CHERRY G81 1800 HQU (MY) keyboard mechanical retrofit

[lucar]

Hi,

lately I completed a mechanical retrofit to a CHERRY G81 1800 HQU rubberdome keyboard.
This keyboard has nice double shot keycaps and I found a new and very cheap one on a local listing.
The retrofit involved replacing the pcb with a G80 1800 Leeche (cina) one and adding a self designed/modified stainless steel plate to add rigidity to the whole assembly.

I believe I started from this plate design and modified it to my needs:
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=96313.0

I published a video of the whole process and I've been asked to share the plate design so here are pictures , video and download link for the plate design. If You're going to use my design, please always double check everything before you start ordering parts.

The original keyboard


Without case


The original plate/pcb assembly


The new plate/pcb assembly


Testing it


Build log

Plate design files here
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing


Cheers from Italy
Luca R.

[chip chop]

Great project & video, thanks for sharing

[IronSunsetscales]

Is that leeche PCB QMK compatible?

[Jan Pospisil]

Sorry to necro this - I seem to have bought one of these MY boards myself.
The wiki says that the stabilized keycaps are not compatible with MX boards. How did you get around that? You seem to be using the same caps just fine.

[Rayndalf]

Sorry to necro this - I seem to have bought one of these MY boards myself.
The wiki says that the stabilized keycaps are not compatible with MX boards. How did you get around that? You seem to be using the same caps just fine.

If the keycaps are dyesubbed or doubleshot (Article number G81-1800 SXX or G81-1800 HXX) they're fully MX compatible.

Integrated stabilizers were only used with POM/ PBT keycaps (G81-1800 LXX).

[Jan Pospisil]

Sorry to necro this - I seem to have bought one of these MY boards myself.
The wiki says that the stabilized keycaps are not compatible with MX boards. How did you get around that? You seem to be using the same caps just fine.

If the keycaps are dyesubbed or doubleshot (Article number G81-1800 SXX or G81-1800 HXX) they're fully MX compatible.

Integrated stabilizers were only used with POM/ PBT keycaps (G81-1800 LXX).

Ooh, ok, cool. Thank you!

[Rayndalf]

Sorry to necro this - I seem to have bought one of these MY boards myself.
The wiki says that the stabilized keycaps are not compatible with MX boards. How did you get around that? You seem to be using the same caps just fine.

If the keycaps are dyesubbed or doubleshot (Article number G81-1800 SXX or G81-1800 HXX) they're fully MX compatible.

Integrated stabilizers were only used with POM/ PBT keycaps (G81-1800 LXX).

Ooh, ok, cool. Thank you!

No problem. What does your 1800 look like?

[Jan Pospisil]

If the keycaps are dyesubbed or doubleshot (Article number G81-1800 SXX or G81-1800 HXX) they're fully MX compatible.

Integrated stabilizers were only used with POM/ PBT keycaps (G81-1800 LXX).

Ooh, ok, cool. Thank you!

No problem. What does your 1800 look like?

Haven't got it yet, this is the seller's photo:



(the ebay listing was a bit funny, they looked at the box and used the brand name on that, rather than the mismatched cherry keyboard.)

Originally I thought/hoped this was the MX variant, but you can see the inside "plate" is white.