buildlog Selfmade 60% mechanical keyboard!

[RollinLower]

it's been a while, but today i recieved the notification that the PCB has arrived in my country! it just needs to be processed through customs now and then i can finally solder everything together and actually make the keyboard work!

 

very excited to finish the project!

[RollinLower]

it took a little while, but i finally recieved one of the final packages from china today!

This time it is the PCB, which strangely came with another positioning plate? so yeah, always nice to have a spare one i suppose

The PCB is a thing of beauty tough, just look at it! 

getting all the switches on was a hassle, because the contacts of thoe LED hotswap feet are pretty loose inside of the switch, so threading those through the PCB was a small disaster

 

the fact that i had to insert them through the positioning plate definitely didn't help either!

after a little long while i got them all in place and ready for soldering tough!

 

my soldering is not the best, so i'll spare you guys the finished soldering job. everything is stuck to the PCB now tough, so i guess that is something?  here's a bit of how it looked tough.

 

and the finished assembly in the case

 

I had to modify the case a little bit for the spacebar stabilizers to fit, but it really looks worse on the pics than in person! especially with the keycaps on you can barely see it.

 

speaking of which:

 

i'm completing the final touches as i write this post (on the keyboard actually!) i still need to perfect the programming and how i want to set up my layers, but it types!

All that i'm waiting on now is just the LEDs and a nicer mini-USB cable than this plain one. 

 

So yeah, i'll post another update as the final parts come rolling in!

[NoxiousOdor]

That is pretty awesome

[RollinLower]

Finally, I received the last package from China!

the LEDs have arrived, and now I can't decide what colour I want it to be

what do you guys think? red, white, green, blue or yellow? 

[EunSoo]

im kinda against backlit leds but white sounds the best

[lookpuppy]

Blue

 

[RollinLower]

12 minutes ago, SCGazelle said:

im kinda against backlit leds but white sounds the best

yeah i'm not a big fan of the whole RGB craze either, but i do need some level of backlight on this keyboard. i can't touch-type, and the ninja stlye keycaps make it really hard to make out the lettering on the keys when it's getting dark. 

[EunSoo]

25 minutes ago, RollinLower said:

yeah i'm not a big fan of the whole RGB craze either, but i do need some level of backlight on this keyboard. i can't touch-type, and the ninja stlye keycaps make it really hard to make out the lettering on the keys when it's getting dark. 

I forced myself to learn how to touch type by getting blank keycaps and no backlighting. I do have some underglow but that's just aesthetics.

[RollinLower]

51 minutes ago, SCGazelle said:

I forced myself to learn how to touch type by getting blank keycaps and no backlighting. I do have some underglow but that's just aesthetics.

welp, maybe one day i can learn how to aswell, tough right now i'm still getting familliar with all the layers and stuff. 

i'm starting to get the hang of it now i think, but i;m not in a hurry. baby steps

[RollinLower]

it's been a while, long enough tht i moved houses and got an entirely different setup! I've been experimenting with all the different LEDs i have. I finally settled on normal white LEDs with a single red one underneath the Esc key.

I dislike LEDs in keyboards, so they are off 90% of the time, tough when it gets too dark i can turn them on by pressing Fn+z, and adjust the brightness with Fn+x/Fn+c.

 

Final pics are incoming, and i guess this is the end for now. So far it was a very cool experience, and i am definitely going to build more boards like this. maybe a more silent one using MX Reds is the next

 

For now tough, enjoy the final high-res glamour shots!

[GrockleTD]

On 1/19/2018 at 12:40 PM, RollinLower said:

i already finished putting the sockets in all of the switches tough.

i guess a tool could definitely be handy when performing maintenance tough, or if i ever want to add a lubricant.

you should always use lube

 

[iLostMyXbox21]

@RollinLower something cool you could do is carve out the letters / shapes on the keyboard so that the lights will go through them. like where it says “esc” you could carve it out

 

just a thought, looks great btw. verrryyyyy clean looking