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Drop CTRL V1 Mechanical Keyboard
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Drop CTRL V1 Mechanical Keyboard
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Product Description
To put it simply, the CTRL mechanical keyboard has it all. Constructed with a solid aluminum frame with a built-in switch plate, it’s stable and fortified Read More
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Apr 10, 2018
5
Prototypes & Final Touches
What a day! The prototypes have arrived and we’re ripping open boxes like it’s our birthday. It hasn’t been the easiest putting these keyboards together. We actually manually drilled the PCBs and assembled them ourselves—but now that they’re built, we love where this project is heading.
The next step is putting the finishing touches on the keyboards and doing a sample run to ensure they meet our (and the community’s) exacting standards!
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Mar 27, 2018
4
Choosing the Perfect Factory
The search for the right factory can be long and grueling. It’s more than just giving a good one the green light: there are countless certifications and compliance-related formalities to consider—not to mention thousands of viable facilities.
In fact, we started with a list of more than 100 different factories, eventually cutting them down to 12. To help narrow down the options, our team flew to China to see them firsthand. While there were a few potential choices, we’re confident we’ve found the perfect one to bring our vision for the CTRL to life.
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Feb 7, 2018
3
No More Soldering or Clunky Firmware
Most mechanical keyboard users don’t know how to solder switches into a PCB. In the spirit of user-friendliness, we’re designing the CTRL with a hot-swappable PCB.
This technology has been in development since 2015, and it’s super helpful for those new to the mech keys scene. With a hot-swappable PCB, you can simply pop in any switches you want without ever picking up a soldering iron.
On top of that, we want to make the CTRL as easy to program as possible. That’s why we’re opting for QMK firmware. The most common firmware among the community, QMK is robust and supportive. With it, you can quickly program keys however you like.
Maybe you want your caps lock in a different position, or maybe you’d prefer the left shift key to operate like a backspace. Whatever the case, QMK firmware let’s you do so with relative ease. It’s also constantly being updated and maintained by members just like you—so if you have any questions, just give them a shout.
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Jan 4, 2018
2
Layout, Material & Other Big Decisions
Keyboards can be tiny, massive, and everything in between. After much deliberation, we’ve decided the tenkeyless layout is the most widely applicable to the community. It strikes the perfect balance between compact layouts and full-size layouts with much larger footprints. It also has a full set of arrows and function keys for programming hotkeys and macros.
To do the CTRL’s tenkeyless layout justice, we know we need a sleek case. To achieve a clean look that jives in the office or the game room, we’re making it with aluminum. Aluminum is easy to anodize, powder coat, and CNC machine. It’s also strong and heavy enough to stay put on the desktop, but not so heavy that it’s difficult to take on the go.
As for the color, we’ve explored many variations of silver and black, and ultimately landed right in the middle with anodized gunmetal gray. The community loved the gunmetal colorway on the Planck and Preonic keyboards, so it seems a natural choice for the CTRL.
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