet.  Pinout for this board is...not.  The "reset" pin is at the bottom of the PCB in the pictures.  The top three pins are not labeled on my Boogie Board (which is awesome BTW) but they are for connecting up to three external switches.  The wire colors labeled below match the keyboard cable I was using, and don't match the (same) color cables currently connected from the PS/2-USB converter, so :shrug: sorry there are no pictures of wiring.  It's pretty jerry-rigged right now and the wiring for switches isn't done, so ... maybe later on wiring pictures for this part.


This trackpoint came from a defunct Lenovo laptop keyboard, and this is the label that was on the keyboard
https://i.imgur.com/iTF7fE6.jpg

Trackpoint credits:  This is a road less traveled, but I think solid documentation in more and more places will help those who come after.
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=55960.0
http://jpad.wikispaces.com/Making+a+Nugget
http://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/my-diy-keyboard-collection-or-how-i-became-a-kb-geek-t2534-30.html

I did a LOT of reading up on this and looking at different laptop keyboards to find a trackpoint to which I could find a pinout.  This one in particular has connections for up to three buttons and I hope to integrate at least two of those near the trackpoint.  If it's over a USB converter, the driver functions will be lost which sucks a bit but at least I hope to be trackpointing on it.  I'm really happy to be able to use a Lenovo trackpoint, as they are reputed to have the best feel and action.  It would be REALLY cool if I can sort out how to program the trackpoint to scroll in both directions; that's supposed to be in the firmware somewhere.

It looks like I'll be able to reuse the arrow and tenkey portions of the Chyron PCBs, which is nice.  The rest of the board only lines up partially, at best.  I should be able to get the switches to mount well in these two areas, but it will require some crappy custom drilling on a minority of the keys.  The MS tenkey area has odd-shaped keys on the right side and a large-radius curve on the bottom left.  I'll have to add some plastic to the frame and remove some from the zero key cap if I don't reuse the MS keys.  There is a height difference with the Cherry switches and caps to consider, and I am not sure if it will increase the height of the overall board, or have the Cherry caps sticking out too far from the frame of the board (which would be not-okay for me).  Low profile MX key caps would maybe be nice.  There are a couple of screw bosses in the tenkey area and the arrow key area (and probably others elsewhere) that will be problematic and probably will be cut.  This sucks; I'd like to keep as many fasteners in there as possible for rigidity.

Here's some "More" to keep the length of the page reasonable - Tenkey and arrow key areas, side profile and a couple MS/Chyron alignment comparisons

More

Tenkey area with random keys for an idea of relative position


Arrow key area:


Side profile:


Partial alignment of holes for MS and Chyron keys for one of the side angle plates


...and the flat main-chassis plate key holes, which are much less regularly-spaced than the central plates:


I found these two threads by Lanx copied on the wayback machine, which is cool because the pictures are mostly there but disappeared from here because of %reason%. 
http://web.archive.org/web/20141118180436/https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=10510.0
http://web.archive.org/web/20140703132149/https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=12439.0

I hope my finished product comes out better looking than his second attempt.  That's not a knock on Lanx's mod but I have to look at this all day so I want it to be pretty or at least unobtrusive.

20 hours and counting...

It has only just occurred to me that this is a pretty rare amount of effort for a keyboard modification.  Some people will get as far as changing caps or even soldering and assembling a DIY keyboard kit, but this amount of stuff to do is intimidating to you.  Let me say this with authority: We all start off with zero knowledge and zero skills.  Even the masters* had to learn basics before moving on to intermediate skills.  If you want to be able to do high-level work, you can.  Most of the knowledge for common mods has already been gathered for you, and a lot of work has been done for you.  GH is a great place to learn and Google is also your friend if you want to do custom mods.  The limiting factor is *you*.  If you start and screw it up, you don't have to tell the community about it, but we will learn from your mistakes if you do.  If you start and you get it close or even nail it first try, you will find a surprising level of encouragement here and elsewhere online.  Don't let your FUD stop you!  Or as the old saying goes, "Take no counsel of thy fears".  Worst case you're are only out some money.  Everyone makes mistakes and even occasionally fails royally.  Everyone, except those who never began the work because they didn't think they could succeed - those have failed already.

 

*not referring to myself here, just saying!

[CPTBadAss]

Really enjoying this build log so far. Thanks for sharing so many details .

It has only just occurred to me that this is a pretty rare amount of effort for a keyboard modification.  Some people will get as far as changing caps or even soldering and assembling a DIY keyboard kit, but this amount of stuff to do is intimidating to you.  Let me say this with authority: We all start off with zero knowledge and zero skills.  Even the masters* had to learn basics before moving on to intermediate skills.  If you want to be able to do high-level work, you can.  Most of the knowledge for common mods has already been gathered for you, and a lot of work has been done for you.  GH is a great place to learn and Google is also your friend if you want to do custom mods.  The limiting factor is *you*.  If you start and screw it up, you don't have to tell the community about it, but we will learn from your mistakes if you do.  If you start and you get it close or even nail it first try, you will find a surprising level of encouragement here and elsewhere online.  Don't let your FUD stop you!  Or as the old saying goes, "Take no counsel of thy fears".  Worst case you're are only out some money.  Everyone makes mistakes and even occasionally fails royally.  Everyone, except those who never began the work because they didn't think they could succeed - those have failed already.

 

*not referring to myself here, just saying!

100% agreed with this part .

[VoteForDavid]

I like it when other people show lots of details and it's a bit of Golden Rule action on my part.  Also, this is pretty much the only place all my notes are going to be together, in order, with pictures - so it's kinda for me as well.

It looks like, without cutting the circuit board, the trackpoint is going to have the nub about where the current zoom control pokes out.  That's ok I guess.  I may dress up the area by shaping the plastic into a little cup around the nub.  I will also have to do some modification to the frame of the keyboard to mount this, but it's all in places that are hidden so I can ugly it up a bit if necessary.



Notes about trackpoint mounting angle:

More

I'm not sure what to do with the trackpoint assembly just yet.  I am assuming I'll figure it out somewhere down the road.  The board has big components on one end and little components on the other.  This means it sits at an angle relative to the top of the keyboard, which is also at angles relative to everything else.  I don't know if there is a "better" angle.  The manufacturers who use trackpoints tend to make them flush with the top of the keys or just a little higher, but then they usually have to consider "don't smash the LCD" as a major design point.  I don't.  I can make my nub flush with the plastic of the keyboard as just a tacky spot for my finger to touch (hold the jokes, please) or I can make it maybe as high as flush with the keycaps.  Probably it will be somewhere in between.  Possibly at an angle.  I dunno.  Maybe I will find a way to experiment with this.  Maybe I will find one of the 'cat's tongue' texture round tops and the angle will be a moot point.  This is just one of those minor crises that comes along when you start out on a project without a 100% definite Plan to work off of.  Oh well.

Have I missed something?  Is it better proud, or recessed/shrouded? Is it better (or good enough) half-exposed?


A wider PCB for the trackpoint by even a millimeter or so would require some fancy fabrication but this one is exactly as wide as it can be without considerably cutting up the top of the keyboard panels or the PCB.  Some other Lenovo trackpoint PCBs are too wide, as are the HP ProBook trackpoints I have seen.  Dell trackpoints have no conjoined PCB and the electronics for the pointer seem to be on the motherboard somewhere.

The pointer switches could be be tricky.  I did some experimentation and comparing dimensions for alternate switch mounting locations and a few switch types, and usable options are limited.  The middle keyboard mounting plates are secured to the underside of the bridge just "North" of where the zoom control lives, and it's an important structural area for putting the keyboard together right.  It's either external switches there (inelegant) or internal switches somewhere else.  Seeing as I HATE the back and forward keys*, and seeing they fall right under the tip of a thumb, it makes sense to me to cut the traces on the existing controller PCB and repurpose those two switches as right and left click buttons for the trackpoint.

This could, of course, possibly be done with a custom key map - but I want this to be a (relatively) plug-and-play affair.  No custom programming of the keyboard controller (if it even can be done) and no custom programs on the computer so the keyboard can be taken to a different computer and still work properly.  The Microsoft software that tries to install when you plug in this keyboard (via an optional Windows Update) may allow some key mapping to be done; I don't know, I never used the software.  The only thing that program ever did for me was bring up unwanted webpages or programs when I accidentally hit the web/search/mail buttons when I missed the Escape key.

If someone wants to implement a middle click button (linux users come to mind) I guess the easiest place would be to slip a switch under the My Favorites button if you don't want to use it for your Bookmarks.  There are really no simple options for extra switch placement near the home row that aren't already taken or have stuff behind them.  I think I'll do this and if I never need a third mouse button it won't hurt anything.  If it ends up being in the way, I could always go back in and cut the wires.  A $$$ production version should have a jumper or DIP switch setting for this.  Proof-of-concept items get "maybe I'll cut the wire later" haha.

As I typed out the notes for this update, the inconsistency of the Microsoft keyboard was slowing me down, again.  I have GOT to get this project done.

This is how the trackpoint looks right now, by the way:

More

Inset is the model of the converter.  The converter is potted in solid, or else it'd be smaller but at least I got the plastic case cut off.  I'll pretty this up a bit before I'm done, and probably cut off the Keyboard input cable.

 
I chucked up a bull-nosed end mill bit in a vertical press and took off most of the mounting bosses from the button mounting plates.  This resulted in about a liter of ABS shavings and dust when I swept up!  Fortunately, even on a slow speed, the (sharp!) mill was able to work fast enough to prevent melting the plastic.  It didn't stink up the place or send scalding drops flying at me.  Unfortunately it went a little past where I wanted to go on a couple of spots, and the rest still need minor clean-up with a dremel or something.  I'm not sure I'm even going to use these mounting plates though, so my feelings aren't too hurt.

Gratuitous picture of half-done milled plates:

More

 
I'm considering more layout changes. I could add a duplicate backspace key where MS put a (useless!) BACK key over the tenkey.  Maybe instead of a large delete key, a duplicate Enter key over the Delete or in place of the FLock key (the two Enter keys do different things in Photoshop)


22 hours


* my work uses custom web-based software and the back/forward buttons under the space bar navigate away from the page in use, deleting all the data that have been input.  These buttons are occasionally pressed by accident and losing a half-hours' work is a pisser, so I pull the back and forward buttons off all my MS4K keyboards immediately upon putting them into service.

[jacobolus]

Wow, great project!

Can’t wait to see how it turns out!

[VoteForDavid]

You and me, both!  It is looking increasingly possible as I go along.

I did some research and it looks like a DIY square broach is the way to go for consistently producing the key mounting holes in the MS plates.  If I want to make the itty bitty side notches in the mounting holes (for switch modifiability), I have a machinist who can make up a little broach/punch for that.  It looks like the main plate may be usable, or at least partially usable.  It's about 2mm thick, which is too much for the switches to snap into but not as thick as some custom boards you see on GH.

More

Somebody lost the battery cover on my mic!  A screw and a piece of tape, it still works and that's all I ask.

It is theoretically possible to reduce the plate thickness to 1.5mm, but that seems like it could be touchy because there are protrusions on both sides that would make fixturing and/or milling difficult.

I cut one of the holes in my mount-testing area and put a switch in it.  The installed height of the keycap is approximately the same as the height of the Microsoft keys, which is a huge win (thank you Jesus!). 



The stem of the MX switch just baaaarely peeks over the side of the frame when viewing the frame end-on.

More

The depressed height of the key is still comfortably out of the frame.

More

  I think this could work.  I used an xacto knife to carve out the hole for this test.  I was a little worried about the potential for the knife to slip and cut the [deleted] out of me, but the surrounding plastic tends to be relatively thick compared to the round bezeled area for each keywell and this prevented knife slippage somewhat.  I just took care to keep the blade well into the hole and it didn’t slip out much at all.  I clamped the metal Chyron frame over the MS frame (for a square hole template) and scored the rough outline of the hole, then removed the Chyron plate and just freehanded the cutting.   It didn’t take all that long, and alignment is what you make of it when doing things like this.  I did learn that when the hole is too narrow, the switch body will squeeze the key stem and the stem will bind up instead of rebounding.  I don't know why but that surprised me a little.  It fit and worked fine after just a little shave more from the sides of the hole.

I guess I could do them all by hand and then not have to pay $15 for a piece of square steel stock to make a broach.  Heck, working at this place, I might FIND a piece of 14mm square stock.

Test-tapping was a foretaste of good things to come.  The keypress on the MS keyboard is very much like the press on the MX clear, but where the MS bottoms out and squishes, the Cherry just goes clack and stops.  Better than that, it has already actuated, reliably, hopefully, and I don’t have to smash down EVERY SINGLE KEY PRESS.  WHEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeee!

[VoteForDavid]

Ok, this has officially cost me money now.  I just paid the invoice from Sprit for a set of 62g gold plated springs.     I'll get some lube later, when it gets closer to time to do some per-switch work.

The day after I mention it…

I found a slab of FRP that is hard enough to cut ABS when sharp, and soft enough to work with hand tools.  I could cut that into a broach, but I kinda wonder how long it would stay sharp  A metal tool would probably stay sharp approximately forever, cutting through 2mm plastic.  Then again, it is rather cathartic, carving out the squares for key holes.  I carved out a few more mounting holes by hand to see how long it would take.  It took about six minutes per switch location and it was very relaxing.  If you’ve ever done crochet/knitting/needlepoint or reloaded ammunition, you may have an idea of the relaxed concentration I got from this.  Still, at that rate it's 10 hours of carving.  Versus a few seconds each with a broach?  I think I'll try to make a broach, and hand-carve a few holes at a time, until I get the broach done.

I realized that working for long hours on my laptop's touchpad is what caused my CTS to flare up.  Figuring out how to make a USB trackpoint was inspirational - now I want to put one in my laptop as well.  It looks like there's room, but I think that's for a separate thread.

Expect little to no progress reports this weekend - happy resurrection day, everyone!

[infiniti]

I miss my ergo 4000...but its breakdown is what led me to the path of mechanical keyboards!

Amazing project you have here!

[VoteForDavid]

Mondays are sometimes … not optimal for me.  About all the hobbying I managed to do was to start shaping my broach.  I was using a BIG, SHARP rasp and only had to slip and chew up my fingers twice before I thought to put on gloves.  Then I remembered the end mill I used on the keyboard frame is also sharp on the sides.  That’s going to be the ticket for this job.  I used the rasp to get overall width close, then went to the mill for shaping the profile.  It seems like this stuff is at least as hard as aluminum, which is a good sign for the potential durability of the finished tool.

Anyway, it looks like a taper from a ~9mm circle to a 14mm square (with cuts all around) is what I’m after for my broach.  The material I found turns out to be 13.6mm thick.  This is actually a good thing, as the switch I measured actually has a 13.8mm square flange.  13.6mm in one dimension allows for minor rotation correction per hole without resorting to welding up the plastic.

...and now my DW wants me to build her a keyboard too.  Fortunately, I didn't demolish both the Chyron keyboards and she authorized a non-standard layout that will allow me to use the Chyron PCB *and* mounting plates, and I'll just have to come up with a case and a controller.  Double-plus good head start news is that I still have an intact, hopefully-identical PCB with no switches on it, to trace out the matrix.  God willing it will have something like a normal circuit and I can just slap a controller and case on there and call it good.  That will be for its own thread, though, and after this board is completed.

I think I'm at around 24 hours into this build and it's STILL almost exclusively research and design.  If I can get the fabrication done without (further) injury and stay out of the Emergency Room it could still be $0 total yet, which is *very* cool.  (no I'm not counting the springs I bought in that $0, because those are optional! )

[VoteForDavid]

More work on the hopefully-will-be-a-working-broach.  This is unglamorous.  The tool currently looks like a stick.  TIA.

[VoteForDavid]

I pulled the switches out of the second of the two smaller boards.  I managed to remember to squeeze them top-and-bottom instead of on the sides, but only after pulling out and mangling the clips on half the switches.  If I'd paid for these I'd really be kicking myself for this, but ...

There's nothing like having one of these open on your bench to help understand just how a switch works.  I opened one and learned from it.  That was cool.

