geekhack
geekhack Community => New Members => Topic started by: sz42 on Tue, 01 September 2015, 19:09:52
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Greetings, all.
Very glad to be on here, finally. Been lurking for a little while picking up bits and bobs of juicy info. I'm really impressed by the awesome community and all the cool toys being built and I figured it was time to make my account and join in. Mostly, I will really appreciate being able to talk to others about keyboards without their eyes glazing over after about the second sentence.
I bought my first commercial mechanical keyboard a few months ago; Cooler Master QuickFire Rapid-i with Cherry MX Blues. Pretty nice upgrade for me but I quickly learned about those little key dampeners and I installed the 0.2mm ones. Then, I tried a set of blank DSA keys--I haven't decided if I prefer the DCS caps yet. After a month or so of hunting for parts and hmming and hawing about my plate DXF, I came to realize that getting keycaps is about a zillion times simpler if I don't wish for anything strange like "sets that come with 1.75 shift keys" or "DSA profile keys with support for backlighting". I know I still have a lot to learn about keyboard stuff.
I'm pretty comfortable with LibreCAD and I'll *definitely* get around to learning KiCAD sometime. Maybe OpenSCAD too.
And now, my journey begins...
So... anyway... Howdy, folks!
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Welcome to Geekhack!
Dampeners - O-rings, landings pads of silicone balls? Bet you never knew there were so many options ;)
I don't think I've seen any DSA sets that are backlight-friendly, so you're safe there :p
But any keyboard that has a standard US ANSI layout you shouldn't have any difficulties finding keycaps for.
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Thanks.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that backlighting is neat but *not* one of my must-have features. Again, in order to simplify my switch matrix wiring requirements, LED backlighting is probably not a feature I will attempt to build in on my first try. On the plus side, there are waaay more beautiful keycap options out there that aren't so backlight-friendly.
Sticking to standard layouts when making a first keyboard from scratch is probably very wise advice for newbs like me (94-keys looked kinda neat on paper... until I went looking for full keycap sets). I'm thinking to aim for a boring TKL design initially. I'm guessing that I'll probably graduate to a 60% to 75% keyboard once I try some layering experiments on an actual programmable 80% one. Gotta keep my ESC key handy for Vim.
I only slightly regret spending on a commercial keyboard when I could have put that money towards parts for making my own, however, owning one has been a really good learning process.
/me gets dangerously close to placing another keyboard part order
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hi
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welcome to GH!
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Welcome to GH!
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Thanks.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that backlighting is neat but *not* one of my must-have features. Again, in order to simplify my switch matrix wiring requirements, LED backlighting is probably not a feature I will attempt to build in on my first try. On the plus side, there are waaay more beautiful keycap options out there that aren't so backlight-friendly.
Sticking to standard layouts when making a first keyboard from scratch is probably very wise advice for newbs like me (94-keys looked kinda neat on paper... until I went looking for full keycap sets). I'm thinking to aim for a boring TKL design initially. I'm guessing that I'll probably graduate to a 60% to 75% keyboard once I try some layering experiments on an actual programmable 80% one. Gotta keep my ESC key handy for Vim.
I only slightly regret spending on a commercial keyboard when I could have put that money towards parts for making my own, however, owning one has been a really good learning process.
/me gets dangerously close to placing another keyboard part order
Your wisdom is growing :)
An idea is to create a keyboard that is a subset of a standard layout, like the JD40. Or a superset, where the extra keys are readily available.
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WELCOME TO GH MA BRO and hope you enjoy it here like I do