Matias 60 Choices

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Mal-2

11 Feb 2015, 01:33

Hypersphere wrote: @cookie: Please keep us posted about the Topre silencing kit that you are working on! One problem with foam materials is that they tend to break down faster than non-foam materials. Would you be able to use a solid material that was sufficiently resilient to provide good silencing properties and yet stable enough not to require replacement for many years?
Felt or synthetic cork perhaps?

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Hypersphere

11 Feb 2015, 02:03

Regarding materials for silencing pads in Topre switches, 3M and others have introduced some thin foam materials that are good at absorbing shock. Rogers produces a material called Poron that might be a good candidate for silencing pads.

As for switches, Matias switches do a good job at giving the impression that the force decreases after the tactile bump and actuation. I haven't seen a force-displacement curve, but the Matias web site indicates that peak force is 60 g, actuation occurs at 2.2 mm out of a total travel of 3.5 mm, and the force at bottoming out is 35 g. In any event, I count Matias switches among my favorites, which also include IBM capacitive buckling spring and Topre (45 g and 55 g). Moreover, Matias Quiet switches do an excellent job of consistently silencing keys across the board, including mods and spacebar, and doing so at a very reasonable cost.
Last edited by Hypersphere on 11 Feb 2015, 15:04, edited 1 time in total.

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cookie

11 Feb 2015, 10:35

Synthetic corc is way to dense but his Poron stuff looks promising. I have to check out the price for this but I think it will be expensive, I mean it already looks expensive! :(

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bhtooefr

11 Feb 2015, 11:07

It's worth noting that Selectric's incredibly steep drop-off is done by the motor - key actuation engages a clutch that both engages the printing mechanism and starts a shaft spinning that literally knocks the interposer out from under the key. And, the interposer is fairly stiffly sprung with a coil spring (in tension, not compression, IIRC), the keys are very VERY lightly sprung on a leaf spring, which is why there's very low preload.

As far as variable rate springs, they're certainly one way to re-shape the force curve, although only for an increasing curve. Trucks will often use them (often in the form of stacked leaf springs, rather than coils with different winding rates, because leaf springs have other advantages for trucks) to ensure a soft ride when the truck is lightly loaded (low spring rate springs that are used first), and then sagging to the heavier rate spring when heavily loaded. (Older trucks just used a single (high) rate spring (or set of springs), so when the truck was lightly loaded, the ride was rough. A low rate spring would bottom out too easily when loaded.)

Really, if you want to completely avoid spring rate issues, magnetic return could be interesting. Pneumatic, too, although that will make for a keyboard with noise levels in typewriter territory, and require quite sensitive position sensing (go go capsense, because capsense can detect the direction of movement, which is actually all that's needed to trigger the return).

And, a proposal for why Matias did this... differentiation. Plenty of arrow-less 60%s, there's even a couple with Matias switches (V60 MTS and Infinity come to mind), this one has arrows. That said, I would want a hybrid of the Mac and PC layouts. (At the very least, swap Ctrl and Fn to the Mac order. And, I can deal with Fn for the navigation keys, which would give another Fn key.) Then again, this is what I actually came up with for a linear arrow layout, which is basically Matias's PC layout with Fn and Ctrl swapped, and following Apple's old linear arrow standard.

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Muirium
µ

11 Feb 2015, 12:29

Very good point about Selectrics. We like to think of them as we do keyswitches, but those guys were more truly mechanical than any mech keyboard. They even put beamsprings to shame for lack of moving parts!

I'd like a capsense driven experimental electromechanical keyswitch that has minuscule preload but a great chonk of tactile swing. One day…

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Hypersphere

11 Feb 2015, 15:15

@bhtooefr, You are quite right. Matias has a declaration of purpose right at the beginning of his web page on the Matias 60:

"The most compact mechanical keyboards are known as 60% keyboards.
They pack a lot of power and comfort into their small size — but they all suffer from the same fundamental problem...
They lack arrow keys.
The Matias 60% Keyboard is the first one to solve this properly. It gives you the power of a full keyboard in the smallest usable size."

http://matias.ca/60/pc/

This is how he intends the Matias 60 to differentiate itself from other keyboards in the 60% form-factor category, and he has created a layout that no one else has. Some of us may not like it and would have wished for other solutions (including keeping the arrow keys in the Fn layer), but Matias is hoping to have created something new and useful that may win converts.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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Muirium
µ

11 Feb 2015, 21:38

When is a 60% not a 60%? When you add more keys!

