"Who was that shape in the shadows? Whose is that face in the mask?"

Ladies and Gentlemen!
I am happy to finally announce a project of mine in co-operation with PrinsValium of the Symmetric Stagger Board fame.

For a long time I have lusted after the Korean custom keyboards, jealous of the ability to use a full set of Cherry double shot and dye sub keycaps without substitutes!
You see, I never cared about their CNC carved Alumin(i)um bodies and I spoke about that on a few occasion. The holy grail, for me, are the keycaps.


I reached out to PrinsValium, told him my story and asked if he was interested. Luckily, he shares my views on this and he agreed to [strike]help me out[/strike] do all the work for me.

Now, before you fall asleep I'll go ahead and tell you what you probably have already guessed from the story above:
We are making a PCB with a programmable controller and a mounting plate, which will enable every Filco tenkeyless user to use a full set of good old Cherry keycaps!

Wait, what? Just for the Filco tenkeyless? Why?
It's practically impossible to make one PCB compatible with all the keyboard bodies out there, so we went with this one for a few reasons:
1. The Filco is probably the most popular tenkeyless brand around here.
2. The keyboard body on the Filco is in my opinion beautiful, I actually think it looks better than the Korean custom Alumin(i)um bodies.
3. It costs a lot to make low volumes of keyboard bodies, way more than a whole Filco tenkeyless.
4. I already own one! Yes, the privilege of being project lead.

If you still don't have a good idea what it would look like, it's basically the 86U layout!

We would need 1-sized windows keycaps for in between CTRL and ALT, but luckily there are cheap Cherry boards with just the right keycaps available.

Great! So what?!
Glad you asked! In this thread I will answer your questions and see how many of you are interested in buying your very own Phantom!
Later, when all the technical and logistical details are sorted out, I will open a group buy thread.

For the record, we are working on this for a month already and it's nearly complete. Expect the group buy thread soon!

I want to know MOAR!
Ask away in the thread! Please don't send PM's unless you are a really really fine looking young lady, I will check for that!

Also, there is a FAQ coming which I will post below this one. Stay tuned!


Interest list:
HaveANiceDay
PrinsValium
litster
mtl
Supergleep
Waterdr1nker
chongyixiong
reaper
N8N
hoggy
jayfinger
dux
lyk503
laden3
002

If I overlooked you or included you on mistake, please say so.

i have no heard of these korean custom alumin(i)um keyboards, could you please provide linkage so that i may have a gander?

Great concept, but why 86 key and not 87 key layout? According to this poll:
http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?20156-Realforce-OLD-vs-NEW
most folks prefer the 87 keys. Also, if it's programmable, extra keys are always handy! My Kinesis has 86 keys, and I often find myself wishing it had 1 or 2 extras, to allow 2 Alts AND an AltGr for instance.

Recently, some nice cherry doubleshots with 2 windows keys have become available:
http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?20113-Official-Cherry-Double-Shot-Keycap-Set

definitely interested.  so you will have PCB, mounting plate, and controller.  Would buyers need to source their own Cherry switches and diodes, plus soldering them together?  Sounds like a very fun project!

definitely interested.  so you will have PCB, mounting plate, and controller.  Would buyers need to source their own Cherry switches and diodes, plus soldering them together?  Sounds like a very fun project!

The switches will be salvaged from the Filco. I'm not sure about diodes distribution yet, but they are so cheap it hardly matters anyways. And yes, this will require desoldering the old switches and soldering everything together again

Any ballpark on price?

Sent from my EVO

It depends heavily on the quantity. We don't have final quotes yet, especially for the mounting plates.
The PCB will most likely be below $30 USD.

Were is the geekgirl approved logo?

Interested.

Cool. Will the capslock switch be located at the center like Filcos or will it be on the side like Cherry corps keyboards?

It should be the latter since we can use the stepped cherry corps capslock without modding them. That'd be cool

Are you considering swappable CTRL/CAPS LOCKS keycaps?

Amen to that and I'm placing interest.

No FR-4 PCB and all the marketing buzzwords?

Thanks for organizing this, HaveANiceDay.  What color for the [strike]bike shed[/strike] mounting plate?

@calavera Both capslock options are supported by the PCB, centered and off-center.

@cactux Since the controller is programmable, it's easy to make a CTRL out of a capslock.

@chongyixiong The PCB will be FR-4, and probably even better quality than the stock Filco. Our manufacturer does not offer non FR-4 options :)

@mtl The color of the mounting plates is not yet decided, we might make a poll for that.

Interested.

@mtl The color of the mounting plates is not yet decided, we might make a poll for that.