Also, I put in just a little time on my hopefully-will-work broach.  I cut one tooth in one spot and rubbed it against a random section of the frame of the MS keyboard.  It took a teensy tiny shaving.  That is to say, it worked!  The teeth are going to have to be deeper than I thought they might, but that's ok.  I did some maths and I think each tooth on the broach will need to cut 1/2mm deep.  That might be too much.  I won't know until I get more of the broach done.

A barely-shaped DIY broach, with one baby plastic shaving on one baby tooth:

More

...25 hours in.  My boss who gave me these parts, asked if I were done yet.  I told him I'm over 20 hours in and not even close, we laughed at me some more.

[VoteForDavid]

The broach is formed and I had time to begin cutting a couple of teeth.  One of them is a bit longer than the others   I was going to use a mill for this but it ended up being easier and far less dangerous to use a sharp hand file.  Not for the first time I wished I had a lathe at this location, but hand tools are getting it done so far.  I want to cut these teeth deeper, but I ran out of lunch hour as usual.



It takes more force than I thought to broach through the plastic.  I think I could do it by hand, but for ease of use on 100+ holes I may try to come up with a press.

[Niomosy]

Ahhh.  The keyboard I so want Microsoft (or anyone) to put into production.  Good luck on the project. 

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks!  Hopefully I can figure out a way to make it that doesn't take 10 hours per board.

...which goal has had a setback



I guess 2mm ABS isn't strong enough to stand up to me jamming a broach through it like this.  The alternative may be a punch press, but I'm not getting one set up.  There is too great a variety of protuberances on the plate to be able to use a flat die on either side.  I am back to totally new plates or carving out these holes one at a time.  It will maybe take only a couple of minutes each, if I dremel out most of the hole and only xacto out the final shapes.  That takes mechanical construction time from 600+ to only 200+ minutes.  That's a lot faster, yes, but at that rate it begins to make sense to use the Plate Builder.

So I use the Plate Builder and nail the layout first try, then I'd just have to find someone who will make the plates with all the screw bosses on the back side, and all the reinforcement ridges etc. that poke out all over the place.  It makes sense to have the plates 3D printed.  Depending on the printer I'd STILL have to touch every hole for final fitment.  And then the model turns out to have one key out of position by a couple of millimeters and the stabilizers flipped on one key.

I think it makes sense to do this by hand.  I've got to find a faster way to do it by hand.  An artist may suffer for his art, but this looks like it could be just plain tedious!

[VoteForDavid]

Ok enough with the dead-end DIY broach.  I’ve gone back (for the lack of better ideas) to manual hole shaping.  And run into a pretty serious snag.  And arrived at a meaningful revelation.

It's time to revisit my M.O. because the more I think about it, the more I realize that keeping the MS key mounting plates is not practical, and I think I can do better for myself.  I want to fit this keyboard to my own hands.  The universal appeal of the keyboard will suffer, because a board laid out to suit me won’t be perfect for the next user.  Mass-produced parts are exercises in compromise, and I think I may be ready to stop compromising on the tool I use most, all day every day.  MS put some keys too large and there are some keys offset wrong for me.

I overlaid a populatd MS4K keyboard with where my fingers naturally fall on the plane of the key caps.  The minor quibbles I had with Microsoft's layout decisions fairly leap off the paper at me.  Yes I missed one spot on the left side; you still get the idea.


 
Some now-moot ideas on using the MS plates to mount switches:

More

The tenkey is super simple aside from cut-outs for stabilizers.  The central plates should be similarly easy.  But.  The combination of angled key caps and various-length stems allows Microsoft to make truly compound curves on the main keyboard.  MX switches are all the same height, and the key caps are all straight right angles relative to their stems.  To use the flat plates would result in two angled sets of keys on each side.  This is not the goal.  The next step is to modify the MS plates so the keys are sitting at appropriate angles and distances relative to the top of the keyboard.  At that point, it's stupid to not be using fresh sheets of ABS for this.

The command buttons on the bottom row would present a hefty challenge.  They sit at angles, and they are at various depths from the top of the frame.  I’d have to MAKE some custom ABS pieces to mount these at the right height and angles.  I’d have to figure out how to make these parts, and how to make them as rigid as the rest of the board.    The keys in the transition between the angled plates and the flat base are also different heights, which is accomplished with differing stem lengths.  And keys with angled caps on MX switches would need custom angled stems, or angled mounts which could cause caps to crash into their neighbors.

The space bar also has a HUGE amount of curvature to it.  To retain the space bar and use Cherry space bar stabilizers I’d have to move some Cherry stems onto the Microsoft space bar, which will be challenging to get right with nothing to set it on.  I guess I’d have to measure and make a guesstimate for the mounting heights, then mount the switch and stabilizer pieces at the appropriate height with educated guesswork, THEN try to get the bar glued up straight to MX-compatible stems.  The alternative is to use a splitspacebar, and the MS bar already has most of the curves required – maybe I could cut it up.  I might be able to put a couple of stabilized switches  (one on each side) and cut the space bar right down the middle and use that for custom MX-stabilizer-fitted key caps.  I notice that my keyboard has one big shiny spot on the right side of the space bar.  My thumbs don’t even really venture out into the middle or outside edges of the space bar; it’s like it’s just that big on there for decoration or tradition’s sake.  The space bars could be much smaller.  Real-estate could be freed up for a scroll wheel or more buttons or whatever.

Yellow is where the flat plates sit now.  Green is where they would need to be.

]
 
The whole bottom row, in fact, is fitted with caps that are kinda stupidly-large.  I can see using regular sized keys all the way across.  The space keys could be fitted farther away from the rest and at odd angles, because my thumb prints are only in a couple of spots.  Using regular keys means doing "something" to fill in the void spaces where there used to be 2x-sized keys, but that is minor compared to the mounting angles just now.

 
Laying out the switch cutouts to show myself where to cut the far-right side of the board is easy enough.  The tenkey was super easy.  Overlay the tenkey area from the Chyron keyboard and lay in with a scalpel.  Done-ish.  Just go cut them out!



The plan is changed for the main keys.  The guts are cut out to a consistent height around the edges, and flat plates will be bent and glued to these at about the same distance from the top of the frame as the mounting plates in the tenkey and arrows areas.  Mounting holes will be cut, keys will be mounted.  You're welcome - if you are planning to try this mod yourself, I just saved you 20 hours of head-scratching!



During the laying out of my fingerprints on the keys, I noticed that this keyboard is WAY asymmetrical.  I also noticed that my right hand tends to splay a little more than the left "naturally" and the left tends to bunch up more than the right - on my LAPTOP keyboard which is a typical flat/straight affair.  For the most part, I have to give them credit: Microsoft *really* hit a home run on the layout for the 4000/7000 keyboards.

...28 hours in...

[Dihedral]

Is it worth gluing in some enablers and then fixing the switches to them?

[VoteForDavid]

Enablers are a great idea and may yet be required, but they would be several tens of thousands of percent higher cost than the rest of this project to date   Thanks for mentioning them.

At last, I think I have found a definite direction.  For the switch mounting plates, for prototyping locations in a custom layout quickly: slots.  Establish the locations of the rows of keys, and cut slots of the appropriate width along the entire length of the row.  Switches can be slid from side to side.  If a switch is slightly out of position to suit my hands, it can be moved along the slot. 

I went and traced out the layout again with finger spots for all the keys this time.  Just tapping on paper with the keys laid out in the "proper" spots has me more eager than ever to get this board done.  I've also got cardboard nearly cut to fit and some ABS to cut into mounting plates once I get some good cardboard templates.  A bit of rotary tack-welding and I'll try to lay out the slots in the frame.  I think a hot knife (ground-thin soldering iron tip) may be the tool for getting most of the slots cut out, and a dremel for the final cuts.

Special Capitalism Bonus: *if* someone wanted to start selling these keyboards (or ANY custom-per-order layout), it would be possible to send a customer a slotted switch location mock-up plate or plates mounted in a frame without electronics, and have the customer figure out where to place key switches.  Charge a deposit on the plates to help ensure they come back.  Send instructions on spacing, and have the customer send the plates back with desired switch mounting locations marked out, or with switches installed by the customer in the preferred location.   Maybe send the switches and caps to the customer and charge a deposit for them too.  Making custom keyboards, with each set of mounting plates suited to the customer - that would be very slick!

[jacobolus]

The enabler is a total waste. It doesn’t save money, it doesn’t save effort, it doesn’t save space, it doesn’t improve structural integrity, .... I honestly don’t understand why anyone would ever use them for any purpose.

[VoteForDavid]

Ok forget the slotted plates idea for this project.  My fingers want wavy rows of keys and by golly they are going to get it.  I need to figure out how to get a location marked without moving the cap, but I think the way is to lay it out on paper literally- with key caps on paper and marking around the caps.

I did a bit more cutting, and there is more to do.  If I left the escape key support in place, I would have a very strong escape key, but no room for the rest of the F row.  Combine this cut and the leaving-out of the FLock key, and there is room in the F row to have proper spaces after F4 and F8.  Cutting the bar that made the F row narrow, and going to normal sized bottom row keys, are enough to be able to fit standard sized F row keys and still have some slack on interrow spacing.



The widths of the outside function keys (tab/shift/enter/backspace etc) are going to be much, much smaller.  Some of them nearly normal-sized.  I don't know where I'll come up with the caps, but that's a problem for Future David.

The ABS I thought to use is pretty old, and it was cracking like nobody's business when I tried to cut it.  Time to find more ABS sheets.

...30 hours...

[invariance]

The combination of angled key caps and various-length stems allows Microsoft to make truly compound curves on the main keyboard.  MX switches are all the same height, and the key caps are all straight right angles relative to their stems.  To use the flat plates would result in two angled sets of keys on each side...........The plan is changed for the main keys.  The guts are cut out to a consistent height around the edges, and flat plates will be bent and glued to these at about the same distance from the top of the frame as the mounting plates in the tenkey and arrows areas.  Mounting holes will be cut, keys will be mounted.

I was wondering how you would approach this.
This is just a thought and I have no idea how feasible it is but, the column of keys where the plate would bend (p, :, /), would it be possible to cut from the top down between the keys on the original plates, leave a bit of metal at the bottom of each cut, and then bend and splay it slightly?  Then repeat for the next column ([, '), etc.  Of course finish off with reinforcing the top of the plate.

During the laying out of my fingerprints on the keys, I noticed that this keyboard is WAY asymmetrical.  I also noticed that my right hand tends to splay a little more than the left "naturally" and the left tends to bunch up more than the right - on my LAPTOP keyboard which is a typical flat/straight affair.  For the most part, I have to give them credit: Microsoft *really* hit a home run on the layout for the 4000/7000 keyboards.

That was one major aspect I noticed with this keyboard also: even though MS designed for a better wrist position both inline with the forearms and rotationally (the tenting of the keyboard), they fell down when keeping the traditional key layout.  I find the right hand feels good with the key positions being in line with with finger extension/curl (ie row 3 and 5), but the left fingers still  bend uncomfortable in the wrong direction.  Now if the left hand could be a mirror of the right, then the left row 3 and 5 keys would be more inline with finger motion........

[jonlorusso]

The enabler is a total waste. It doesn’t save money, it doesn’t save effort, it doesn’t save space, it doesn’t improve structural integrity, .... I honestly don’t understand why anyone would ever use them for any purpose.

What if you leave them attached in a grid? 

[VoteForDavid]

@invariance
I could have kept modifying the Microsoft plates to mount my switches.  But then I'd end up with more and more of a mess.  A couple of the holes near the edges were going to be worryingly thin as well - might not even be strong enough to hold a switch!  If I weren't going for totally custom spacing, it might still be worth trying to "splay" either of my existing sets of switch plates.  Might, but I doubt it.  I really think fresh plastic is the way on the main sets of keys.

@jacobolus
The Enablers are just that - they enable.  If you want to observe best practices for soldering to switches, you can't do flying leads.  Flying leads are a bodge even when done nicely.  Enablers allow clean joints that will be strong with full penetration and nice fillets.  They also allow proper spacing and placement of diodes and LEDs which can be challenging if one is not accustomed to dead-bug soldering.  I guess if you really wanted to, you could use them to make a PCB with some clever fiberglass work. Surely there is already a thread on GH where the relative merits/demerits of the Enabler are beaten to death.

I spent some more time working out the matrix in Photoshop.  It kinda sucks to work on, but it's coming along.

I found some scrapped 22" LCD monitors with flat back panels and ripped them apart.  The ABS is much newer and softer, and cuts nicer than the sheets I tried to use the other day. I got the new plates cut out, and roughly the right shape.  I felt my mind not clear enough to do any welding, so I left off plastic work for the night.

An ancient soldering iron tip was ground down into a hot knife, tinned, and then the temperature was turned down to something more suitable for ABS than for solder (400ish F) and I put in a little practice welding butt joints in preparation for putting my new plates on.  Cutting the plates a leeeeetle bit oversize on some of the edges could be a good way to get them welded to the frame without having to add material when welding.  That would have been nice to think of before I finished cutting down the plates exactly to size.  I'll figure it out.  I thank God once more for a good mind and hands.  This would be expensive or impossible for me, if I couldn't do it myself.

...32 hours...

[CPTBadAss]

It's kinda weird to see your timer at the end of the posts. I don't even want to  know how many hours I've sunk into various projects.

[VoteForDavid]

I've never seen an in-progress hour log on a job this involved either.  It's as much for my own curiosity as to let everyone else know how long this is taking.  This is where I am keeping my notes, after all!

It occurred to me that I could yet use the Chyron switch mounting plates for the “right” side of the keyboard.  I finally thought to try heat staking to mount the metal to the plastic.  Drill a bunch of holes in the steel, melt some plastic through the holes.  Mounted.  The hardest part is making a surface to which to mount and stake the plates – but that is not so hard, just a lot of plastic welding.

So I cut into the Chyron plate.  The tenkey wasn't for a normal keyboard, so there's no stabilized spot for a big + key.  I cut one of the other stabilized key locations out of rest of the plate, and cut a hole for the stabilized key in the side of the tenkey plate.  I took a little care letting it in, and it fits snug.  I cut a few little bits of aluminum and glued it up with them on the underside of the plate.  I'll take off the clamps and flex it a bit tomorrow and see if it seems strong.  I used CA glue.  It's not great for aluminum really, but this is anodized and would clean up perfectly with acetone if it didn't work - so I figured I'd give it a shot.  I'd have rather had a nice TIG welded joint but why start using proper tools now?

...34 hours...

[VoteForDavid]

The tenkey plate seems strong enough.  It's just "superglue" but it's also just a keyboard and not exactly subject to outrageous force.  It may have been overkill but it didn't hurt anybody to leave it clamped up for a few hours.  Then I laid a bead of glue along the seams for good measure.



A bit of cutting and trimming, a bit of the hot knife, and I was able to get the tenkey plate about where it should be.  Two of the corners of the black frame rubbed on the top and bottom right keys as expected.  I notched the corners a little but was able to mostly leave the top of the plate.  It looks okay.  I might be able to fill in the area to the right of the + key area but I'm not entirely sure I will.  It would be tricky to get it to look right.



...It probably wouldn't come out as nice as this did.  This could have been better, but I think this is probably good enough to leave permanently.  It's tack welded in for now.  The little filler plate is flat, and the frame curves.  I couldn't set it flush, but a little bit recessed looks good I think.  It looks like an option that wasn't installed.  Maybe it wants a logo etched into it.

[VoteForDavid]

My 62g springs have arrived, and I am a fan of the one I installed so far.

I spent some time with the hot knife working a little on the frames closer to the shape they need to be.

And I feel like there are little Influenza demons working on the inside of my head with chisels and sandpaper.  Work on everything may be on a slow roll for the near-term future.  Nobody tell my boss.

...37 hours and slowing ...

