Custom designed and printed 60% keyboard with a detailed build log

sealclubber · 30 Jul 2018, 18:56

So, I'm finally delurking and using this account again after 6 years. I've made a couple of custom keyboards recently and wanted to start sharing my work with people who might enjoy reading about the build process. The finished product is here:

The full build log is https://imgur.com/a/xRLG84C

The other boards I have made are a 60% with a left function key cluster, and a 142% monster styled after an IBM battleship. I have a couple more boards in the works, including a longboi 147 key behemoth, a gothic architecture styled board, and I'm looking at remodeling the layout and stealing keycaps from a VIC-20. I have build logs in progress for the boards in the works right now, and I only got the idea for the redone VIC-20 just today so I haven't started on that yet.

Mostly posting here now to see if anyone else likes making/viewing things from scratch, as /r/mk (where I originally posted this) is... a collective of interesting individuals who prefer prebuilt boards.

I'm open to criticism, thoughts, ideas, and suggestions.

Muirium · 30 Jul 2018, 19:04

Ohhh… wow. What the? And the? That's a compelling show of inventiveness you've got there!

Okay, first up: tell us about those caps!

sealclubber · 30 Jul 2018, 19:15

The caps were designed from scratch with three things in mind:
1. Simplicity (as far as the amount of polygons go)
2. Strength (mostly just the middle stem)
3. Needed to be able to print upside down for a flat surface

The lower polygon count was mostly a thing for myself to facilitate ease of use when modifying the legends themselves, but translates to ease of use if anyone else wants to use them (I have the source for everything in that build link). The strength needed to be high for the center stem as to prevent them from breaking off inside the switches themselves if you wanna take them out. I could have done better with this part as alps don't like tall stemmed keycaps. At all. They tend to wobble quite a bit, not more than a pingmaster or an apple m0110, but still too much for my liking.

As for the printing orientation, I wanted legends that were crisp and clear, and the best way to do that was printing the tops directly onto the glass. Thankfully, I have ironed out most of these problems in my upcoming keycap sets, and am in the process of printing the new set in a custom SA/DSA type-ish profile, with the legends much better this time around. Trial and error is a beautiful thing

green-squid · 30 Jul 2018, 19:54

I saw your post about this on Reddit a while back, this is super cool! I don't know if there's really anything needing to change.

Muirium · 30 Jul 2018, 20:17

I've read your build log now. So much work! You must do this stuff for a living to pull it off anything like so fast.

One big question though: what material are you printing in?

See, Alps switches rightly get a lot of love round here. And many of us are always interested in new caps for them.

sealclubber · 30 Jul 2018, 20:23

Actually I'm a systems administrator for a living, and this is more of a hobby but thank you! Been doing 3d work on the side for a while now.

I'm using PLA for this, nothing fancy. I steered away from ABS, nylon, and PETG due to how damn touchy they are in terms of temperature requirements and layer adhesion.

As for different alps caps I might revisit them in the future with different designs/profiles and share the source files with everyone.

Muirium · 30 Jul 2018, 20:35

Very, very cool!

The material we like the best of all is PBT. I know next to nothing about 3D printing, though, so I don't know if there's something fundamentally incompatible with the stuff. The fact it's highly resistant to wear (and shining) perhaps suggests it could be a total pain in the jacksie to work!

There's a lot of classic switches out there which could well use a renaissance in caps. Hi-Tek Space Invaders come to mind, along with Alps of course, and my own beloved Topre. Buckling spring would be a challenge as the caps form part of the switch mechanism itself, but my goodness are there a fair few of my fellow IBM freaks around here.

Carving legends straight into the caps during manufacture is a nice idea, if a lot of work and machine time. You'd need to go with some easier process, I think, to turn things really lucrative! But there really is money in caps. As we often see…

I wonder, would 3d printing work for *molds* for mass production? Just thinking aloud, as I all too often do.

ag36 · 31 Jul 2018, 02:21

3d printed master is often used for low volume production but not injection molding, usually silicone mold for resin product or metal with 3d printed wax master. By the way I wonder isn't 3d printing keycaps can have very high material cost?

sealclubber · 31 Jul 2018, 18:42

Muirium wrote: Very, very cool!

The material we like the best of all is PBT. I know next to nothing about 3D printing, though, so I don't know if there's something fundamentally incompatible with the stuff. The fact it's highly resistant to wear (and shining) perhaps suggests it could be a total pain in the jacksie to work!

There's a lot of classic switches out there which could well use a renaissance in caps. Hi-Tek Space Invaders come to mind, along with Alps of course, and my own beloved Topre. Buckling spring would be a challenge as the caps form part of the switch mechanism itself, but my goodness are there a fair few of my fellow IBM freaks around here.

Carving legends straight into the caps during manufacture is a nice idea, if a lot of work and machine time. You'd need to go with some easier process, I think, to turn things really lucrative! But there really is money in caps. As we often see…

I wonder, would 3d printing work for *molds* for mass production? Just thinking aloud, as I all too often do.

As for PBT I haven't found a straight up PBT-only filament, and if I wanted something that wouldn't tarnish over time, I'd use nylon, which has the added benefit of being resistant to basically everything short of the fires of Mt. Doom. PBT has an acceptable melting point at ~220C but the filament I've seen it mixed with is polycarbonate, which is a whole 'nother can of worms.

As for making caps and/or adapting caps to work with current switches I have created adapters for those thicc ass original honeywell caps to MX and fujitsu leaf springs to MX. If I could get a hold of some hitek 725s I'd adapt them too. As for creating things for IBM M/Fs I've actually done that and am typing on that keeb now

(Please excuse the... everything about those design choices. I revamped it a while ago)

But yea redoing the keycaps (not the keystems) is pretty easy. I just can't use the Model F's stuff because the caps and stem are one piece, easy to do with model M stuff though.

As for making money with the caps and mass production, it would not be cost effective (as pointed out by ag36). Plus I open source everything I do which isn't good for turning a profit