Why don't you just deliver it as unpainted metal and let people painted it whatever they want? Metal isn't exactly hard to spray paint.

Plus bare metal would look cool.

The Teensy will be mounted on the backside of the PCB, it is a pretty tight fit but there is room there. It will require some care when soldering but this should be no big problem.

Is the Teensy included with purchase of the PCB+Mounting plate?

If 87 keys are the standard Filco setup, then yes. It supports the switch locations of the Filco tenkeyless. The spacebar row and caps lock have extra locations as i described above. It is easy to cram a lot of optionality onto the PCB. The problem is the mounting plate. If only doing a Teensy upgrade to a Filco, then of course the mounting plate can be reused. If only desiring to use the stepped caps lock but with the Filco space bar row, I'd suggest enlarging the mounting hole for that switch on the Filco plate. Candidates I can see needing new mounting plates are using the non-Filco space bar row. All plates should probably be produced with support for both types pf caps lock (to keep the number of different plates down). Different space bar row setups and stabilizer types will require at least a few different plate layouts. I will play around with this a bit to see how much options can be combined onto the same plate.

I'm in

@mtl Yes, the Teensy and the PCB will not be priced separately. A PCB without a Teensy would be useless

@dox Hmm, maybe. PrinsValium is the guy when it comes to evaluating that option. But if it does not collide with anything else on the board, I see no reason not to include it.

This is an example of the cutouts for the Cherry stabilizer (white lines) and the slots for the Costar stabilizers (blue lines). If I modify the cutout for the Cherry ones (very) slightly, the Costar ones will fit, but I have no idea if they will stay put. On the other hand this should not affect the function of the Cherry stabilizers in any way.


Smart persons salvaged the stabilizers from their Cherry double shot donor boards. This would mean having stabilizers of the correct length. Unfortunately Cherry PCB mount stabilizers cannot be modified into plate mounted ones like with their switches. The bar and its mounts are separate pieces though. So taking the mounts from another, plate mounted, stabilizer solves this. Cherry stabilizers bars are also sort of easy to shorten. So getting a longer one can solve the issue of not finding the correct length.

I know HaveANiceDay really want to make this work with Costar stabilizers. I don't know which lengths they come in on different boards. It might be possible to bend a piece of wire free hand that will fit, but they are much more complicated than the Cherry bars. Putting Costar stabilizer mounting slots in the right position on the mounting plate is of course no problem, I just don't know how much good it will do.

Cherry stabilizers are available from mouser (and other places I suppose), Costar stabilizers seem to be a tough thing to locate =P Any one able to find them somewhere would be highly appreciated. Mouser have some types of the Cherry switches as well (clear, black, blue).

Edit: Forgot to say, Costar stabilizers are easy to swap in and out. You might just swap them when swapping setup on your tenkeyless.

I really like this. However, will a Leopold Tenkeyless be able to house this?

I remember seeing a picture of the Leopold's PCB somewhere, and it didn't look compatible. I could be wrong though.
Can you open up your Leopold and make a picture from the bottom of the PCB?

I found the pics from the Leopold tenkeyless disassembly http://monda.hu/blog/2011/05/20/fc200rcab-leopold-tenkeyless-tactile-click-keyboard-disassembly
Here's one of them:

It doesn't look good, there is a big hole in the LED area :/

I have a G81-1800 with slightly shorter spacebar and the mounting points are not exactly Cherry or FILCO like,
Is it possible to use these?

Top: Cherry G81-1800
Bottom: FILCO spacebar

I don't have a ruler with me right now and this is the best i can get with my camera phone. Rightmost mounting is aligned although in the picture it may not look as such

Maybe someone can help posting these in correct measurements
I'm thinking of putting these to use since they are made of PBT, but if it does not generate enough interest then I don't think it is worth the trouble. Also, fitting the stabilizer to the layout might be troublesome since the location of the stabilizers overlap the normal types due to the length of the spacebar

Cherry 1800 looks like this. So, some windows key and App key to harvest, although they aren't exactly doubleshot

kaiserreich has hit upon an idea.  I'd be far happier modding a g81-#### case and leaving my filco unsullied.  Would the pcb be compatible with a cherry case?

It will be compatible with anything of the exact same layout as the Filco tenkeyless. That is the spaces between the alphanumerics,, function row, and navigation cluster are the same. The holes for letting screws and tabs through for mounting it in the case also have to be in the same position to guarantee no traces will be lost if drilling your own. So, no, probably not.

You don't need to really modify your Filco Just take the innards out and swap this board in. Then you will need new switches too, but they are not too hard to come by.