[VoteForDavid]

I spent a little time working out the matrix circuit.  I finally got a clue and quadrupled the resolution so I could use brushes more than 1 pixel between the finer traces.  The working file is closer now to 200MB than I usually like to use, but storage is cheap and my computer was not

I spent a little time working on a tool.  I made a little jig to open all four legs of a switch at once, but it's fiddly work.  I think it is easier and faster to use the metal tips of my compass to open one side of a switch at a time.  It's easy enough to open a switch but I wanted to see if a quick DIY tool would make it easier.  It didn't.  Oh well.

At least it seems to have been a temporary allergic (over)reaction to mold in the local air, vs. influenza in my nose, thanks God.

...38...

[VoteForDavid]

More work on the matrix. 

I realized I still need to figure out exactly what I'm going to do with the space bar(s) and I'll go with that as the reason I've been avoiding working on the maybe-hardest part of the project (the main switch mounting plates).  As the lady said, "I'll think about that...tomorrow."

...39...

[VoteForDavid]

Behold the fruits of two hours' labor:



It's crazy that I would bill out nearly a hundred dollars to draw a bunch of squares on this paper, but there it is.  I found that I have enough of the right sized non-standard-sized switch caps for a full keyboard worth that will fit.  I found that the old, huge shift keys from the Chyron boards should be suitable for my new space bars.  I found that my space bars should fit just fine on the mounting plates I have (if the curved plates don't kill me there). 

This is looking more and more do-able.  I might be able to shift the right home keys a little closer to my preferred locations, even though these squares look pretty tight.  These lines were drawn around the outsides of key caps, and even where the lines touch there is like 1mm space between the keys.  The board is going to look pretty gap-toothed.

...41...

P.S. I looked in our inventory system at work, and found DOZENS of 122-key Cherry POS keyboards.  Before I let myself freak out, I checked.  Membrane switches.  0/10 do not want.

[VoteForDavid]

I finished swapping out the first bag of springs.  I need to break into the second bag to have enough for the full keyboard, then go through and test each switch for sticking.  Already I know several stick a little or "click" up instead of rising smoothly, and I'll swap their springs into switches that don't stick.  The reject pile already includes several bases that are anywhere from slow on the rebound to actually almost-don't-rebound level of sticking.

Pictures!  First the pretty:  I tacked the mounting plates to the bottom of the top frame.  I accidentally flipped the patterns when it was time to get these cut out and the textures are on opposite sides on each plate.  In case you can't see it well, the left side is smooth and the right is textured.  I think the texture looks better but I'm pretty sure it will be easier to score the smooth side.  Sometimes accidents lead to education, and I think this is one of those times.  I could be surprised and find the texture takes a more-visible score line.



Then the ugly: These are the worst of the rejected switches.  There were not that many really funky ones; these are the worst of the lot.

More

Corroded switch pin


Corroded interior contact


Corroded diode


Grotty slider - the only thing I can think is this must have been a switch that didn't have a key cap for several years or decades.


...43...

[VoteForDavid]

I sorted through all the loose switches I have.  91 have acceptable action with their new springs.  A couple dozen are somewhat sticky, ranging from slow on the rebound to a couple that wouldn't even pop up again.  I've almost got a full set of good here and I think I'll be able to deal with slightly-sticky switches for less-used spots like ~ and numlock, etc.

Some more time working out the matrix.  I've almost got all the traces outlined and it's going much easier since I made the image larger.  If I could tell myself what to do at the start, I would remind myself to break out the light table and make backlit images, because that would likely have been much faster.  Next time I have to trace out a matrix, I guess that's what I'll probably do.

...45...

...and my laptop died, so that's probably getting attention instead of this project tomorrow

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks God, the heat gun treatment revived the ancient nVidia GPU one more time!  Laptop in business, I fiddled with switches some more.  I have a full set of switches plus a few spares.  I don't have enough leftovers to fill a 104-key board for DW.  That, plus the fact she can use a straight keyboard mean I might just buy her one instead of hand-making another custom board.

...46...

[VoteForDavid]

OK it's time to start in on the main mounting plates.  That means it's time to finalize the layout* and mark switch mounting holes on the plates for cutting.

To that end, I made a couple of custom tools.  One is the size of a switch cap, with a central hole.  This can be laid on the square switch location marker on my paper layout sheet from 4 posts up, and the center of the switch can be marked.  You can see the + of the stem of a cap through the hole on the topright picture.  Drilling this hole on a switch plate will put a hole in the center of where I want my mounting hole.

The second tool is for marking out the to-be-cut-out squares for the holes.  It's approximately 0.55" square, with a central hole.  There are little baby gaps on a few spots when the tool is inserted in a switch hole and backlit,  but these holes probably won't be perfect anyhow.  To use, drill the hole you marked with the first tool, put a rod (drill bit) in the locating hole you just drilled, and put this tool on the rod.  Straighten this tool for proper key alignment.  Mark the square, remove the tool, cut out the mounting hole.  SOUNDS simple enough eh.



*I realized I could have more room for a larger carriage return key if I shifted the whole right hand layout to the left a little.  I realized I have room to do that.  When laying out my switch locations before, I was fixated on keeping the home keys in the same relative positions as the Microsoft layout had them.  I don't need them to be in the same spots, so I can move EVERY key.  I don't know why this was such a revelation but it was kindof a big deal for me.  I need to re-re-draw the paper switch layout picture.  I think, since the plastic frame pieces are mounted to the top frame of the board, I'll cut some paper to fit the mounting plate area exactly, instead of eyeballing it, and draw my layout with the paper in the keyboard frame.  Sounds like a minor hassle, but then - so is this whole project!

...47...

[VoteForDavid]

Holy.  Cow.  I would not have guessed it would take so long.  It took two hours to do a final layout for one hand.  I got halfway done, before I realized that I needed to begin with the home row.  I erased it and started again from the home row.   I was going for a large left shift key.  Left shift ended up a normal-sized key - and I am NOT going to be curling my hand halfway into a fist just to type a z with my pinky.  The z is going to fall under my finger like someone designed it that way and the Shift is relegated to standard-width.  There is enough space when all the rows are populated toward the top, to have a stabilized Space key at a hefty angle. 

It made a surprising difference to have the frame around the key plate.  It was surprisingly helpful, actually.

...49...

[VoteForDavid]

Okay this is either going to be brilliant or a disaster.  I think it will be brilliant.  It will take another man-week of work to even see if I like it   DW and her smaller hands are completely incompatible with this layout.  One more thing to make co-workers hate using my workstation   

The final layout, after much millimeter-scale revision on the right side:



Next up: drilling a hundred holes and making a bunch of little squares on plastic.  Then comes the really hard part.

...52...

[jacobolus]

I don’t really have anything substantive to contribute, but I’m enjoying following this thread. Keep us posted how it goes, and good luck!

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks!  I'm enjoying it too, especially thinking about how potentially good the board could be when it's finally done.  Every time my current MS4K registers key presses out of sequence because of the inconsistency of the membrane switches, it motivates me a little more to get this project done.  I've set aside my side job that brings in actual money, just to have "spare" time for this.

A little more work went into the pictures of the matrix.  I had to increase the resolution again for the hopefully-final bits of work, and the file is in the 300MB range.  I think I'll stop saving it to a USB drive because the loading/saving times must be getting ridiculous compared to how fast it would be on the SSD in the workstation.

I marked the locations to drill holes on the plates, and ran out of time for the night.  Turns out, the smooth plastic is WAY easier to see score marks and dimples compared to textured, but if one is inclined to make mistakes when marking for drilling/cutting the smooth plastic would show fewer of them.

...53...

[Zustiur]

I'm following this with great interest. Mushy keys was one of two reasons for not using the MS keyboard that I was given at work. The other was that it was wireless.

Please tell or show how you plan to cut the square holes for the keys. My mind boggles whenever I try to imagine doing that.

Regarding USB vs SSD I have to say save it to the SSD and (this is important) BACK-UP YOUR FILE. Not implying that ssds are unreliable, just saying that you don't want to risk losing all that effort!

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks for that, it's very good advice!  I currently have files within a day of each other in physically separate locations, and the computer copies the SSD to a platter drive every week also.  And I have a not-terribly ancient clone of my home PC sitting on a shelf at work, as a last-ditch backup for the local, airgapped backup drive for the home PC.  Backups: important.

Loading the file into Photoshop still takes several seconds, but saving is much faster to the SSD!.

The squares will be a challenge, for sure.  Currently I consider that the hardest part of this whole affair, and I will have to experiment a bit to figure out a good way, before I lay into the main plates.

I drilled out the center-locating holes and started marking the square mounting holes.  Pictures to follow.  This took surprisingly longer than I thought.  I suppose by now I should have stopped being surprised that everything is taking. so. long.

...54...

[VoteForDavid]

OK so now it's time to figure out what to do  )  I need to come up with a strategy for cutting these holes out.  The current plan is drill out the centers and xacto the corners and edges, which took 5-6 minutes each when I tried it before.  That puts me at around 7-8 hours of making holes.  Maybe a chisel could speed things along.  Then I need to mill (or otherwise thin) the backsides, because this plastic is too thick to let the switches snap in place.  Then I want to notch the sides of the holes to allow opening the switches without removing them.

The frame for the tenkey area was only tacked in place, so when I accidentally dropped the board it popped loose.  Making lemonade: I turned the plate into an alignment tool.  Mount the second custom tool and put the frame on it, and rotate the frame so the drilled hole next door is in the middle of the empty square next door.



This would have worked beautifully if the rows were straight or the keys were aligned regularly.  I got about 2/3 of the board done this way, and eyeballed the rest.  At least, with such an oddball layout, nobody is likely to notice a few degrees of misalignment

I used a very sharp awl to scratch around the square, to mark my hole locations.  The smooth side took a line much more easily.  The textured side looks a LOT better IMO.  In progress:



Done!

[VoteForDavid]

Using pilot-tipped drill bits of two sizes, I drilled the holes out to 1/2".  The square marks were disturbingly close to the edges of these holes, but 1/2" is smaller than 0.55" so it was ok.  I roughed one out square and it was still too small to fit a switch, so no worries.  I tried one of my smaller end mills but it doesn't have much in the way of side-cutting ability so I used a rotozip-like bit to rough out the corners of the holes on one of the plates.  I also tried a manual nibbler, but it's designed to cut material a hair too thin, so it could only take a partial bite.  It worked, and a slightly-larger nibbler would have been useful - except that it also marred the scored-square lines  so it looks like a bit of handheld x-acto trimming will be required for each hole but much less than otherwise.

It's scary how not-square the holes are, but they are also undersize.



in-the-weeds details about the drilling follow:

More

These two plates were cut from the same piece of plastic, so I was pretty surprised at how differently they reacted to drilling.  The smooth-up side drilled super easy.  It made fluffy shavings that had me stopping to clear the bit every 4 holes.



The texture-up side was WAY different.  It took three times of it catching on the tip of one of the flutes and rising fast, slapping my hand a little on the way by, before I figured out it needed a much-lower rate of feed.  Until that realization came, at the same feed rate, it kicked up these funky tight spirals of rigid plastic that kicked off the bit.



The voices tell me this pile could come in handy as a source of fine ABS, in the near future.  Note the tenkey plate included for scale.

...56...

[VoteForDavid]

The top layer of the matrix is all photoshopped up and the traces are different colors, ready to be sorted out.  The bottom layer is well underway. 

The second plate looks much like the first, with the holes roughed out square.

I think I have a method for the switch holes!  The baby end mill may not be much for cutting on its sides, but the end is sharp enough.  With the holes roughly square, mill the back of the plate to about the right thickness so there is less to cut, then cut the square to fit a switch nice and snug.  Mill the edges of the newly-square hole to something more like the right thickness, and the switch will fit and clip onto the back of the plate.  I got a couple of these done, and it seems to work well but with one caveat: the plastic is not a uniform thickness, so the depth of the mill has to be adjusted per hole.  That's a bit of a hassle, but it leaves the rest of the plate between the holes thicker, which will help with strength of the overall part.  It is much easier to cut the holes square with a knife, with the backside of the plate thinned a bit.

So the making of the switch holes may have just gone from the hardest part to only tedious.

...58...

[Zustiur]

I'm not sure that I followed all of that but the picture showing the drill bit with the pilot tip helped my understanding a lot! Thanks. That gives me options for my own custom board (thread coming soon). I wonder if foam board will be strong enough for prototyping. I think it will be perfect for such placement testing even if not for wiring up.

[VoteForDavid]

Foam board seems like more work than paper, but also more rigid if that's what you're going for.  Lay your fingers on a flat piece of paper in a position which feels natural.  Draw a circle around each fingertip.  That's your home row.  That's what I ended up doing anyhow.

The milling blockoftext will make sense with a picture of it done, which will be coming in the next few days.  Maybe some, maybe none work in the short term, I have a day trip to Houston and back and it might take enough energy out of me to not want to work on this at all!

[Zustiur]

Given the current state of my fingers I suspect teasing on paper won't be enough testing, though I'll definitely start with that.

[VoteForDavid]

Wait  what's the matter with your fingers, mate? 

So here's the back of one plate with examples.  These holes were drilled out, then roughed out with a side-cutting bit (a few days ago).  The holes are square-ish but all undersized and the corners especially need some attention.  In the top of this picture, the backs of the switch holes are all roughly thinned out with the mill.  The bottom-right has the square for the switch cut into the top (which is the reverse, in this view).  The hole will accept a switch but the edges are very close in places to the edges of the milled-out area.  The bottom-left holes have been treated to another pass on the mill, and there is "lots" of space around the switch hole.  There is room here and to spare, to cut out notches for opening switches without dismounting, in the future.



I went through and rough-milled the edges of the backs of all the holes on both plates.  Then I used a handy-dandy 1/2" wide, flat, fine toothed file to shape the holes.  I cut with the file to the square lines on top of the plates.  It's a file for steel, so this happens pretty fast (and leaves gouges in the corners of the holes which speaks to how far they are undersize! )  When the hole gets big enough to squeeze a switch in, the switch polishes the high points in the hole so they are easy to spot and knock down.  The switches are not-quite square, but if the holes are only cut enough to fit the switch one way, the sides may be bound too tightly and prevent the stem rising when the switch is pressed.  Make sure to cut the holes big enough to fit the switch when rotated 90 degrees for proper operation.

I also spent some quality time with the image of the matrix.  That's coming along faster now, since the image is over 300MB and I can use hard-edged 8 pixel-wide brushes.

...59...

[Zustiur]

I'm not sure if it is RSI or arthritis. My left pinky is the most annoying. I've noticed that with my other fingers curled to sit on a home row my pinkies have to be straight in order to reach. Column stagger helps, and I can test that on paper but I think key height will be a major help. That is where rapid prototyping on foam board comes in.

[VoteForDavid]

Seems like you might want to try a layout like the TEKB that has the pinky keys closer to the wrist.  If you can lay hands on a keyboard like the Microsoft Natural series or their new Sculpt, that will put the keys rotated on both sides to have pinkies closer to the wrists.  If you have worse problems with the left side, maybe rotate the right side of your current board away from you and see how that goes?  You sound like a prime candidate for an "ergonomic" spread layout.  Also maybe for
http://www.amazon.com/Pain-Free-at-Your-PC/dp/0553380524

[VoteForDavid]

I spent some more time on the mounting plate holes.  I timed it, it’s about 3 minutes or less per hole, using the file after the holes are drilled and rough-cut square.  Call it maybe 5 minutes total to get a finished switch hole.

The switch matrix image is finally finished!  I am in process of converting it into a wiring diagram.  It’s a pretty odd ball compared to some other matrices I’ve seen.  The traces wander all over the place, to avoid rollover and/or ghosting.  To get all over the place, they loop around and around each other.  The sections of the clamp-on PCB connector I thought were overlapping, actually don’t.  They used some of the pads on the bottom layer to provide contacts for the top.  Clamp it all tight, and you don’t need ANY other connectors so it’s pretty clever.

I added an image layer per trace (35 new layers) to show me where to wire what.  Because they’re all going to be on wires and not constrained to go around each other on a plastic film like the original traces, the routes are amusingly different from what Microsoft used.  This is going to be a rat's nest, though.  The image file is at 340 megabytes and will be growing quite a bit yet.  If I remember I’ll make a (much) smaller version just so you peeps can see how all-over-the-map this matrix goes.

