deskthority

Hello; I found this community while searching for a new keyboard to buy, and now I am pretty enthused about the idea of building a keyboard of my own. So far I have mostly found answers to my newbie questions in various helpful guides, but I have a couple of questions about switches.

What I would like: More or less standard tenkeyless keyboard with 16 mm key pitch. Backlighting a plus.

1. Cherry MX seem popular, however the specs say they are 15.6 mm across. So they would only be separated by .4 mm for a 16 mm keyboard. Is .4 mm too close? It certainly seems too close for mounting them on a plate, so I imagine I would have to PCB-mount them.

2. So I am leaning toward Cherry ML (11.2 mm x 12 mm). I haven't found anything else that size- am I missing a possibility?

3. I would also be very interested to hear about any 16 mm pitch keyboards anyone knows of that are currently being sold (US).

PCB mounted MX should be fine, the real problem is the caps.

Thanks! I am thinking to 3D print the keycaps. If I did my back of the envelope correctly, it'd be pricy but not beyond the realm of reason. That's the other thing I wondered about though- Would they have to be a strange shape (i.e., really flat) with the MX, to keep from hitting the switch?