Hot-swappable Atomic with custom case

[iFreilicht]

First time posting a thread here and I have no clue about rendering, please be gentle

Intro:

I got one of the last Atomic PCBs that were sold by OLKB, because I got a very cool idea for a split layout with a numpad in the middle.



At that time, no cases or plates for the Atomic were available anymore, so I'll have to and want build my own.

And because I like the idea of the Atomic so very much and don't have money to buy new keyboards regularly, it will become my daily driver (at least in terms of layout) for a relatively long time, so I want to be able to swap out switches when the Gateron Greens get on my nerves or I want to put the two MX Lock switches somewhere else. The caps will be blank DSA PBT caps in Orange and White unless I decide to jump on G20 Semiotic (which will probably be way to expensive for me).

So, the party piece here is the case and maybe the hot-swappable functionality.

Initial Status:

This is what I've come up with initially:




The top is milled, probably from Aluminium, and acts like a 5mm thick plate. By making the case the plate, there are no visible seams on the outside, which I found to be an interesting idea. That way the case is also usable without the bottom, so if funds are too tight to get the bottom made immediately, I can already type on my new board and get used to the ortholinear layout.

Bottom is from brass. It could also be aluminium, but brass looks bad-ass and gives that nice heavy feeling. Fun fact: half of those screws are faux (they're not actually holding the plate in place) because the mounting holes in the PCB are anti-symmetrical. This might confuse me at some point in the future, but it just looks nicer this way. Maybe small marks in the plate would help with that. Something like dotted rings around faux screws and solid rings around structural screws.

When posting the pictures to r/MK, someone suggested to make the case high-profile. I am using an HP case right now as well, but this one just looked stupid.



It looks like a brick. Not really a fan. I tried to see whether I could salvage it in any way, maybe with undercut chamfers,



but in the process I mainly managed to make the low profile case look even better:



So that's where I'm starting this thread off now. What I am missing is some way to tilt the case up, or at least some place to add such an option later as I don't think I'll be comfortable with 0° angle.

Any criticism, comments or ideas are appreciated.

[iFreilicht]

BOM:

OLKB Atomic PCB - Acquired
71 Gateron Green Switches - Acquired
2 Cherry MX Lock Switches - Acquired
146 Holtite Sockets for Switches - Acquired
146 Holtite Sockets for LEDs - Acquired
DSA Keycaps - Not ordered
Orange LEDs - Not ordered
Case Top - To be designed
Case Bottom - To be designed

Current Status:

Firmware in QMK is done, took the better amount of three days until I finally figured out a relatively simple solution.

[iFreilicht]

UPDATE:

Yesterday I put in all the Holtite sockets for the switches. The problem here was that the Atomic PCB is universal, so one of the two holes for MX switches is elongated to also comply with the Alps footprint. This means that the sockets have less surface area to grip and are prone to being pulled out when removing the switches. Some of the holes are even overlapping with mounting holes for PCB-mount stabs, in those cases there's even less stability. Everywhere else the sockets fit perfectly, though.

Procedure was very easy, too:

1. Drop socket into plated through-hole:



2. Push it in with a flat object (allen keys work, crosstip drivers not so well. Reportedly, the hot tip of a soldering iron works even better, but I don't have one at home)



3. Done!



Doing this for the whole board took me about 2 hours, but it should be doable in 1.5 or even less if you've done it once before. Quite a relaxing experience.

Then I also had to remove the PCB pins on the Gateron Green switches. I got them as an r/MK secret santa gift, so I didn't have a choice to get them without. I first tried removing them with a box cutter, but that was very hard to do. I didn't have a flush-trim sidecutter, and my regular one left 2mm of pin over, which was too much. But, as it turns out, you can easily break them off with a pair of tweezers:



This took maybe 15 minutes to do for all the switches I had, which should be around 85 or so. Not that I was in a hurry or anything. The MX Lock switches I had were already plate-mount only.

So there is the progress so far:



Ooops, forgot the MX Locks. Good thing the switches are hot-swappable 

While we're at it, let's put some caps from my current board on:



I didn't bother putting the Holtites for the LEDs in yet, they're even smaller and don't seem to fit perfectly and I won't get any LEDs for this board in the near future anyway.

Also, I put a good amount of work into the QMK firmware, but it seems like my idea of modifying what characters keys produce with Shift and AltGr is a bit more complicated than I initially thought.

Thanks for reading!

[HeroXLazer]

Oh, hi, remember me from SFF Forum. Nice job.

[iFreilicht]

Oh, hi, remember me from SFF Forum. Nice job.

Haha jup, sure do! Thank you very much! I even got a small update in the form that I've now managed to properly program the micro. It took three days to figure out what the best possible implementation was because I wanted Shift to simultaneously change to a new layer and RAlt to do the same. Additionally, if both those keys were pressed, a third layer would be activated for even more obscure symbols.

But now I've made it and managed to perfectly replicate the layout that you can see in the first post. There's one small bug that when you hold Shift and press the numpad dot to produce a comma, holding shift will also "hold down" numpad dot. Not sure why that happens, but everything else works perfectly. I'll post a link to the github repository once I've put it up there.

[HeroXLazer]

Yeah.