I have finally got all of the parts and finished my first DIY mech keyboard. One of the main reasons I finally joined the forum's. I know a lot of other's have done their own build's, and go to the point of making there own cases/ plates and even handwriting there board's.
But i thought i would make a post about my first DIY board and some of the newb issues i have ran into. But now i know better for my next build's.
For part's I went for a GH60 "satan" PCB , i was originally going to go for a sprit 60% but i couldn't find any last minute.
An orange anodized plate i wont on a live stream from LeandreN
with Cherry MX Clear switches, an aluminum casted case that i got on the mech market subreddit for $40 from a Pok3r. ( being casted it led to my main newb mistake) and PCB mount Cherry stabilizers.
First i clipped and lubed all of the stabilizers with a dry teflon based lube following a couple guides on the forum. I used a teflon based lube mainly because that is what i had.
Then I lined up the bottom row and did a test fit with all of the modifier keys to make sure i was using all of the slots in the PCB for a standard layout. This is what i had anticipated as being one of the tricky part's but it was fairly simple.
After that i made sure all of the switches were flush with the PCB and soldered them in place, which was fairly easy and only took me about 10 or so minutes, i have done a fair amount of soldering, this is just my first time on a keyboard.
After that i plugged the board into my PC and went to Keyboardtester.com to make sure every switch worked before placeing the board into the Pok3r case and screwing it in, one screw hole gave me a bit of trouble and took awhile to line up with the pok3r case screw standoffs.
Then i placed all of the keycaps ( a thick PBT set from Geekkeys) onto the switches, though a few days before i put a bit of teflon lube in each of the keycap mounting holes as Cherry clear switches have a MUCH tighter hold onto the keycaps.
But when i went to plug it in afterwards is when i ran into issues. At first it seemed to work fine, but after a few seconds my motherboard shut the USB port off and gave a power surge notification, meaning it exceeded the 3 amp rating of my front panel USB header. I then unplugged the keyboard immediately and noticed a strong electronic burning smell, and was convinced that i fried the controller by not insulating the PCB from the non anodized aluminum case. I then looked into it and found that the Pok3r is supposed to have a plastic insulating sheet under the PCB. So at that point i mentally wrote the PCB off as dead. I then pulled it apart to find out what had happened, and despite the clear MX stems being coated in teflon, these particular keycaps made for a VERY tight fit. I ended up pulling two key switch tops off, broke my keycap puller and pulled the stabilizer bars from the stabilizers which i then had to put back in place with tweezers from underneath the plate, to get to the screws, but luckily the plate allows the switch tops to be removed.
Long story short, i got the board out to find that the aluminum case had shorted a positive pad on an SMD cap/resistor to the ground connector on the USB port and burned the trace, so all i had to do was bridge a wire from the USB connector to the pad that had been shorted
After fixing that I used a couple layers of thick packing tape on the bottom of the PCB to insulate it from the case, cutting out the screw holes and reset button which has worked great as of now
I probably made that a bit too long but i am very happy with the keyboard despite the issues i had, and building it was a fun learning experience. I'm already planning my next build, maybe a 40%.