...61, this is crazy...

[heedpantsnow]

Love this thread and always love the updates.  keep up the good work!

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks! 

***

Ok so here is what I'm dealing with: the switch matrix, both layers overlaid, much-smaller than the working file (which is currently sitting at 9000 x 3852 pixels, with over 40 layers, 353MB)


Now you get an idea what I mean when I say this matrix is all over the place!

If I am going to implement per-switch diodes, I need to figure out which side of these traces goes to which side of each switch.  Then there needs to be enough voltage to overcome the voltage drops of the diodes.  That would involve dozens of test points on the controller which I am disinclined to install, or re-wiring the whole thing AFTER it’s done.  This board has never ghosted or rolled over on me, so I think diodes are a complexity I may leave for version 2.  I’ll leave the diodes in the switches though, because it’s more work to remove them.

I need to finish the switch holes, re-install the plates in the frame, install switches, then wire it up. I can't really wire up the switches with the plates out of the frame, because of the way the circuit runs all over the place.  I am considering leaving the holes plain squares.  Since it's going to all be flying leads, there should be enough slack to pop a switch from its mounting hole without desoldering the switch, if I ever do decide to go back in there.The first-draft wiring diagram looks like this:



It would be REALLY helpful if I had a transparency printer, so I could make color overlays of all the traces and all the wire paths, and turn it over and have a 100% visual from the backside.  That’s not happening, but it would be cool.  I guess I could use the actual matrix sheets on clear Plexiglas, with a blank sheet on which I could draw one wire route at a time, but it wouldn’t have all the fancy colors the digital version has.  It WOULD be reversible, which is kinda huge because I made this matrix looking at the top, and wiring and soldering is from the BOTTOM  

I'm about 3/4 done making the square holes in one plate, then there are the holes in the other plate to finish which will take a few days more.  The astute observer has noticed by now the space bar switches don't have their holes drilled yet.  After the plates are mounted and the other switches populated and caps placed, THEN I'll be ready to decide on final space bar placement.  I may leave the plates and switches mounted to cut the holes for the space switches and stabilizers, but I'll have to remember to mask off the switches to keep ABS dust out of them!

[user 18]

It's quite admirable that you're going to all this effort to match up the original traces. Unfortunately, unless I'm missing something, you don't have enough information in your pink layer. You're representing each switch as a single node, but you need to separate which wires go to which pin on the switch. The exact pin is arbitrary, but each switch will have at least one trace going to each pin.

I would suggest you reconsider your desire to reuse the original controller. Building a Teensy 2.0 (or 2.0++) into the board would cost $20-30 or so, allow you to greatly simplify the matrix, put a full round of diodes in, and make your keyboard programmable, allowing macros and function layers. It's probably also possible that you could wire your trackpoint and buttons up to the teensy as well, unifying the whole device as a single USB peripheral.

If you're trying to get a bottom view of the traces, there's a couple things I would suggest:

1. Mirror the image left to right and flip the plate left over right when you turn it upside-down to solder.
2. Print it normally on thin paper, and put it face down on a lightbox. You can rig up a lightbox fairly easily for this application with a piece of glass (a tabletop or desktop will work well) and a desk lamp underneath facing upwards.

I've really been enjoying your progress log, keep up the great work!

[VoteForDavid]

As I understand it, each switch IS a single node, at the intersection of two traces.  The magenta lines are just to show which traces go to which switch, which is all I need.  Once they get to the switch, it's flip-a-coin time to decide which side gets which wire.  I remembered today that I have a BIG piece of glass that just needs to be cut to be used as a mounting surface for the traces and as a sketchpad for the wiring.  I think it would be a good idea to use opaque tape or take a piece of paper or something so I can clearly label each pane as TOP or BOTTOM view.  I'd hate to get THAT mixed up!  I also have a light box plenty big enough for this (a good suggestion BTW) and if I ever build a time machine I'll go tell myself to use that when making the images of the matrix sheets

Currently this is right at $0 +time, and think I like that as performance art for its own sake.  Anyone with this board and some patience should be able to follow in my footsteps, if the controllers are close-enough (and I don't see why Microsoft would ever feel like changing the controller pinout once they got a working unit).  Aside from reusing the original controller, yes a Teensy is a great way to go.  For one thing the matrix could be not-insane and laid out very neatly.  I don't need function layers or macros on this board for the forseeable future, and so programmability is nice in an academic sort of way.

Thanks!

p.s. forward this to the Unpopular Opinions thread in your imagination: I think function layers are silly when there is room for keys.  With all the web and favorites keys I intend not to install, there are EIGHT key locations just sitting around doing nothing on top of the board, plus the UTTERLY USELESS FLock and Insert keys. 

... now that I think of it, I guess it wouldn't hurt to include a DIP switch array that would turn on those keys, install and wire them, but just leave them useless.  But I won't.

[user 18]

Here's my concern with the way you've set things up, assuming I understand it properly.

When a controller scans a matrix, it will use a pin as an output, with whatever it's outputting (5V, 3V3 are pretty common). It will also use pins as input, and check for current coming into those pins. If current is coming in, it's clearly connected to an output pin.

In this picture, pin A is the output pin, and pins B and C are input pins that are intended to register the presence or absence of current flow. In the top drawing, the switch connected to pin C will only register properly if the switch connected to pin B is also closed, due to the connection of the red wire to the wrong pin. In the bottom drawing, both pins will register normally.


(sorry for poor photo quality, I hope you can tell what I mean).

Now, you've posted pretty low resolution images of your matrix, and it's pretty complicated. My eyes aren't good enough to tell if there is any point on the matrix of your board where this might be an issue, but I'd say it's fairly likely. If there are only two leads going to a particular switch position, then you're absolutely right -- orientation of the switch, and which lead connects to which pin, is completely arbitrary.

If you've taken the above into account and I've missed it, my apologies.

[VoteForDavid]

I am superduper tired (3x <5hrs sleep/night in a row) but I think you have missed something fundamental.  Either you missed that this board has a conventional matrix style controller with a crazy looking layout, or you have missed how a switch matrix works.  If the former, please understand that all the switches on this board do have only two wires going to each of them, and most have the same two wires continuing on to other switches in the matrix.  If the latter, Please see:
http://pcbheaven.com/wikipages/How_Key_Matrices_Works/

I spent some more quality time with the mounting plates and am 2/3 done with the other plate.  As I got more comfortable working with the material and developed a feel for what is required it started taking more like 1 or 2 minutes per hole, and I like that a LOT better than 3 or 4.

...63...

[user 18]

Okay, at this point I'm 99% certain we're just miscommunicating. I'm going to give explaining myself just one more go.

On your wiring diagram, you have a couple of nodes (which I assume are representing switches) which have 3 or more lines running from them. I've indicated a few on the diagram (circled in red).


Of those 4 wires, it's almost certain that there are some which are required to be on the same pin of the switch as each other, and some that must be on opposite pins from each other. Take a look at switch A1 on this matrix. It has 4 wires running from it, 2 red and 2 blue. One red wire runs to pin 1, the other runs to switch B1. One blue wire runs to pin A, the other runs to switch A2. The two blue wires would need to be connected to the same pin as each other, and the two red wires would need to be connected to the other pin.


If, for example, the blue wire connecting to pin A and the red wire connecting to pin 1 were connected to the same terminal, that switch would always read as though it were pressed, even if it is not.

The weakness of representing switches as nodes rather than as a conventional circuit diagram switch is that you cannot differentiate which pin a lead is meant to be connected to. The second image above (which I've snagged from your link on matrices), differentiates this by using blue and red wires to indicate which wire should be connected to each pin -- all the red lines go to one pin, all the blue go to another. However, your matrix diagram is all one colour, and does not have any method of differentiation between pins as far as I can tell.

[VoteForDavid]

Yes, I think we are talking past each other.  That is good!  Better than being factually incorrect - when we get on the same page we have both clarity AND agreement!   Otherwise one of us is still missing something   I think what you have missed is either or both the insanity and/or the method in the madness.  Here I have selected only three layers per image, to show the case of the Enter key, which has FOUR magenta lines to it when all layers are showing.

The magenta line is a wire path.  The gray line with dots on its length is a trace of the matrix circuit.  I have offset the magenta line down/left for clarity, as it partly overlays the gray line.



Same deal for the other sheet of the matrix, except that the trace in question is the orange line and the magenta is offset down/right.



Most switches have wires to and from, on the same leg of one circuit in the matrix.  In these two cases, the bottom-left diagonal line is headed for the controller.  For switches like this one which are "in the middle" of a trace, the switch has a wire going to-and-from each leg.  Some keys have traces that wind around so strangely that I chose to use the "wrong" end of a trace to connect the leg to the controller, and this is one.  The Enter key is a dead-end on the orange path, but the other end was probably screwy so I connected the dead-end to the controller for the sake of simplicity in making the diagram.  A few keys (off the top of my head, E is one) have only a wire from the controller to just the one switch on one sheet of the matrix, and the other side of the switch is connected to a string of other switches on the other sheet of the matrix.  Those keys practically can not be part of any ghosting, because they have their own dedicated circuitry.   

It is the equivalent of Microsoft laying out their matrix like so, with B1 and C1 on different circuits altogether:

[user 18]

Okay, I see what you've done now, and it makes perfect sense. It wasn't clear to me that you had two different wire path layers, as they were both rendered in similar or identical colours (at least on my screen).

Again, it's wonderful all the effort you've put in, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product!

[njbair]

That thing is insane. 18, if that diagram had made sense to you on the first try that would just confirm that you're crazy. So you've got that going for you, which is nice.

It reminds me of a transmission valve body. Every time I see one I think the engineer must have been certifiably crazy.

[VoteForDavid]

The solenoids on the valve body are your Fn and layer shift keys

OK so it took an hour and a half, but I went through and doublechecked my traces-to-buttons colored lines, and here is the wiring of the stock board.  Items in (parenthesis) are going to be omitted, mostly the Favorite and Web keys.  Keys on the TenKey area are preceded by "TK".  Please feel FREE to point it out if there is any key that isn't listed on both a TOP line and a BOTTOM line.  The TOP lines are on the top sheet of the matrix, the BOTTOM lines are on the bottom sheet of the matrix, and together they should have all keys duplicated exactly once.  The two digit number after Top or Bottom is the number of the contact on the controller, as numbered on my image.

Bottom  01 W
Bottom  02 LWin  V  1  F3
Bottom  03 Q
Bottom  04 Ctrl  Esc  (Mail)  4  Fav5  F6  Flock
Bottom  05 LAlt  2  (Search)  F4  3  Mute
Top 06  LAlt  RAlt  TK+  TK9  TK8  TK7  (TK( )  Home  End  Play  P  [  ]  \
Top 07  B  Caps  (Web)  (Search)  N  M  <  LeftArrow  DownArrow  RightArrow  TK0  TK.  FLock
Top 08  V  C  X  Z  Esc  F7  F8  F9  F10   F11  F12  CarriageRet  (TK<-)  Menu
Top 09  LWin  (Fav1, Fav2, Fav3, Fav4, Fav5, Fav*)  Y  U  I  oO  PrintScrn  ScroLock  NumLock TK/  TK*  TK-
Top 10  LShift  (Mail)  7  8  9  0)  RShift  Delete  PageUp  TK4  TK5  TK6  (TK) )
Top 11  Space  A  S  D  F  Q  W  E  R  T  Tab  F1  F2  F3  F4  F5  F6  Pause
Top 12  ~  1  2  3  4  5  6  J  K  L  >  ;  ?  -  +  Backspace  Insert
Top 13  LCtrl  G  H  RCtrl  "  UpArrow  TK1  TK2  TK3  TKEnter  (TK= )  Calc  PageDown  Volume+  Volume-  Mute
Top 14, Top 15, Top 16 (to zoom control)
Bottom  17  E
Bottom  18  R
Bottom  19  T
Bottom  20  ~  A  G  B  Y  7  F7  P
Bottom  21  S  N  H  U  8  F8  [  -
Bottom  22  D  M  I  9  "  ]  +  F9
Bottom  23  Space  Z  (Fav*)  Volume+  >  RAlt
Bottom  24  C  (Web)  F2  2  RCtrl
Bottom  25  F  5  0)  oO  <  F10  \
Bottom  26  LShift  3  F5  (Fav4)  Calc  CarriageRet
Bottom  27  X  F1  (Fav1)  Volume-  Play  RShift  ?
Bottom  28  6  LeftArrow  UpArrow  Delete  Home PrntScrn  F11  Tab
Bottom  29  J  DownArrow  End  PageDown  PageUp  ScrLock  F12 
Bottom  30  BackSpace  TK-  TK+  TKEnter  Caps
Bottom  31  Insert  Pause  (TK= )  (TK( ) (TK) )  (TK<- )
Bottom  32  ;  TK*  TK9  TK6  TK3  TK.
whoopsy I skipped 33 in the numbering!  I left it out here for consistency with my image
Bottom  34  K  Menu  RightArrow  TK1  TK4  TK7  NumLock
Bottom 35  L  TK/  TK8  TK5  TK2  TK0

...64...

[VoteForDavid]

Big time checkpoint!  All the holes on both main plates are squared and hold switches, and the backsides are thinned enough to allow switches to snap on.



It took a lot of adjusting on the drill press, but finally I just settled on "a hair too thin" and hit all the holes with the end mill, so they are all a good thickness on the mounting surgface.  I know this without installing switches, because I made another tool:



Its a scrap of plastic with a notch filed into it, wide enough to slip over a switch plate that's thin enough for a switch to snap on.  Checking holes with this is WAY faster than checking with switches.  If I'd made the plates out of metal (or plastic) the proper thickness, this wouldn't be required but ... oh well.

...66..

[heedpantsnow]

Big time checkpoint!  All the holes on both main plates are squared and hold switches, and the backsides are thinned enough to allow switches to snap on.

Show Image

It took a lot of adjusting on the drill press, but finally I just settled on "a hair too thin" and hit all the holes with the end mill, so they are all a good thickness on the mounting surgface.  I know this without installing switches, because I made another tool:

Show Image

Its a scrap of plastic with a notch filed into it, wide enough to slip over a switch plate that's thin enough for a switch to snap on.  Checking holes with this is WAY faster than checking with switches.  If I'd made the plates out of metal (or plastic) the proper thickness, this wouldn't be required but ... oh well.

...66..

Nice, dude!  So, switches and wiring are imminent?

[VoteForDavid]

For a certain value of "imminent" yes. )  Our lead programmer at my job has a saying, when anyone asks for some change or feature in the software we use.  "oh, it'll take about two weeks" and then everyone laughs.  He's been building this software for a decade at least, with constant revisions to suit company requirements.

So, this keyboard is almost done!  It'll take about two weeks 

Need to temporarily re-mount the plates
   populate with switches and caps
   and decide how and where to place the space bars. 
Then remove it all
   and cut out the holes for the space bars. 
Then re-mount the plates and finish the joints.  I am pretty sure acetone will be involved here, because I don't trust hot-welding the plastic on the backsides of the joints. 
Then I need to finish out the six key holes
   and arrow key holes; I think I might cut these out of fresh plastic too, seeing how well the main plates have gone.  Or maybe I'll trim them out of aluminum like I did the tenkey area, and no further trimming would be required but mounting becomes the challenge.
When ALL the switch mounting plates are done and mounted
   then populated
   then wiring
   then attaching the controller
   testing
   hopefully no troubleshooting!
Deciding what else to use (trackpoint, trackball, touchpad, scroll wheel, whatnot)
   Implementing that
Figuring out WTH to do about mounting the bottom of the chassis
   doing that
aaaaaand done!  So, a couple of minutes' work left still, at least - and all that's just off the top of my head!

[VoteForDavid]

Good news/bad news time!  I tacked the plates back onto the frame and populated them with switches and same-profile caps, and found that I need to fine-trim the mounting holes.  The curvature of the plates makes the holes a hair narrower (VERY tight), and some will need to be opened up with the plates installed, which stinks.  Also, a couple of caps were touching and interfering with each other, and they may need to be shaved just a little.  Maybe not, depending on which caps I end up using.

