deskthority

While chattering was an issue on the KBParadise V80 I bought some five years ago, that was five years ago and that is plenty of time for them to have sorted whatever caused the problem

The KBParadise ALPS keyboards come with perfectly nice thin ABS double-shots which I think can be purchased on ...

I have one of these and love how the keys feel -- I don't know how it compares to vintage ALPS or whatever but I find it much nicer to type on than MX tactile switches. But alas! I broke it trying to replace one of the switches, which was chattering.

I had a very nice KBParadise V80 with Matias Quiet Click switches as my office keyboard and that was pretty quiet and nice to use but it had a chattering equals key which I could not fix so I fell back on my £27 clicky blue board which to be honest sounds kind of obnoxious. I have just this week ...

For an old-timey-looking spherical high-profile set I quite like the idea of MT3 profile. Matt3o prototypes this via 3D printing and might have some ideas of how this might be adapted to ALPS mount

That said, I don't know to what extent the designs are his to share, and the fact that (Mass)Drop ...

I rather like the 14.5-unit ANSI-style layout: it avoids the 1.5-unit backslash key, which I view as something of a wart. Some awkwardness about where to squeeze in backtick/tilde, and there would be issues with using standard-sized keycaps, but with Alps caps this is less of an issue...

I’d love to see the making-of video of this project. Going straight for double-shots is even more crazy ambitious than MT3.

± = § (section sign)

1 = dagger

2 = double dagger

3 = nabla (upside down delta)

This is my work keyboard after its transformation.

Since my keyboard is ANSI I did not use the ISO Enter keys, so they are being borrowed by a couple of my colleagues.

I like the idea of a YAS62-style case but if I want to do a layout with my own special design of bottom row, or use ALPS switches, then I will want to make my own plate. Would it be easy to supply a specification for where the cutouts for the screws need to be to fit this case?

You can use a Planck/Prionic keycap set on a conventional keyboard and it works and looks distinctively retro or punk.

IMG_1501.JPG

After procrastinating for a while I have soldered wires on to my Teensy LC board which I plan to solder to the rest of the keyboard next.

The combination of controller and wires is not as flat as I would like and so far it does not look like it will fit in the height of the case I ...

The keycaps from Devlin via UKKeycaps arrived this week. After much fiddling with fiddly stabilisers I have populated my key switches and can pretend to type on my poor brainless keyboard.
Next task: make it a brain.

After several sessions in the Hackspace tronics room I have soldered on the diodes, row and column rails.

P1030232.jpg

There is still the small matter of wiring these to the micro controller and programming it. Also the case needs some sides and a bottom—for which I need to work out how to have ...

The ‘Ansi with ISO enter’ layout is how Apple do ISO English on Macintosh keyboards.

Looks much more real with the top 2 layers bolted together and the switches inserted!

IMG_1341.jpg

Started soldering the diodes to the switches—first time with a soldering iron since I was a child—but the ease with which I am popping switches out makes me think I need to consider gluing them in ...

The group buy was cancelled but I'm still planning on buying the SKIDATA set once it is on sale. I reckon an experimental first keyboard is best made with an experimental first keyset. :-)

After measuring he test piece every way I could think of and adjusting the kerf parameters accordingly I have ...

How about ‘Wordsmith’?

Here is an approach to thick acrylic backplates that turned up on Reddit using the laser cutter to engrave the shapes rather than a router to rout them.

Today’s lesson is about tolerance. Specifically, that the tolerances on sheet acrylic are less stringent than the tolerances on Cherry MX switch and Co-Star stabiliser clips.

I have cut a test piece with the assist of Jared at Oxford Hackspace:

IMG_1310.jpg

The idea here was to make lots of ...

I like the suggestion of "MintAway". I'm not necessarily a natural Planck user but I like the look of it. Maybe if we could order up some random 1x2 keys I could assemble some kind of odd lop-sided keyboard from it.

matt3o wrote: that would be a little too extreme

Pity, because I was going to make the same suggestion. It is definitely a design calling out for a high-profile spherical style. Maybe as the 2nd use of this new profile it would make more sense …

How about the (?nameless) high-profile spherical profile Matt3o is working on? Likely to be not much less lead time than SP by the sounds of things …

I know what you mean though -- the "under" plate looks like the exact opposite of what it should look like...

This week I have mostly been drawing holes. Here's the SVG version of the top plate:

http://static.alleged.org.uk/pdc/2017/x1-20170226-plate.svg

Apologies for not leaving gaps for opening the switches; for this build at least is is simpler to use standard square holes. I have intentionally ...

I would suggest using the Granite legends since Matt3o has already put the effort in to refine them in some detail, and they have centred legends which seems very appropriate for a spherical profile.

For colour scheme I like the idea black or very dark legends on ivory or pale cream base colour ...

I hope their photo is exaggerating the colour change because it looks quite different. I was going to ask whether if there were another gb in future whether Pantone colour codes can be used to reduce the risk of surprises, then I looked up how much Pantone charge for plastic colour chips and boggled ...

+1 for asymmetrical layout and having the space-bar row being shorter. I've tried to do the same & like you found that standard caps being designed for symmetrical layouts makes it tricky! :-)

For more old-timey asymmetry you could replace Caps lock with Ctrl and make the backslash key the proper ...

FWIW, I bought a keyboard from them last year and it was fine.

I would worry that even if it can be fabricated the small amount of material might be too weak to hold the stabilizers clipped in place. Is flipping the switches upside down an option?

Not quite ready yet, but from the last few messages above messages it is getting pretty close.