matt3o wrote: I can't find an inexpensive way to have the case done. Tomorrow I'll try to work on the final 3d file. Wondering if the plate should part of the case itself (ala HHKB)
I wonder if it would be feasible to have a vacuuformed case CNC-milled to get the grooves. You would first reinforce some parts on the inside with plastic using plastic cement to allow the mill to go deep enough.
You would have to cut the holes for the keys anyway, so you could kill two birds with one stone by doing both in the milling step. Drawbacks are that edges are soft and you won't always get a perfect result, so getting matching top and bottom halves could be difficult.
A 3D-printed case won't have a nice texture. If you do a plate in ABS as part of the 3D-print then you should reinforce it around the switches, or do it thicker overall like the milled plastic plate you made.
Kinesis and Maltron have plastic "plates". Kinesis' key wells are injection-moulded, Maltron is vacuuformed.
Another option could be casting in room-temperature resin, most likely polyurethane. Resin is also more brittle and crumbly, not as bendy and tough as ABS plastic. To make hollow resin objects you would typically spin it while the resin sets ("rotocasting") in a special machine (could be manually powered) but it is very difficult to control the thickness, so an integrated mounting plate would not be feasible. There would be a whole lot of extra work required to saw it into two halves and clean it up. Inner corners also tend to get very thin with rotocasting.