It turns out I don't have room for the superlong caps I was going to use for the space bars, but regular-long caps (tenkey zero caps) fit well at the angles I wanted.  I made some cardboard spacers and taped them to the undersides of the caps, and put a little piece of sticky-out rolled tape on the bottom, to hold the space bars temporarily in place.  Tweak, tweak, tweak.  After settling on a position, I scribed around the edges well enough to position the caps.  Then I did some stuff with a compass and straight edge and ended up with the outline for stabilized switches about where they should be.  These will be hard to cut, but should be do-able.  That's all the main plate switches located and all but two cut out.  Less than a dozen switch holes to go and the whole board will be ready for switches!

Anyway, because it was all put together, here's what it looked like for about a minute before I blew it all apart again (again):



Yes, the space switches are at drastically-different angles. 

[VoteForDavid]

I didn't like how the switches I was using all felt a bit different to each other.  Lack of consistency is one of the reasons for this project, after all. My unfounded, unresearched theory is that I put too much heat into some of the switches when I was removing the solder, prior to getting them off their previous PCB.  I spent a couple of hours changing these clear stems into the bases of the switches in another MX board that came through, with the nice side benefit of having a bunch of vintage black pieces I can switch in if it turns out I hate the ergo clears.  I also took the time to carefully wipe down every single stem, because some of them had visible "stuff" on them and some didn't.  I wiped the sides as well as the actuating/tactile bumps.  To do the whole board worth of switches took two hours.

I came across a board with PCB-mounted switches, and just left the switch bases soldered to the board, using the board as a switch holder.  Later, I'll do the ol' heat-and-push-sideways switch removal method, which I hope will allow me to put much less heat into each switch.  It seems like a good idea at the time, anyway.

...68...

[heedpantsnow]

I didn't like how the switches I was using all felt a bit different to each other.  Lack of consistency is one of the reasons for this project, after all. My unfounded, unresearched theory is that I put too much heat into some of the switches when I was removing the solder, prior to getting them off their previous PCB.  I spent a couple of hours changing these clear stems into the bases of the switches in another MX board that came through, with the nice side benefit of having a bunch of vintage black pieces I can switch in if it turns out I hate the ergo clears.  I also took the time to carefully wipe down every single stem, because some of them had visible "stuff" on them and some didn't.  I wiped the sides as well as the actuating/tactile bumps.  To do the whole board worth of switches took two hours.

I came across a board with PCB-mounted switches, and just left the switch bases soldered to the board, using the board as a switch holder.  Later, I'll do the ol' heat-and-push-sideways switch removal method, which I hope will allow me to put much less heat into each switch.  It seems like a good idea at the time, anyway.

...68...

Rock on brother!  Keep at it and you'll get there. Thanks for always being faithful with the updates.

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks, and you're welcome.  Encouragement during a long, tedious process is always welcome.

I think I may try left-spacebar as a backspace key.  That sounds like a very good idea.  I basically never use my left thumb for Space. 

I had the faint-but-horrible feeling that I might get the board done and just hate the custom layout.  The Microsoft board I'm using at work is so close to good, it makes me a little afraid that a radical change will be too much.  There's one way to find out! It might be a good idea to tack it all together instead of finishing the joints, so if I need to go to back with some more-conventional spacing the plates won't be too hard to remove.

Speaking of removing, it is WWWAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYY faster and easier to disassemble a board with PCB mount switches versus plate-mounted.  My.  Goodness.  I depopulated the entire board and had time left over to cut the larger shapes for the space key and stabilizer holes in an hour of work tonight.  Those stabilizers will be challenging and I am glad I've only got two to do (for now).  I'm not glad I was slinging a soldering iron while tired, because I grabbed a hot switch the wrong way and burned my palm but oh well.  That's what you get sometimes.

...69...

[VoteForDavid]

As it turns out, these switches are much more finicky about their mounting holes than I thought.  The holes I had made were too tight to varying degrees.  With the previous inconsistent switches, it was hard to tell what was going on.  With these different switch bases, it is easier to know when the hole is wrong.  The switches rub inside and feel different, when the switch holes are just a thousandth or two small.  The right size seems to be small enough to catch the retaining clips, but large enough I don't have to press hard at all to get them all the way in the plate.  I haven't measured, but something tells me this is approximately 0.55" square

I finished one of the stabilizer holes, then mounted a switch and cap and found that when all three pegs are in the switch cap it becomes very important that the dimensions and relative spacing are the way they should be.  The least little misalignment, and the stabilizers will rub.  With slightly more misalignment, the stabilizers would actually hang up at the bottom of travel.  I got the switch operating smoothly and punted on the other stabilizer.  I started fitting holes to switches and got about half of the plate populated with switches for (hopefully) the last time.

ETA: ...70...

[VoteForDavid]

I finished populating the first plate with switches, cut the second space stabilizer and switch in, and fitted a few more switches to the second plate.

...71...

[heedpantsnow]

I finished populating the first plate with switches, cut the second space stabilizer and switch in, and fitted a few more switches to the second plate.

...71...

Sweet, that's major accomplishment!

[VoteForDavid]

Hey thanks!  It really was.  I was surprised how touchy the stabilized switches were, but I think I shouldn't have been.

Both main plates fully populated



Tenkey populated



The nine last key holes are roughed-out and await finishing.  The arrow key holes will accept switches but the plastic is too thick so they don't clip in position yet.  I'll need to trim the backs of these a little.  Then the nine remaining key holes are all that's left to cut square, thin out, and populate.  That will be all the keys in place!



I clicketa-clackety-clicketed on the arrow keys and it was soooooo nice.  It made me want to have a keyboard full of these switches . . . heeeey wait a minute . . .

...72...

[VoteForDavid]

Moral for the night: freehand on the end mill is something one ought to practice, but with care a passable job can be done.

In related news: all the MX switch holes on all the mounting plates have been finished and populated!  A lot of plastic work was required for this part.  The separator between the six switches and the three switches on top was too fat, leaving too small a place for the top three switches (just like the Fn keys had).  I had to rework the area with my hot knife, and joined the pieces here.  I also had to do some adjustment on the up-arrow key area, because I cut the switch hole too far up and the cap was hitting the frame.  Oh well.



Some of the switches are sideways because I got carried away with the file and the holes were cut a thousandth or two oversize, and switches couldn't catch the plate to latch on - so I cut the holes to accept the switches sideways.

If I can figure out how to get the calculator and media buttons working with switches attached to the top frame, I can fasten the switch mounting plates to the top frame and begin wiring the matrix.  If not, I'll have to figure out some sort of connector that can be disconnected to allow me to separate the top and bottom frames.

...74...

[VoteForDavid]

The top three switches from last night have the same problem as the up-arrow: I'll need to work on the plastic of the frame to allow the key caps to move freely.  Boo.

Tonight was media button time.  The switches I picked out for these are a bit hard to handle because they're so small.  To allow the buttons  to sit at the right height for these, I had to put them at a certain angle resting on the frame, instead of down in the button hole.  The plastic of these switches melts much hotter than ABS, so I decided to go with hot glue instead of heat welding.  Lots of hot glue.  I used the hot knife to sting around the holes so the hot glue would have something to bite onto, and filled the area around the button holes with hot glue.  Then I trimmed the glue down flush with the edges of the frames.



A little dot of hot glue to hold the switch in place, with fine adjustments to position and angle.  This was tricky.



Then hot glue was added a very little at a time, building it up to hold the switch *very* firmly in position.  This is still incomplete, but you can see the progress here from right to left.



The buttons don't really have anything to hold them straight, and they wobble a little.  I hope this won't bother me.  I don't look at the keyboard much when I'm working, so maybe it will be alright.  To make them more stable would be a challenge.  They click the switches and that's the point.



...75...

[VoteForDavid]

The media buttons are all hot-glued in place.  DW pointed out that hot glue is rework-able, and so I went with hot glue instead of acetone to join the switch plates to the top frame.  I also selected a set of key caps which, although it looks pretty terrible, feels pretty good.  I need to adjust the plastic of the top frame in a few more places, but that will have to wait for another day.  Pictures will have to wait for another day too - it's tomorrow already!

...78...

[VoteForDavid]

Plastic work on the top plate is done.  I changed a couple of key caps, but now all of the keys actuate easily as they should.  I need to figure out what to do with a trackpoint and maaaaybe a scroll wheel from a mouse, if I can cram it in there.  Another late night.  Photos will have to wait again.

...80... two solid man-weeks.  I bill well into three figures for this kind of time, when I have a client paying bills.  I've lost that maybe much again on the side job I laid aside to get this project done.  This better be one heckuva keyboard.

[VoteForDavid]

Okay here is the board fully populated with keys, and all the plastic work done to the top frame for key fitment.  DW asked why there is such a wide gap between the keys on the left side, and I reminded her it's so the keys will fit the natural spread of my fingers.  My fingers.



By the space and zero keys, I changed the slope of the edge of the frame, because the frame slopes up to the keys and this made a sharp ridge that bites into a thumb as the keys are pressed.  This being uncomfortable, I knocked down the edge.  I melted and shaped it down with the hot knife, and sanded it smooth.  It's ugly.  That means it matches the rest of the board I guess.   I may end up having to paint this thing when I'm all done, and maybe also get a color-matching set of key caps.  Maybe.  The Microsoft board looks really cool in stock form, but I intend on never having to market this board and I'm not really sure it has to look nice.  I *may* get some kind of filler in the edges, so the bottom row of keys aren't just adrift in a sea of emptiness between the frame and the keys.  :shrug: we'll see.

I think it would be cool to have a scroll wheel in the keyboard.  I have a scroll ring on my ExpertMouse and I love it.  I plan on having a trackpoint in the keyboard, and I don't like to lose functionality.  If I can get in a scroll wheel to go with the trackpoint, it will duplicate the functions on the trackball.  Here is a much-altered Logitech scroll wheel from a mouse someone recycled, in its new home in my keyboard:



This scroll wheel is a little different than in most of the mice I've taken apart.  This model has a pushbutton to allow the (metal) wheel to spin freely, or to put detents into the rotation.  It's pretty slick, but the mechanism is large and my space is limited here so this was difficult to fit.  The scroll wheel has its own daughter board inside the mouse, and that board is small - but not small enough to fit with no trouble in my keyboard.  As I don't need to use the switches on the scroll wheel, I hot glued the side switches to hold the plastic mount for the wheel steady, and cut off the end of the circuit board because it was hitting the space key.  Note that the daughter board hangs way down inside the keyboard:



There is a strong reinforced section in the bottom frame in the Microsoft keyboard bottom frame, right under this location.  Well, there was.



I think it fits now, but it is hard to know.  Not only because it's impossible to see in there . . .



. . . but also because the frames don't mate perfectly.  All the modifications I've made to the top frame prevent it laying down on the bottom frame like it used to do.  I am keen on not making a whole new custom bottom frame, so a lot of cutting-out of old reinforcements and mounting points is going to be required.  Here you can see the new mounting plate for the tenkey area sitting on top of structure that was useful for the original Microsoft hardware.  This mounting stuff is all going to have to go, to fit the new parts I've fitted on the top plate.



There!  Finally, a solid update with pictures for you   There are some nights when I'm modding that I just don't have an update in me.  I workandwork unti I realize I'm getting muzzy, and just stop working.  My brain barely has enough juice to get a single-sentence update posted, but I know I like seeing even quickie progress reports in other peoples' build threads so I put one for you people.

...81...

[njbair]

This is really coming together! Looks really good, too.

[neverused]

I see that you have already progressed quite far, but this may be of interest to you:

http://web.archive.org/web/20140703132149/http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=12439.0

[VoteForDavid]

@njbair thanks a lot!

@neverused thanks, I have seen that thread.  I was *very* glad that the Wayback Machine saved the pictures.

&

but now: ugh.  I got the trackpoint module wired for switches and tacked in with hot glue.  It looks great.



I'll need to toss in some black foam or felt or something, and the aesthetics are pretty well spot-on for me.  The stem protrudes a good amount in a good location.  It's great.  But then I went to wire the switches to the Microsoft controller. 

I hadn't looked very closely at the controller to date.  It's a continuation of the matrix from the two sheets, and the circuitry of the keyboard matrix on the PCB is not entirely straightforward.  The switches for Forward and Back, which I would have to isolate from their traces to use as Left and Right click with the trackopint, are in the middle of strings of key switches in the matrix.  I'd have to make clean slices of the trace *around* the solder fillets in a couple of places.



I'll probably put some jumpers in there to reroute the traces, which is no big deal.  I'll also have to integrate the just-taken pictures of the PCB into my big file of the keyboard matrix.  I tried just now, and my laptop sort of sat there with a blank look on its screen.  It tried to open the file, it really did.  But I'm not sure it can handle that much data.  I'll try again at lunch at work.  Using an actual Workstation can make a big difference

[VoteForDavid]

I realized today that I am obsessed with this project, and that I am okay with that fact, if I can finish it soon. )

I also realized that I don't need to figure out anything on the controller board.  I just need to jumper around the two sections where the Forward and Back switches are.  That didn't stop me from sorting out the traces on the controller and adding it to the .psd file with the rest of the keyboard.  It's now pushing 380MB and takes a long time to load from and save to an SD card (! )

I was happy to find that there is metal under the black (carbon) contacts on the controller.  I was able to gently scrape the black coating off the traces of the controller, and tin the traces.  This is kind-of a huge deal for making this controller easier to use.

I also tried to make a list of exactly what switches go where (like in reply #80 of this thread) but as I was double-checking the list I realized I had skipped/missed a bunch of switches.  I'll have another go at that and then I'll be

finally

ready to lay down wires on the key switches!

...85...

[VoteForDavid]

Ready for wires!  I double-checked and I'm 99.863% sure the switches need to be wired up as follows:

edit: er, well, maybe not so much. As I found out later, this is reversed!    The numbering is backward because I didn't flip something in photoshop.  So. 01 is on the right and 35 is on the left in this picture. That only cost me an hour or so


The red bars are for layer alignment in Photoshop.  The black contacts are nice and shiny now 

01 W
02 Win, V, F3, 1,
03 Q
04 Left Ctrl, Escape, 4, F6, Flock
05 Left Alt, 2, F4, Mute
06 TOP Left Alt, Right Alt, TK+, TK9, TK8, TK7, End, Home, Play, Backslash \, ], [, P
07 TOP B, Caps, N, M, <, Leftarrow, Downarrow, Rightarrow, TK0, TK. Flock
08 TOP V, C, X, Z, Escape, F7, F8, F9, F10, F11, F12 Return, RightMenu
09 TOP Win, Y, U, I, O, PrtScrn, ScrLok, NumLock, TK/, TK*, TK-
10 TOP LeftShift, 7, 8, 9, zero, RightShift, Delete, TK4, TK5, TK6, PgUp
11 TOP Space, A, S, D, F, T, R, E, W, Q, Tab, F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6, Pause
12 TOP Left Backspace, Tilde, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, J, K, L, ;, >, ?, Insert, Backspace, +, -_(by+)
13 TOP Left Ctrl, G, H, Right Ctrl, MidEnter, Uparrow, TK1, TK2, TK3, TKEnter, Calculator, PgDn, V+, V-, Mute, " ' (by Return)
14 TOP NC
15 TOP NC
16 TOP NC
17 E
18 R
19 T
20 B, G, Y, 7, P, F7, Tilde, A
21 N, H, U, [, -_ (by+), F8, 8, S
22 D, M, I, 9, " '(by Return), ], +, F9
23 Space, RightAlt, >, V+, Z
24 C, F2, Right Ctrl
25 <, O, backslash \, F10, zero, 5, F
26 Return, Calc, F5, 3, Left Shift
27 ?, RightShift, Play, V-, F1, X
28 Left Arrow, Up Arrow, Delete, Home, PrntScrn, F11, 6, Tab
29 J, Down Arrow, End, PgDn, PgUp, ScrLok, F12
30 MidEnter TKEnter, TK+, TK-, Backspace, Caps, Leftbackspace
31 Pause, Insert
32 ;, TK*, TK9, TK6, TK3, TK.
33 didn't pay rent, got kicked out of the list
34 RightArrow, TK1, TK4, TK7, NumLock, RightMenu, K
35 L, TK/, TK8, TK5, TK2, TK0

MidEnter is the Enter key from the tenkey area, duplicated on the right plate by the Control and Left Arrow keys
Leftbackspace is the left space bar converted into a backspace switch
TK designates keys on the TenKey area
TOP lines are from the top sheet of the matrix

...86...

