As we publish more articles in the "Mech Keys How-To" series currently ongoing, navigating the various topics and finding previous articles will only become more difficult. This thread will serve as a table of contents to help add some structure to the whole project. Feel free to also suggest future topics in this thread, as it will surely be easier to identify gaps and opportunities for further exploration when viewing everything as a whole. Mechanical Keyboards Introductory Topics Mechanical vs Membrane Sizes and Layouts of Mechanical Keyboards Short Intro Into Split Keyboards (dovenyi) Staggered and Ortholinear Layouts Low-Profile vs High-Profile Keyboard Designs Build Materials and Other Case Design Considerations Selecting Your First Mechanical Keyboard (The_Manic_Geek) Keyboard Layouts Support for Alternate Layouts (dvorcol) What is SpaceFN and why you should give it a try (dovenyi) Keymap Layout Analysis (Keymap wizardry: Typing out the Harry Potter saga)...

Every now and then, one of the questions I’ll get from a reader of my articles circles around trying to figure out why I know seemingly way too much about mechanical keyboards. “Where did you learn all of this information, Goat?” While having been around as an active part of the community for several years now and talking with other people in various places has certainly helped me learn quite a bit, the simple answer that I usually toss to people who ask that question is that I read… a lot. Yes, that’s right, reading. Given that the modern mechanical keyboard scene started around 2007-2008, and with vintage enthusiasts having interests that stretch multiple decades backwards from there, a lot of the core, fundamental knowledge base of this keyboard community was carved into stone in the form of solo written articles, blog posts, and forum arguments. In fact, I’d go as far as to argue that a good majority of the history and foundational knowledge that makes up this hobby is in the...

If you watched Star Wars for the first time, without seeing images of the Empire’s perfectly spaced thousands of goose-stepping minions in spotless white-lacquered armor. If you didn’t see the fleets of black and grey tie-fighters, the immaculately designed star cruisers, the evil moon-shaped flagship… you wouldn’t know that the rebels were rebels. After all, rebels don’t look like rebels if they don’t have something to contrast them against. They just look like normal people. That’s probably why when you see Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Finn (all rebels) dressed in stormtrooper garb, they somehow seem even more rebellious then they were before. It’s not what they’re wearing, it’s how they wear it. Dirty, scuffed, broken. Helmet missing or askew. An out of place, beat up weapon slung diagonally across their body. It’s the simple act of defacing the uniform that identifies them in our mind as counter-cultural. Funnily enough, it works in reverse. To the dismay of...

Wouldn’t the proper phrasing for these be “artisanal” keycaps and not “artisan” keycaps? As I was looking through the ‘Mech Keys Guide List’ here on Drop a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised to see that there were effectively no articles detailing arguably one of the most unique and interesting niches of the mechanical keyboard community – artisan keycaps. In fact with each passing day I find myself sinking further and further into the depths of artisan keycaps and have gained an appreciation of them that far surpasses any expectations I could have ever had after getting my very first one. Despite artisan keycaps being fairly ubiquitous in this day and age, and with beginner friendly storefronts like Drop selling alongside prebuilt, accessible mechanical keyboard kits, I still find that those freshly diving into the keyboard hobby have a very skewed (mis)understanding of these kinds of keycaps, why they are priced the way they are, and all of the variety that exist out there...

Figure 1: Nope, not a single one of these is necessarily better than the rest... For no particular reason, I’ve been spending more and more time over the past few months in and around various mechanical keyboard help forums and servers. Despite having never really relied on their services back in my day when I first joined the hobby, I can kind of understand the appeal of them to new and curious enthusiasts as they generally seem like go-to places to connect with people who know a thing or two about keyboards. What I cannot wrap my mind around, however, is the sheer number of times that the exact same comments, questions, or concerns that get raised by the newer hobbyists get repeated. Even with FAQ or pinned set of questions, people seemingly only seem to think about and/or be concerned about the exact same set of things when it comes to their first keyboards. One of these types of questions that I find particularly concerning are those that are directly or indirectly...

Thanks to StoryboardTech’s fantastic article, you finally learned how to solder! Or at least, you’re committed to learning. So, what’s next? Well, if you’re brave enough, why not learn how to desolder as well? And when you feel confident with that, how about Mill-Max? You don’t necessarily have to know or learn how to solder before learning how to desolder or Mill-max, but in my opinion, getting comfortable with soldering is a great step towards learning how to do the other two, and if you know how to solder, you can practice desoldering and mill-maxing to your heart’s content since you’ll already have the tools from learning how to solder! Well, at least most of the tools. Let’s start off with the good ol’ disclaimer section first, however. Disclaimer These are my own opinions and my own thoughts, and if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that we all do things in slightly different ways. Whether it be deadlifting, desoldering, Mill-Maxing or even baking...