We should call these 60% + arrow key layouts a more descriptive name, like 65%. There's plenty of them out there, after all. Even in the HHKB and Poker families!

What's new about this one is adding a whole other row instead of an extra column or two. We'll see, eh.

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bhtooefr

11 Feb 2015, 22:44

Someone should probably standardize what "60%" means, to be honest.

Should we go based on area (compared to a standard Model M at 23 x 7 U, or 161 U^2) or key count (compared to a standard ANSI 104-key for ANSI, 105-key for ISO, or 109-key for JIS)? The wiki also goes with width as a possible definition, but that's wholly inadequate.

By an area metric, Matias's 60% is 82.5 U^2, or a mere 51.2%, standard (15 x 5 U) 60% boards being 46.6% by area. By a key count metric, it's 68 keys for the PC version (or 65.4% of a 104-key board), 65 keys for the Mac version (or 62.5% of a 104-key PC board, 61.9% of a 105-key AEK).

It's worth noting that percentage-based designations are also used by laptop manufacturers to describe key pitch - for instance, they'll describe an 18 mm pitch keyboard as "95% of full size".

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Muirium
µ

11 Feb 2015, 22:52

Percentage makes more sense for something single dimensional like key pitch. (Provided those guys are altering it linearly in both axes.)

For keyboards, my definition for 60% is the main alpha block on a standard fullsize layout board or TKL (whether modern or winkeyless). The essence of a 60% is to be that block with everything else excised. That makes for 15x5u rectangle.

I call 16x5 designs (like Matteo's latest) 65%, although I see if we're talking about area that comes out as 64% precisely! Perhaps that's a better name.

This Matias board is 15x6 (for all intents and purposes), which comes out as 72% using that formula! Hmm. Sounds way too much. I wonder if it really does feel that much bigger than a 60%? Certainly looks a very suboptimal use of all the extra area, however you define it.

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Hypersphere

12 Feb 2015, 01:17

Interesting that this thread has started anew the debate about what constitutes a 60% keyboard! I suspected this might happen, yet I remain interested in this enduring question.

jacobolus

12 Feb 2015, 01:52

All the names we commonly use for keyboard layouts (ISO, ANSI, JIS, QWERTY, matrix, ergonomic, IBM, DEC, SUN, Apple, full size, 101/104, 122, terminal, full size, tenkey-less, numpad, 100%, 80%, 75%, 60%, 40%, PC, XT, AT, PS/2, Space Cadet, Poker, HHKB, unsaver, etc.) are pretty bad for classifying keyboards into distinct categories.

I say we give up and just assign each keyboard layout a 4-character code between 0000 and ZZZZ. Then we can just remember that A4q7 and A4q8 are full size ANSI 104-key keyboards differing in how much space they put between the number row and the f row, whereas 6thZ is the Japanese HHKB. BAM, problem solved.

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Muirium
µ

12 Feb 2015, 01:54

Foo, bar, baz, larry…

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bhtooefr

12 Feb 2015, 11:51

I'm using 15x5.5, though, because the .75 U tall keys do make the keyboard smaller.

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eldorange

16 Feb 2015, 18:26

Is Matias coming up with a 60% keyboard....I hope Unicomp will be as innovative and market oriented like Matias...I admire this keyboard company...I hope this will be sold as a regular item...not as group buy soon...the lower part of the keyboard is a turn off for me though...better if its designed like KBC Poker or HHKB...

IanM

25 Apr 2015, 16:55

It looks like this project is still in progress and still possible to order: http://matias.ca/60/pc

Matias is mentioning gaming in the blurb about the linear switches, is the keyboard supporting 250Hz/333Hz/500Hz/1000Hz polling?

Is there a cheap way to get hold of a Matias linear quiet & quiet tactile switch to try?

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Nuum

25 Apr 2015, 21:38


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