[VoteForDavid]

I wanted to mark the back of the board with key names, but I don't have a tiny white paint pen.  Oh well.  What I did have is some unicorn-vomit ribbon cable.  This is what it looked like after I pulled off the extra wires and separated the conductors.  This is the starting point for my wiring harness.



The voices reminded me to check for clearance.  I have no clearance on the scroll wheel PCB.  It fits exactly against the edge of the keyboard PCB with a little compression in there for good measure.  When I say it barely fits I mean "thank you Jesus it almost doesn't fit at all" and it fits - but barely!



Instead of marking the switches to know which is which, I pulled up a picture of the top of the original keyboard and proceeded to trim the cables approximately to length.  A couple of the wires look like they will be *barely* long enough.  They are pushing a meter long.  This matrix is crazy.

I was -->.<-- this close to wiring up the board when I realized I still hadn't worked around the two buttons for the mouse keys.  It was tricky work, but I got jumpers around the switch locations on the PCB, and wires soldered on for the trackpoint switches.  I don't know how I'm going to do the permanent mounting of the PCB.  It was screwed to the bottom plate.  I don't want to leave it flopping loose enough on the wires to be able to screw to the bottom again - and my wires aren't long enough even if i wanted to.  It's going to be fast to the top plate.  I'll figure that out later.

..88..

[VoteForDavid]

The unicorn-vomit cable harness was soldered onto the contacts of the PCB.



The process of wiring the switches has begun, at long last.  The potential for disaster here is very high.  I decided the only way I could reasonably expect the board to be neat enough to work with toward the end of the wiring job, was to be (relatively) extremely tidy.  Lots of little baby tack-welds with hot glue are involved.  The Holy Spirit prodded my tired brains to not solder these joints and it's a good thing - I routed one of them to a wrong switch!  All I had to do was pull on the wire and it popped loose.  If it was soldered already, it would have been much worse to deal with.

These wires are pretty easy to work with.  They are stranded, and the insulation is fairly soft but resists heat quite well.  Some wire jacket materials will shrivel away from a soldering iron, but these just sat there and didn't squish or shrink away - even whilst being pinched with tweezers and soldered.  The hot glue didn't melt the insulation either, but I did glue myself to the board a couple of times.  Using a pair of scissor-style wire strippers, I cut the insulation and tugged a bit.  The insulation can be pushed about a centimeter, which is about enough bare wire to wrap around the leg of a switch.



It's nice that the next takes-a-long-time part of this project can be done in the A/C.  DW can't be in my shop because sawdust residues give her an allergic reaction.  I can do this bit on the bed while she looks at cat videos or whatever online.

...90...

[Stargorn]

This is an incredibly inspirational thread. I can't wait to see more!

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks! . . . but . . . you have to wait.  Unless you have a time machine faster than mine.  Mine only goes 1 second per second, and only forward in time.  At least it does work very well.

This is slow going.  Even slower when a wire breaks instead of stripping properly, like the green one did.  I had to patch on a bit of orange at the end.  Electrons are largely colorblind though so it should be okay.  The difference from the last picture to this one is an hour of work, with interruptions from a toddler who didn't want to go to sleep at bedtime.  Two *long* wires with lots of connections, taking minutes at each connection.



The blue and yellow wires flying loose toward the top of the board are for the FLock switch I'm going to put somewhere other than next to the F12 key.  I'm thinking of mounting it recessed in the back edge of the top plate so a pin has to be pushed into a hole to actuate the FLock key.

If this controller gets killed by ESD, I'm going to be unhappy.  I've got a few of these kicking around at work, though.  I can grab another one and change out the controller.  If THAT doesn't work, I'll be tempted to rip all this insanity out and get a Teensy.  I'm praying it works though, because I'm getting so close to done.

[VoteForDavid]

Remember all that talk about mirror images?  Yeah . . . so I had the image of the controller PCB backwards in the file in photoshop.  All the wires were in reverse order.  Fortunately, they were backwards in a way that made them longer than necessary, so the mistake was simple enough to repair.  I just remembered I didn't clean the flux off the board so I'll get that later. 

Switching the wires around and stringing one more conductor: 1 hour.  Happily, the result looks even better than what I had last night.



...92...

[heedpantsnow]

Dude.  Amazing.  You have so much patience and determination.  So many of us would have just given up...a long time ago.  Keep going brother!

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks a lot!  I have abandoned my share of projects in years past, but this one is different.  I sit there every. day. typing on the motivation to get this finished.

But not tonight.  Tonight will be the first time in nearly a week I will try to go to bed before 01:00. 

... and earlier today, I had the idea to try my hand at a custom keyboard for gaming on my laptop.  So that's three keyboard projects.  One at a time though!  This is by far the more complicated endeavour.

[VoteForDavid]

another hour-and-change, another three wires routed.



...93...

[VoteForDavid]

Another hour and a half, another two wires 



I hope this starts to go much faster.  All the remaining cables go to fewer switches than these two do.  These were about the longest two wires on the board.  And one was short  I had to tack on another extension.

LESSON: don't cut your wires until you've finished running them out on their switches!

I also had to re-do a connection from a previous day that I noticed was not in the right place.  I'd put a little wire from the middle of a long run to the backspace key instead of the space bar.  I removed the little wire and put a longer one to the proper switch.  My fingers are starting to suffer from this work.  If I were still playing guitar, those calluses would come in handy.  I set my guitar down a long time ago, and my fingertips are getting sore from pulling at the insulation on these wires.  I'm using a scissors style stripper here because the space is just too small to use an Ideal Stripmaster.  If you have never had the pleasure of using a Stripmaster, you have been working too hard on your wiring.

...94...

[tufty]

I've missed a few updates here.

Rather than pissing about with stripping and hot-gluing, why aren't you just wire-wrapping this?  Should take around 3 seconds per switch.

[VoteForDavid]

I am wire wrapping it.  Kinda.  Every switch contact has one or two turns around the lead.  The leads of these switches aren't tall enough for a nice four or six turns per lead with a proper wire wrapping tool.  The wire is like 22 or 24AWG - too thick for many turns.  Plus, these are PCB-mount switches and the little stabilizer pegs would interfere with a wrapping tool.  With "normal" wrapping, I'd still have to strip the wires.  Plus, I like the idea of making each conductive trace in the Microsoft matrix be one continuous wire in my keyboard.  The hot glue is to prevent the thing ending up like a bowl of spaghetti before I'm done.  It also holds the wires in place until they are soldered down.  I'm not soldering the wires to the switches yet, because this part of the project is about as straightforward as installing crown molding.  Hot glue is very easy to undo and redo, which is good because I'm undoing and redoing a bunch of times here.

... which is a nice segue to mentioning that I found two more mistakes in my routing from a previous day.  Minor, easily correctable, but mistakes nonetheless.  If this had been all soldered up as I went, these would have been harder to deal with.

Another hour-and-change, but more wires tonight, because these had fewer connections each - as few as one, for a couple of them!



...95...

[tufty]

Well, it's your time, an' all that.  If I was spending 45 minutes per row without even getting the benefits of solder fumes, the whole ****in' lot would have gone out the window long before posting the first photo.  And I'm notoriously patient

What I've not said is that you're doing something lovely, so keep at it.  No matter how you do it

[VoteForDavid]

Well that may be a left-handed compliment, but thanks!

Time flies when you're having fun and are distracted, so I'll just call this two hours over the course of three and a half hours watching movies with DW.  Today I noticed that a lot of the switches are surrounded by switches already wired on both sides.  It feels like the end is near (because it is).  One or two more nights and the wiring will be done.  Then another work session of only checking wires.  Then another night to sleep on it and I'll risk a power and function test. 



...97...

[alienman82]

removed.

[VoteForDavid]

 ) This board is never coming apart to pull a mold off the parts!  If I can help it, it's never even going to be disassembled once it's completed.  The spacing on the keys is pretty funky, so copying it as is wouldn't work so well for most people anyway.  AND that would be a pretty huge project for a first-thing-I-ever-cast.  After I have picked up my side job again and replenished my walking-around money, completed DW's keyboard, completed a custom game controller I'm thinking about, THEN I might take the lessons I've learned and shave eighty hours off the process of making another of these for sale   It would have to be either really fast/easy to make, or be really REALLY expensive for whoever buys it, for me to make these for sale.

However, the MS4K is fairly common.  I think it makes more sense to either figure a way to retrofit a mechanical board into the (relatively attractive) Microsoft frame, or else find a honkin' big 3D printer to make the whole thing in one piece.  Or, you know what would be sweet - have Kurplop machine it out of a 15lbs. billet of aluminum!  Good God, what a beautiful thing that would be.

But for now, I'll have to settle for having completed the wiring to all the switches (save the to-be-mounted FLock switch). 



Check wiring
Test keyboard
Figure how/where to mount the brains of the mouse, and do that
Figure how/where to mount the PS/2 to USB converter, and do that
Figure how to get the bottom plate back on, and do that

...so, I'm practically finished now.  From a certain perspective.  If you tilt your head and squint really hard, it's practically finished!

...99...

[alienman82]

removed.

[CPTBadAss]

Or, you know what would be sweet - have Kurplop machine it out of a 15lbs. billet of aluminum!  Good God, what a beautiful thing that would be.

That would be incredible.


Still loving this build log. Thanks for continually posting .

[heedpantsnow]

Me too. Thanks for the dedication.

[nova779]

I really like this project, I wish I had the patience to do something like this but handwiring that large of a matrix and all of the other work to make it look as great as it does good job. I can't wait to see the finished product.

[VoteForDavid]

Thanks everyone for your kind words.  I have two words of my own:



I checked every node in the matrix against my plan and it all read good continuity, so I plugged it in and Windows found the driver and tried to install the Microsoft keyboard software.  I used an online keyboard tester and all but two of the keys registered properly.  It doesn't read the Backslash or left Alt keys.  Two of the keys near custom-cut edges hang up mechanically.  Otherwise perfect function first try!  Thanks God!

I was ready to spend another hour or two poring over the matrix, until I thought to check the switches.  All the switches worked before.  I tested them.  The two keys that don't register, don't switch.  The switches failed for reasons unknown but I have spares.  I suspect the leads flexed too much during this whole process.  A few switches' leads bent over and had to be un-bent.  These may have broken internally.  Yet another reason to be glad I caught a hint to NOT solder the wires down just yet, thanks God!

Edit to add the best milestone post hours counter update ever: 100 hours of work and successful initial function check!

[alienman82]

removed.

[VoteForDavid]

*snort* not hardly, but thanks!

I have an 11 year-old son learning to type.  He was practicing the other day at 17WPM.  Pretty good, I told him.  I explained to him that 40 is considered proficient, 70-80 is decently fast, and 110+ is insanely-ridiculously fast, like it seems as if one must be pretending to type, hitting the keys that fast.  I've measured myself at 70ish on the Microsoft board at work.  I don't anticipate it getting much faster, but it should be more pleasant by a pretty wide margin.

[VoteForDavid]

I am typing this on the DK1.  It is strange.  The layout is different.  The small Shift keys will take some getting used to.

The backslash was not working right because I had put the wires to one switch contact and one diode lead.  That's not gonna cut it!  The other key that was not working was the left Alt key.  IDK what happened but it works now.  That's all the keys working except the FLock which I haven't yet installed.

...101...

[kurplop]

Congratulations. It's been fun watching this progress. 

What's still left to do?

[alienman82]

removed.

[kurplop]

I am typing this on the DK1.  It is strange.  The layout is different.  The small Shift keys will take some getting used to.

Don't be too concerned if the layout seems strange. It doesn't necessarily mean it's not right, it will just take a little getting use to.

No matter how well we plan things there is still a learning curve.

[tufty]

That's excellent news.  Well done!

Photos are required.

[VoteForDavid]

Check wiring
Test keyboard
Figure how/where to mount the brains of the mouse, and do that
Figure how/where to mount the PS/2 to USB converter, and do that
Figure how to get the bottom plate back on, and do that

...so, I'm practically finished now.

...

I have a teeeeeeny USB hub for the mouse and trackpoint so there will be "just" two cables.  That has to be mounted.  Also I think I'll try to fill in the expanses of open space around the keys with ... something?

[VoteForDavid]

I tried to wire in a baby USB hub to eliminate one USB wire.  I got it all wired in and ... it didn't work.  I was going to have a pair of USB ports open on the back of the keyboard which would have been cool.  Oh well.



So that was an hour down the drain.  I undid all that wiring and got the mouse motherboard wired to its daughter, tested, and a USB cable wired to the motherboard.  It's all super-professionally hot glued in place and tested.  Scrolling like a boss.



I trimmed the board a bit more and it has a liiiitle tiny pocket over in the top/right corner between screw holes.  I was worried the cables to the daughter board would be too long, but it works so . . . it works.  And it "fits" so I'm calling this problem solved.



I got the trackpoint wired in to its own USB cable.  The wires on the PS2/USB converter were thrashed.  Broken inside the insulation, close to the potted-in circuit board.  I figured I'd either have to get another converter or cut off the encapsulation and replace the wires.



The trackpoint PS2 converter was successfully de-encapsulated, wired-to, and glued in place.  The trackpoint tracks.  This step took over an hour!  I slipped the wrist rests in place and figured out they will be tricky to mount if I can't re-use the Microsoft bottom case.



The 7 key kept sticking.  It was binding.  The top and bottom (black and silver) parts of the top plate just wouldn't stay put together.  Hot glue wouldn't do it.  Not enough room for acetone to make it stick hard enough.  Microsoft must have found the same issue because they put screws to hold just this section together.  I put a couple of washers in there to hold my plates and this seems to be the fix.  I put a few more little screws in a few holes which seem to be there just to hold the top plates together.




A few more dabs of hot glue here and there, plus a big pile of glue where the cables exit the housing.  I think the electrics may be done enough to test this keyboard in actual use.  It looks like a complete prototype, anyway.



The strain reliefs on the Microsoft cable are very nice parts.  A steel clip on the cable with overmolded plastic.  There is almost no way this is going to pull out of your MS4K keyboard!



I tried to install the bottom plate, and it will take a LOT of cutting to get it back on the top plate.  Permanently installing the wrist rests without it will be tricky.

The right and left click button panel from the top of Logitech mouse was welded together in the middle and trimmed big-time.  This part has a pleasing contour and a thumb will glide over it well when using the scroll wheel.  I hope.  The mouse's freewheel/detent rotation selector button was removed, cut, customized, and very-tediously shaped to fit the two notches behind the scroll wheel. 





The wheel's click selector button used to mount on a long lever arm, and it used to press right in the middle of these two notches.  The two notches are now seats for the new points on the bottom of the button.  The button is held in place by the top (left/right mouse button) plate.  The top plate is held in place by a few tack welds now, but will be solidly in place later.  The little selector button is currently free floating but held fast, and click-selects the scroll action like it should. 



These two little bits of plastic took an hour.  All told, another sixish hours of work.

...107...

[VoteForDavid]

Tonight was for plastic work.  The inside of the bottom plate got some major surgery, but the outside is what's a) visible and b) more dramatically-obvious:



The things that poke out farthest are the lens for the laser mouse, and the cable for the keyboard controller.  The far edges of the keyboard also have switch contacts and posts poking down into where the bottom plate used to be.  The ribbon cables for the laser mouse squish down easy, so they really don't protrude as much as it looks like here:

orange line shows the plane of the bottom of the frame


The wires on the extreme outsides of the mounting plates also interfered with the bottom case.  I wish now I'd run ALL the wires inboard of the outermost switches.  Oh well, lesson learned.


the smiley face is spent 7.62x39mm casings on red fiberglass, happy at my entire shop all the time

I noticed that the shape of the top frame makes a BIG difference in how this cover fit, and that affects how the button works.  I had to get the bottom plate and palmrests screwed on in order to get the fitment right, so I could weld this together.  That's going to take some work, but it's at least firmly together now.



