Costomising a 5 euro 'faulty' keyboard

[ben_bennie_nie]

Bought the keyboard for 5 euros. The W,A,S,D where supposedly faulty but work fully. Guessing the guy i bought it from had some lag issue's. Working on costumizing it and i'll be using it with my laptop.

This is the keyboard i bought, it's a 'Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro M White'

Already tape modded the back of the circuit board. Painted the case light gray. Still need to clear coat the case however.

Ordered a keycap set on aliexpress:

 

 

Bought some 2mm selfsticking eva foam sheets. I'll be using that to fill out the back of the board. To make it sound less hollow.

Also got some 1mm eva foam for the keycaps with stabalizers. Looking forward to when i get the keycaps and ill be able to finish the board.

Had the spray cans of gray and clear coat laying around from my endevours of modelmaking. All and all it will remain a cheap board.

 

 

 

[spacepickle]

Looks pretty sweet. You should attach a video of how it sounds once you get the keycaps!

[ben_bennie_nie]

It's now painted, foamed and taped up. I also ordered stabilizer lube because, it has none. Pretty sure the switches are not lubed but they're not hotswappable so. Can't do anything to that or i would have to solder. 

 

18 hours ago, spacepickle said:

Looks pretty sweet. You should attach a video of how it sounds once you get the keycaps!

Thanks. Keeping my fingers crossed to how it will sound I'll keep you updated.

[ben_bennie_nie]

Keycaps arrived and i like them but, the board itself seems to be painted too bright. Might repaint it with a darker grey. Found a slightly greyish cable i had in my stash that goes nicely with it. The original black cable really stuck out like a sore thumb. Even with the keycaps it sounds loud and not in a nice way. It sounds very gamer keyboard clicky. Hoping lubing the stabilizers and anything else i can think of can make it sound good.

 

[spacepickle]

It’s giving knockoff 8bitdo vibes lol

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

12 hours ago, ben_bennie_nie said:

It sounds very gamer keyboard clicky. Hoping lubing the stabilizers and anything else i can think of can make it sound good.

Probably the best way to start looking into the sound is with as little mods as possible and go from there, to see which directions your mods move you.

With the switches soldered, there is probably no foam or dampening between the PCB and plate, meaning you have a lot of the switch sound reflected right back at you without going into the tray and into the foam. I found that adding some foam between the plate and PCB therefore can really help reduce the higher frequencies and dampen the "clicky" nature of linear switches.

 

Otherwise I would experiment with different mods to the tray, given that this is probably the easiest one to work on. Foaming that up can help, but I found that adding things like automotive sound dampener (i.e. the Kilmat or Noico stuff) can really help with resonance from the plastic box.