I just got my Novatouch via Taobao in China and wanted to report some quick observations. I'll use this thread to document my further investigations as they progress.
- The spacebar stabilizer stems are in ever so slightly different locations, so this means that the plates aren't interchangeable with Realforce TKL boards.
- The Novatouch plates themselves are also slightly narrower than Realforce plates, meaning that you can't use a Novatouch plate in an alternate (typically aluminum) after-market housing designed for a Realforce.
I currently have a hacked Realforce where I have swapped in 30g domes on the alphanumeric keys from a Japanese board, and it lives in a Korean aluminum housing. I was hoping to be able to combine plates, parts, stems in such a way that would allow me to have exactly this same set up but with cherry MX key caps. Alas, this won't work for the above enumerated reasons.
My current plan now is to buy a second Japanese keyboard with 30g domes to swap into the domes on the Novatouch. Having looked under the hood of the Novatouch, I'm fairly confident this can be done without trouble.
The hard part is going to be getting this in a nice aluminum housing. My plan is to design my own to fit this new Novatouch board, though I'm new to such a project (though I do have machining experience). Anyone with CAD or aluminum housing experience who would be interested in helping me off to a running start, please let me know. :)