I was showing the progress on this project to DW and pointed out to her the drastic irregularity of the key caps I've got on here, so I'll show y'all too:

Arrow keys


Plus and Enter keys


also note how the side case doesn't close right.  This sucks.  I think it may stay that way, or I may see if I can put some torsion on it somehow.  It's the thinness of the bottom case in this area, less than an inch wide, that makes it flex when it's all screwed together.

Additional Enter and Backspace keys


and the far left row is just crazy but I think I may like it.  The left shift is SO tiny I think I'll need it to be this tall, at least for the initial adjustment period.


I'm thinking about skinning this with a thin sheet of plain fiberglass I've got laying around so the bottom will be closed.  We'll see.

...109...

[VoteForDavid]

I started to look into what I have to do to close the bottom of the case, had an idea for bending up some ABS and . . . punted.

Fiddled with keycaps some more.  I think this is the sort of thing that is never 100.00% final.  I spent some quality time with the hot knife and got the scroll wheel pretty well final-welded.  A little sanding and it will be done.  I touched a couple of rough edges elsewhere on the frame with the heat also.

...110...

I told my dad during his visit over the holiday this weekend, I'm not sure I'd do this all again if I knew from the start how long it would take.  Maybe it would be 40 hours of straight work on the next one, without all the false starts.  :shrug:

[radish]

I started to look into what I have to do to close the bottom of the case, had an idea for bending up some ABS and . . . punted.

Fiddled with keycaps some more.  I think this is the sort of thing that is never 100.00% final.  I spent some quality time with the hot knife and got the scroll wheel pretty well final-welded.  A little sanding and it will be done.  I touched a couple of rough edges elsewhere on the frame with the heat also.

...110...

I told my dad during his visit over the holiday this weekend, I'm not sure I'd do this all again if I knew from the start how long it would take.  Maybe it would be 40 hours of straight work on the next one, without all the false starts.  :shrug:

nothing good ever came easy! I'll be glued to my seat spamming f5.

[VoteForDavid]

I dunno, winning the lottery sounds pretty easy 

The assembled keyboard was too flexible with the huge hole on one side of the bottom.  The side with the small hole was pretty solid, but it didn't have a flat corner so it rocked a little.  I put the feet back on the bottom just to check, and when the middle of the board was elevated unsupported, it was VERY flexy.  Having learned a lot from the first bottom case, I am scrapping it and going much more conservative on another one.  Smaller holes, and melting instead of cutting where possible.

I found some very thin ESD mat at work with a tacky underside texture.  If I glue that to the bottom of the "finished" DK1 it should stay firmly in place on my desk.

Some sanding on the welding by the scroll wheel, and it feels good.  That's almost done.

...111...

[VoteForDavid]

The second bottom frame is coming along.  With the first as a guide, I was able to make the cuts much smaller on the sides.  I kinda guessed on the area near the mouse motherboard, and that is proving troublesome.  I'm trying to keep the original feet, and it would be a lot easier to not.  The geometry on the bottom of this plate is such that losing the feet makes a pretty dramatic difference and the board will rock a little without adding something to the bottom again.



On the left side, I routed all the wires away from the outer edge of the board.   Hot glue helped out again, being easy to undo a small dab here and there.

The sides close with light pressure.  This is kindof a big deal for me, and I would like for them to close even better.



The front would close if I had the palmrests on there.  In theory, I could call this "done enough to use" right now.  I want the back to close up tighter, though. 



This is challenging because I can't SEE what's touching in there.  I may try squeezing the frames onto some foam like it was plastigauge.  I don't know how else I'll see where it's rubbing.

...112...

[VoteForDavid]

Okay I think it's as tight-closed as I can make it, and still stick with the original objective of using MS4K frames.  That is to say, the gaps are not perfect but everything is 5mm or less (ish) in the rear and the front and sides are decent.  I trimmed and melt/smooshed a few more things inside the bottom case and did a LOT of looking into inscrutable places with a torch, vainly hoping to see what else was hitting.  I think I'm done with that.  I rerouted the USB cables, but they are still a limiting factor that keeps the back from closing tight.  The USB cables are just too thick, and they can't be routed anywhere else but along the back edge of the board.  I have seen thinner USB cables, but they all had this superthin coiled magnet wire cables vs. insulated-and-stranded, and that stuff SUCKS to work with so I don't want to try it on this project.

I very plainly see now the merit of screw holes on the switch mounting area.  This material is too flexible to hold perfectly tightly together with such a large span of un-screwed-down parts.  The entire board does flex, but only if you are trying to see if it will flex by twisting it in both hands.  It seems steady and firm enough to type on, but that remains to be seen during actual testing/use.

I cleaned up the side and rear cut-outs on the bottom plate and they are ready for closure.  I think I'm going to try to fit a section of ABS over the mouse motherboard, to protect that. 

I thought about it, and realized the *only* time I ever hit the FLock key on purpose was because I needed to un-F-Lock the board after accidentally hitting the FLock key.  I am going to leave the wires in the board in case I need to touch them together, but I think 8 years using this model of keyboard without needing that key are enough time to say I don't need it.  But JIC, the wires will be there still when the bottom is unscrewed.

Either way, I'm almost ready to take the DK1 to work and see if there is anything I can't live with, using it as a daily driver.  This project is rapidly approaching . . . dare I say it?  Dare I hope it? 

...completion?

...113...

[VoteForDavid]

I ran a little flame over the edges where the scroll wheel was welded in place.  That's done, but it looks pretty much the same as it did last time you saw it.

A few small pieces of ABS were cut and welded into place to cover the major gaps on the bottom frame.  The holes being covered obviates the installation of a neoprene bottom skin.  The bottom frame so reinforced is not only closed, but also somewhat more rigid than it would otherwise have been.  I call this part of the project a total victory!





I think it looks pretty good actually, all things considered:



The side and rear gaps are not perfectly tight.  As I said before, I am okay with that.



For a DIY project reusing someone else's injection molded parts, and fitting a few of my own manufacture to the constraints of the existing parts, I think this is actually not terrible-looking.



And on that note, with the "new" key caps I've picked out of the pile as shown below, with not even 115 hours on the work totalizer hours meter, I'm going to go ahead and call this project

finished!



********
I'm not really happy with how the DK1 looks.  I would like tighter gaps around the edges between the upper and lower frames.  I would like MUCH smaller gaps between the upper frame and the keys, especially the bottom row of keys.  I would like a set of BLACK keys to match the color of the frame.  I would like to have only one USB cable.   I would like Kurplop to machine a well-fitted set of frames for this of aluminum and then black-anodize it to match the key caps.  I would like a winning lottery ticket.  Barring all of that, I'm set to take this battleship to work on Monday, install some black foam by the trackpoint, and run it through its paces.  Pray to God it works or I might pull out the rest of my hair.

[kurplop]

This has been a fun thread to follow. It looks great, especially considering the limited resources you were working with. I will miss the regular updates. Make sure you give us further updates on how well it is working out for you, the things you got right, and the things you will change on your next one. Yes the next one. You didn't think one keyboard mod would satisfy you did you?

By the way, I'd love to case that for you. Unfortunately I already have too many other irons on the fire.

[yehoshuaf]

What. Have. You. Created?

[VoteForDavid]

It would be pretty involved and *very* tedious to try to design a case long-distance but I appreciate the sentiment Kurplop!  I have access to a CNC mill locally and if I really wanted to, I could turn a big fat slab of aluminum into case parts.  Well, it would probably be several big fat slabs of aluminum because this is complicated enough I can see having to make a few mistakes and starting over repeatedly.  You wouldn't know anything about that though eh?  The nice thing about 3D CAD/CAM is the models give you a lot of chances to eliminate errors before ever making the first build.  I think most of the time on the next unconventional board I make, is going to be time staring at a computer screen instead of piles of someone else's parts.

@yehoshuaf I hope I have created the best keyboard I've used to date bar none. 

I know for a fact that I have made a very, very big mistake.  I found a board in the recycle bin with vintage blue Alps switches.  I'll have to use the DK1 for a while just to get used to it, but there is a possibility that I may have to make a future version with Matias Quiet switches.  I'm guessing that the switches, plus key caps, plus controller, along with the huge 3D printer for making case parts, adds up to an expensive board.  )

Looking back through this thread, I notice I've left out any provisions for liquid spill tolerance.  Here's hoping I don't spill anything on this!  Somebody remind me if/when I start another build thread, to build in drainage channels.

[VoteForDavid]

I like it.  I like it a LOT on the right hand.  The left hand will take some learning but it's not that unhappy.

Long-winded post about using this for a day:

More

I'm already thinking of making another board.  Of course there will be minor changes to the layout if there is a second version.  I’ll have to type on this for a couple of months to get used to it before deciding what exactly wants changing.  No more of this BS Microsoft insanity matrix, that's for sure.  Maybe a swiveling space key...?  The whole thing have to be 3D printed or milled.  Making these parts by hand was some serious hassle.  I would probably try to keep play/volume/mute and calculator keys.  I would NOT have an FLOCK function!  If I made one more board, I'd be close to making another one, and that would have a good probability of being a TKL board.  And for sale.
 
The Good:

• The scroll wheel is absolutely brilliant.  I cannot see building myself another keyboard for daily use without this feature.
• The middle enter key I added is surprisingly helpful when using the trackpoint as a mouse
• The tenkey-zero space key was the wrong angle.  The backspace I had on the tenkey works okay instead, and the zero is okay as . . . zero on the tenkey
• The trackpoint adds a lot of functionality.  It's nice to not have to go all the way over past the tenkey. 
• Typing numbers is easier with the numbers spaced for my hands, as expected.  The tenkey didn't get as much use today as usual.
• The tiny 1.25 backspace key on the top-right is less difficult to use than I expected.  I barely notice it's not a 2U key during use so win.

The neutral:

• The scroll wheel is surprisingly more useful with the click detents disengaged.  With the ability to stop it and go back so easily, the lack of a clicking scroll that stops itself doesn't bother me at all.
• The initial impression is that this keyboard makes me sit more squarely-aligned to the board with less leeway for "hand slouching" as I type.
• The enter key by the right control key means I have to pay more attention when reaching for the control key
• I put a taller key on the left Alt and it works better in practice.
• Left Shift works okay with a slanted 1u key, but I wouldn't mind if it were a 1.25 or 1.5 wide key.  I may have gone too far in the "shrink" direction here.  No way to learn that but by trying it.  I've never tried a tiny shift before so :shrug:
• One of the times I plugged the keyboard in (one, not seven) the computer tried to install Microsoft's Keyboard and Mouse Center software.
  
• The trackpoint is not as nice as I thought it might be.  It's not as smooth as I expected when it moves the mouse, and the acceleration could use some tweaking.
• The spacing on the bottom alpha row, and the positioning of the command keys on the very bottom row, will take some getting used to.  This is a pretty radical layout.

The Bad:

• The left-click button gives a hollow plastic sound I don't much care for.  "Next time" I'll use a nicer switch.  The right click is quieter.
• The angle of the scroll wheel would be better if it were rotated just a few degrees.  The geometry of the parts I was using dictated the angle.  The nice shape of the Logitech mouse parts I used to cover the scroll wheel mostly makes up for this.  "Next time" the angle will be closer to the angle of the space key than straight-across like it is now.
• The trackpoint falls asleep every couple of hours and has to be unplugged and replugged-in to wake it up again.  It doesn't wake up gracefully either, and takes a minute to regain function.
• Wouldn't you know it, FLOCK actuated.  Probably the teeny tiny bare end of the wire made contact with another line in the matrix.  I had this board apart 5 times today because of this.  The current result is short wires poking up between the F8 and F9 keys.  Actuate with stainless steel tweezers as needed.
• The left Control key is too far inboard.  Next time I spend eleventy hours making a keyboard, I'll probably put it closer to the outside edge of the frame and maybe a 1.25 or 1.5 size.
• My left thumb is lazier than (insert horrible racist stereotype here) and weak for pressing the backSpace key.  It's going to have to man up and muscle up.
• Left Space - as - Backspace will take some getting used to.
• a few times, resting my hand on the board pressed the F key.  This is a training issue, which may also be solvable by installing the original (stiffer) Clear spring again.  I couldn't deal with a board of MX Reds for typing!
• I'll have to relearn how to press left Shift and left Control.  I used to smoosh the Microsoft keys with the side of my pinky.  With the smaller keys with edges poking up, I have to use the tip of a finger.  I turned the caps sideways and that helped some.

The ugly:

• Space stopped working after the first re-assembly of the day.  And all the keys on one of its matrix legs.  This ended up being the fault of Microsoft. The bracing to hold the matrix connectors to the black contact on the PCB very firmly . . . pushed on the wires I soldered to the controller PCB.  One of the jumper wires I placed to bypass the forward/back switches and turn them into mouse left/right click, the end of the jumper was pushed by the brace and the trace came off the circuit board.  This was two of the five times I had the board open today, and the fix was to solder the jumper directly to the pad where the matrix wire comes in, and to almost-completely remove the bracing from the lower frame so nothing is pressing on the wires anymore.
• When FLOCK is activated, F1 through F12 don't work and neither does the trackpoint.  I HATE the concept of that FLOCK switch

[VoteForDavid]

Here it is a month later (MAN time flies!) and I've been using this board full-time at work.  I still like it, and there are some minor issues.

The layout has improved with familiarity.  Discussing the high points of the things I made non-standard with this board:
*I could have put the left Control key farther to the left, but I've relearned that key and I hardly notice it.  I strike it with my fingertip now, vs. the side of my pinky.  That's how I designed the board, so it's according to plan.
*The additional Enter key has proved its worth.  When using the trackpoint as an input device, it falls neatly under my pinky, compared to the stretch to get all the way to the Return key.
*The left space-as-backspace has not proved its worth.  Not only do I still sometimes find myself reaching for the space bar there, but when using other computers I find myself reaching for the backspace there.  This is too non-standard to not have it everywhere.  I choose nowhere.  If I ever go back into this board I'll rewire this to be a left spacebar again.
*The scroll wheel remains useful, but after initial excitement I have gone back to using the scroll wheel on the Expertmouse for most scrolling.  This may not have been worth all the effort required to implement on this build.
*The trackpoint is increasingly useful.  The more I use it and get used to its quirks, the better I like it.  This was worth the effort.
*1.25 backspace is not a problem.  It's a reversed cap with a huge slope to it, so it is easy to find.  Maybe a cap the same as the rest of that row would need to be a 2U key but this works fine for me.
*I'm not in love with a 1u left shift.  It could go to 1.5u and have tighter spacing on the bottom row of alpha keys and that would be fine.  It's totally usable as it is.


Possible improvements that wouldn't appeal to everyone
*I could use Delete and Backspace keys in the middle, between the split sections - maybe between the G and H keys.
*The Microsoft matrix can go straight to you-know-where for wiring it up, but it works, and the controller includes a Calculator key which I use sometimes.  I would like to stick with using matrices from keyboards that have dedicated Calculator keys . . . but it would be fine if they weren't this same controller.
*A new frame/case.  I like the wrist rests on the Microsoft board, but the rest is not 10/10 would reuse level of goodness.  I'd ditch the favorites and web keys altogether, and move the media keys over.  The LEDs don't just HAVE to be in the middle IMO.
*Better switches for the mouse buttons.  These don't sound the same as each other, and they don't sound like a high quality part. 

I am okay with the Ergo Clear switches, but I have a couple of clicky alps boards here and I understand what Matias means when they say all the Cherry switches are inherently linear.  I don't necessarily want a CLICK when I hit a key, but I do want serious tactile feedback. 
 
I covered the tenkey area and moved the Expertomouse out of the way as an experiment.  With the layout made to suit me like this, I could use a TKL board.  Also, this board is totally usable as the only input device, as long as the trackpoint doesn't do something weird with the system focus.
 
I found a black keyboard with MY switches and ripped off the caps.  I ran them through the ultrasonic cleaner and glad I did!



I didn't mind the beige and the font was nice, but black looks a lot better to me.



Looking at this, a couple of things bear explanation.  First, yes this is how it looks IRL.  I work in a dark cave because i prefer it that way. Also, the yellow.  The F keys on the left side I use all the time but the ones on the right I use less often.  My keyboards get this yellow paint-with-legends action to remind me what these keys do.  The windows and menu keys, I matched to the F1 and Insert keys: I pulled their caps off.  I rarely use them, and they got in the way of my new black 1.5U caps.  All the capless keys have been blackened on the horizontal parts, so they are still visible by the white on the stems but they blend in WAY better now. I took a soldering iron to the F and J keys.  They are dished deeper on the top but it's not enough for me to feel.  I can feel this.

This is probably the last update for this thread.  10/10 glad to have done this build.
[/img]

[user 18]

I think this looks a lot nicer with the black keys. Really glad to have been following this thread and to see the build evolve. Glad everything's worked out for you, and I look forward to seeing what projects you'll tackle next!

[VoteForDavid]

It was a surprising amount of work to maintain a build thread in progress.  The next project is in-work, but y'all will get a retrospective build log type post for that

And no more counting the hours. 

[heedpantsnow]

Man thanks so much for keeping us informed and entertained with this. I learned so much by watching what you were doing!

[harlw]

Good heavens - bravo OP, certifiably insane but highly entertaining

[blueangel2323]

Hey David, I have a strange request for you... any chance you could send me your pictures of the different layers of the membrane? I want to verify that your Natural Ergo 4000 has the matrix set up identically to my wireless version 7000. Thanks...

[VoteForDavid]

Shoot me a private message with your email and I'll see if I can dig them out of the memory hole.  If I can get something like a reasonable file size I might post them here. But I'll have to remember, because that sort of file size in Photoshop is strictly for my workstation at work! Sorry to get back to you so late, I kinda lost all my custom keyboard momentum for a while and fell off this site too.

I just realized I've been daily driving this thing for a few months now! The odd layout suits me fine.  It's shocking how little I use the tenkey now that the numbers fit my hands. The scroll wheel died, which sucks when using the trackpoint.  The tiny left shift and offset left control are still very slightly problematic. Pretty much everything else is brilliant.

Except that it's picking up crumbs and beard hairs and dust and good LORD no wonder nobody builds keyboards with wide open spaces like this one has!

[blueangel2323]

Shoot me a private message with your email and I'll see if I can dig them out of the memory hole.  If I can get something like a reasonable file size I might post them here. But I'll have to remember, because that sort of file size in Photoshop is strictly for my workstation at work! Sorry to get back to you so late, I kinda lost all my custom keyboard momentum for a while and fell off this site too.

I just realized I've been daily driving this thing for a few months now! The odd layout suits me fine.  It's shocking how little I use the tenkey now that the numbers fit my hands. The scroll wheel died, which sucks when using the trackpoint.  The tiny left shift and offset left control are still very slightly problematic. Pretty much everything else is brilliant.

Except that it's picking up crumbs and beard hairs and dust and good LORD no wonder nobody builds keyboards with wide open spaces like this one has!

PM sent.

Also, I can't believe you got rid of the extra row of keys above the number pad. They are probably my favourite thing about the 4000 compared to previous Natural keyboard. Very convenient for entering formulas in Excel.

[VoteForDavid]

Excel and I are not good friends..

Anyhow, I decided to avoid destroying my bandwidth allotment with the .psd file for one user if possible   It seems like you should be able to get the idea from a .jpg of each layer at a sane size, so how is this:







Pretty drastic edit due to rehosting from photobucket: The pics are 4k wide so here's links in case it may mess up someone's interface if they tried to show full width. Note that the keys are labeled in these images, which is kinda hard to see in these 1k pixels previews.  In Photoshop, you can delete the white, add one sheet as a layer over the other sheet, and compare something like what I was doing. 

https://i.imgur.com/fTOmLZ9.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/u4Z3ccr.jpg

[blueangel2323]

Wow, colour coded and everything! That's awesome. I scanned the membranes from my defunct wireless version but haven't had time to figure out the conductive paths yet, so this is super helpful. Thanks again!

[VoteForDavid]

If your computer has the horsepower, I recommend using very, very big pictures for analyzing these circuits. My working file was something like 9,000 or so pixels wide and my laptop can open it, but it can't really do anything to the file in anything like a reasonable amount of time. Even at that size, individual traces were just a few pixels wide in places.

The color coding was for me, but I'm happy if it can be helpful to you also.  I would go through and select one trace with the Magic Wand tool in Photoshop, then use the Paint Bucket to make it all one color. Where there were gaps in the selection, I used a little tiny Paintbrush to fill them in, until selecting with the Magic Wand would clearly show the entire trace was selected.  This was a severe pain in the behind to do, but the result was worth it.

[VoteForDavid]

I got tired of not having the ability to scroll at all, when using the trackpoint.  The trackpoint stops working for brief periods for unknown reasons, but it mostly works enough that I can almost always count on it working when I want to use it.  Sometimes a man wants to scroll without having to reach over to the scroll wheel on the ExpertMouse!

So.  I looked into it and figured out that the model of mouse I used as the donor for my scroll wheel has a common fault: it will stop scrolling.    Many users report BANGING the mouse on the desk makes it scroll again.  I'm not banging my DK1 on the desk.  So.  I taped up the sensor of a Microsoft optical mouse to see if it would fall asleep, and it would always scroll when I moved the scroll wheel.  Good enough.  Here's the circuit board before cutting off anything important, for reference:



And here it is after removing the rotary sensor and trimming the board as small as I feel comfortable doing at the moment:


I don't know if the optics matter, so I put a glom of superglue in place and clamped it overnight. Hopefully either this holds or the optics don't matter.


I had a chrome scroll wheel from another mouse of a similar model to the one already used in the DK1.  I saved it, thinking I might like to change it out with the one currently installed in DK1.  I never got around to that, but I still have the wheel.  Same size, same weighting. Nice.  This heavy, metal scroll wheel is very nice. But the scroll wheels use fundamentally different technology.  One uses an optical interruption and the other is rotary motion sensing.


So...I busted the guts out of the one wheel and stripped the over-molded plastic off the other wheel:


and did some trimming.  Note the teeth inside the metal wheel, that they taper somewhat:


A bit more trimming, and the diameters were looking really good.  More trimming got them even closer, but the teeth on the metal wheel were preventing me inserting the plastic axle easily.  I started thinking about reducing the diameter and using hot glue, maybe using heat to get the parts to melt enough to install, or maybe just risking a press fit.


I decided to risk a $0 part (Like everything else in this project, these pieces came through as scrap to be recycled) and used sockets (from a socket wrench set) and a bench vise, and forced the middle of the Microsoft wheel into the metal wheel.  This is a very tight fit and it's not moving anywhere. It's unfortunately a tiny bit crooked, and when spun by hand there is a fraction of a millimeter of runout.  I don't think this will be noticeable in actual use.  With the rotary sensor attached, the wheel no longer spins freely.  This heavy metal scroll wheel makes the scrolling continue for longer than a light plastic one in a regular MS mouse, but there is a definite detent at each line of scrolling.  I guess I'll see what sort of user experience this gives in actual use.  Later.


I showed this to NP and he was very impressed.  I forget that I have been blessed with extraordinary fabrication and bodging abilities.  He said he didn't think this was possible, but here it is.  Yet another hour sunk into the DK1 project.  Call it 115.  Probably at least a few more to come.  Updates will follow as progress is made.  The keyboard is still in daily use though, so this one might take a while to work into the schedule.  First I'll have to see if the mouse still works after the abuse it's already received!

[VoteForDavid]

Weeeeeel that failed.  I don't know what happened, but the mouse didn't like it.  When plugged into a USB port, the LED would flash and then the mouse played dead pretty convincingly.  So, on to the next mouse.  This one is unmolested, aside from having the scroll wheel's rotary sensor removed, and the wires previously soldered to the other sensor from the (freshly-killed) mouse soldered to the appropriate places:



This mess worked. 



So I decided to try to consolidate all the bulk on top and relocated the wires to the top of the PCB.  It's not pretty and it's not strong, but this isn't a load-bearing joint and the keyboard isn't a moving part, so I expect these joints should hold ok-enough:


It seems the optics aren't that important.  I left this plugged in for a while and the LED stayed lit.  The remote-mounted scroll wheel continued to work.  I'm tempted to turn this PCB into a power light for the keyboard, but it seems like that would be even more work so I'm going to skip it.  Maybe someone who was REALLY interested could turn this LED's power into a driving signal for other lights as well.  I leave that to people who care more about it than I. 



Next stop: See how far back this board can be trimmed, if necessary, to get it to fit in the limited space available inside the case of DK1.

[VoteForDavid]

AAAAAAAAND it works and it's nice.  I've gotten used to using the trackpoint without a scroll function.  Today is the first day I've tried the newly-installed scroll function, and it's nice.  The angle is a little strange for use with hands on the keyboard - a corner of the wheel digs into the side of my thumb, then.  When used with hands on the trackpoint, the angle is perfect. THankyouJesus I think this keyboard is finally functionally complete!

Pictures of the latest round of work:



Here is a test fit with the sensor mounted on the axle.  That looks like a tight fit, but only because it's a tight fit. I had to trim out one of the walls a bit to fit the sensor.



 and on the other side, alignment in the slot is looking pretty great.



 The bottom of the body of the mouse was cut up until I had just the mounting brackets for the scroll wheel.  Then I needed a couple of tiny little braces to hold the axle in place. These were cut and glued in, and the wheel no longer spins as freely but it's still okay for me







 this was a pain in the behind.  Finally I got everything trimmed and fitted, and the mount was glued in place.



 unfortunately, messing with the bottom busted the top loose.  The plastic welds were not thick, and they are now both thin and partially broken    This is cosmetic only, and the joint was well enough fitted (as I pat myself on the back) that I don't notice the tiny cracks around the scroll wheel area when actually using the scroll wheel.



 but it looks terrible with the lights on!



The edge of the PCB is too close to a screw hole. Also, the circuit board seems to be about the right size, but the optical sensor protrudes right where there's a support rib so...



 the support rib was cut out in that spot.  This let the board lie pretty much flat against the plastic. The PCB was still too close to the screw hole...



 I cut the support a little more and slid the board over a little more. The screw hole is clear, and the board is now glued in place.  Call that done. I stripped the fat wire insulation off the 3-wire sensor cable and twisted the cable in case noise matters. The wires run through the rest of the keyboard twisted like this. 



 Speaking of cutting plastic... the new Microsoft mouse circuit board is much longer than the previous one.  I had to cut off a corner of this custom plastic blister, to get the back of the DK1 to close up again.

It still didn't close up very well.  I noticed that the middle of the board was not quite right.



 Opening it up again showed these brackets were pushing against the cable for the keyboard's controller (the dark blur running toward the bottom of the screen on top of the rainbow of key switch wires).  I trimmed the brackets down to fit around the cable, and the DK1 now goes back together better and feels slightly more solid than it ever did before.



 A tip for working with this sort of thing and keeping the screws where they go: use some low-strength sticky tape with a little tab folded on one end, and leave the screws in their holes.  Unscrew the screw, and just tape over the hole.  This prevents the screws wandering away.  Fortunately I have a bunch of these Microsoft boards to mess with, because I lost a lot of screws until I figured this out.

This is another 2-ish hours of work.  117.

[VoteForDavid]

The F and J keycaps didn't have enough of a nub for me to feel when I made the DK1, so I burned a bunch of holes in them with a soldering iron and there was at least a texture.  The texture has now worn down to the point that I could barely feel it.  I added some nubs even my fingertips can feel easily. I used a soldering iron to melt/weld a bit of additional material onto the key caps. A piece of scrap plastic was the source for the added material.   

Now the nubs are quite palpable.  Ugly, but effective.  They are around 3mm tall and surprisingly difficult to photograph well:



I find that I usually keep my fingers hovering lightly over the keys as I type, and these home key nubs stand taller than the rest of the keys.  Finding the home position is now laughably easy.

[AMongoose]

I added some nubs even my fingertips can feel easily. I used a soldering iron to melt/weld a bit of additional material onto the key caps. A piece of scrap plastic was the source for the added material.   

Now the nubs are quite palpable.  Ugly, but effective.  They are around 3mm tall and surprisingly difficult to photograph well

This is great! scoops be dammed, nubs 4lyf.

[dev_dull]

This keyboard build looks like *exactly* what I want, but sadly, none of the images are working; all have the message "...enable 3rd party hosting..."  Sounds like hot-linking is disabled for the account 

[0100010]

This keyboard build looks like *exactly* what I want, but sadly, none of the images are working; all have the message "...enable 3rd party hosting..."  Sounds like hot-linking is disabled for the account 

Look here : https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=91556.0

[daedalus]

This keyboard build looks like *exactly* what I want, but sadly, none of the images are working; all have the message "...enable 3rd party hosting..."  Sounds like hot-linking is disabled for the account 

Look here : https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=91556.0

I have installed the Chrome extension, tried it on MS Edge and Internet Explorer and I still can't see the pictures. Only some are showing up. Can someone please help? I am keen on doing this mod

[daedalus]

found a great guide
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/4wgf3w/hand_wiring_a_keyboard_tutorials/


not sure why forum posts here all embed images in such a way

[VoteForDavid]

Seven years later, I think this thread is finally finished. The last step was rehosting all the pictures on imgur.

The DK1 has been my daily driver since this post was last updated. I love it. 

Some points I pondered as I read through all four pages of this thread again:

• I haven't used the trackpoint, like, at hardly all.  The scroll wheel has got less use because of that. My ExpertMouse has a scroll ring, so I've been wearing that out instead.  The trackpoint has really only come into service when there's been a problem with my standalone trackball, for troubleshooting. It turns out I'm not a big trackpoint guy.
  
• The middle-enter key has seen use when I need to do text overlays in Photoshop (which is why I put it there) but otherwise hasn't got much use.
• The number row over the keyboard is actually usable for me, which is nice. The tenkey is only pressed into service for typing some longer input strings and one work-specific use of the minus key.
• The tiny leftshift cap is occasionally a problem. A larger cap would work better for me.
• The left control key is still too-far inboard but I'm used to it
• I use the left space very infrequently.  My left thumb hovers and I only use that key when my right hand is on the trackball - again for Photoshop purposes.
• I very rarely needed to hit that hated FLOCK but without it using just the wires is ghetto. Also just the wires poking through looks ghetto.
• Looking through this thread I noticed I experimented with using the left space as a backspace.  It's been space for ages now.
• The amount of crumbs this thing collects is scandalously high
• I found a shorter F12 cap and that's good for me as it reduces the amount of times Developer Tools are brought up by accident while browsing the Internet
• The crazy angles of the space bars is good
• The crazy sapacing of the letters is good
• The textured right plate doesn't show dust or glare as much, so it's better.
• The calculator and volume controls were worth the effort to include. 10/10

A few troubles cropped up along the way:

• A couple of times a switch would be pressed up from behind due to lack of rear clearance. This is rarely, very rarely a problem.
• Very rarely, a switch will start to stick or double-actuate, but a quick cleaning takes care of that!  It partly is because I'm using light springs on clear stems.
• I think one switch actually failed and was replaced.
• The wires on the tenkey minus (which gets pounded on several times a day) gave me a bit of trouble, but it only had cold solder joints if I recall correctly.

• Otherwise, this board has been pretty solid. It has outlasted all the Microsoft boards I made it to replace!
• I finally came up with a complete set of black keys, and it looks actually okay if you're not taking flash photographs of it:

The palmrests are wearing out and the scroll area has been bodged together in ugly fashion but it's all in one piece now.

I'm revisiting this post because a new keyboard is coming for use at home. It will have its own thread.  I'm gonna be strict about not answering questions about the next board on this thread. It'll be worth it. You'll see!