That would be a cool shop to go to in a mall. In some of my past posts and reviews I’ve written there have been requests to walk through my own process for building a keyboard for myself. I’m fortunate in that I get to build many keyboards. I haven’t logged every single keyboard that I’ve built, that would have been great, but hindsight is 20/20. The vast majority of the builds that I do are for other hobbyists. I built a small name for myself doing commissions and build services specializing in leveraging my extensive knowledge of the hobby to help acquire unique boards, make recommendations in build materials, and providing a truly personalized board for those who might not have known much about mechanical keyboards before reaching out to me. I started doing this service back in 2018, and now, being a dad, husband and full time IT specialist, I tend to only accept a couple commissions at a time. I’ve got my own backlog of boards, my collection seems to continually grow, and I...

Welcome back to this series where we’re designing kick-ass keymaps! After covering basics like how good/bad QWERTY is, the power of layers and the potential of custom keymaps, we took the first real steps in designing your tailor-fit keymap by looking into some options for compiling a corpus in general and also with a more useful personal corpus in mind. Quick recap: in this context, corpus is simply a fancy name for a big chunk of text. Today, we’re going to analyze your corpus (or pretty much any text if you haven't done your homework yet) and discuss some basic language statistics along with common metrics that can be used to quickly evaluate a keymap, and also to compare layouts. This is the next logical step in our journey if you're aiming to craft the optimal keymap for yourself. Character/bigram/trigram frequencies To begin with, let's examine the character frequencies in our corpus. The occurrence of different letters can vary significantly not only between...

What DaVinci Resolve looks like usually when editing sound tests. TL;DR This article is geared towards beginning content creators or those interested in content creation. If you're a content creation veteran, this may not be useful for you. These are just my opinions. What may work for me may not work for you! This is NOT for someone who is focused solely on making money from being a keyboard content creator or to maximize views, likes, or subscriptions. There is no foolproof strategy for success. Create, create, create. Take the leap and put out content, even if it isn’t perfect. Networking is key! Take Breaks When Needed. Article Sections (CTRL + F To Jump To These Sections) Intro  Disclaimer What IS a Keyboard Content Creator? The Fear of Failure How 1: Create, Create, Create How 2: Find out what YOU enjoy How 3: Networking “Mistakes” How 1 (Create, Create, Create) “Mistakes” How 2 (Find out what YOU enjoy) “Mistakes” How 3 (Networking) “Mistakes” Not Taking...

CTRL + F to quickly skip to each tip/trick below: Tip #1 - Cheap Dust Cover (Shower Caps) Tip #2 - Upgrade Your Wire Keycap Puller to Plastic Tip #3 - Test Your PCB/QC Your Board Before Building Soldering-Specific: Tip #4 - Take Your Time. Set Yourself up for Soldering Success Tip #5 - Using the Right Size Soldering Tip Tip #6 - Soldering Loose Switches/Plateless Builds - Rubber Bands Tip #7 - Fixing Crooked Switches After Soldering Extra Tip - Test Your PCB After Soldering… BEFORE You Put Away Your Soldering Equipment Intro & Disclaimer A recent mistake. Mixed three sets of beige PBT keycap sets and spent a good while having to separate everything... “I wish I had known about this sooner…” I can’t tell you the amount of times that I’ve said those words out loud, or thought about them when it comes to the keyboard hobby. Whether it’s what someone in the community has told me, or something I found out myself, even things that may seem so simple as using...

A gimmicky hype word, or purposeful implementation, gasket mounting has definitely changed the keyboard landscape. When looking for a new mechanical keyboard, one of the hot terms that come to mind is “gasket mounted”. It’s heavily advertised in the keyboard hobby, but what does it exactly mean? Why is it a buzz term, what are it’s benefits, and does it have any drawbacks? Today we do a deep dive in the world of gasket mount keyboards and what the buzz is all about.  Many have seen the keyboard mounting style infographic arranged by Thomas Baart. It’s a great resource, but isn’t quite reflective of the current market. If I had better technical drawing skills, I might attempt a new one.  As you can see in the image for the gasket mount, there are red gaskets identified. What isn’t accurate is that the screws for the case travel through the plate or that the plate is sandwiched between the top and bottom case. This would nullify any benefits that gasket mount provides. ...

Top Left: CustomNeko (Bakeneko With Through-Weight) With KKB BoW And Accents, Top Right: Cannonkeys Bakeneko60 With GMK Norse, Bottom Left: Ciel60 With KKB Abyss, Bottom Right: Jixte60 With GMK Analog Dreams “Simplicity is boring, but I still love it.” - Sukant Ratnakar. When I first got into the hobby back in 2017, there was no way that I would’ve thought that I’d enjoy a 60% layout keyboard. Sure, maybe a 75% (I didn’t use the nav cluster for non-work situations, and when I was at work, I needed a numpad) in order to retain the function row, or, at the very least, a 65% where I had dedicated arrows, but a 60%? Absolutely no way! I need dedicated arrows! I need a function row! It’s funny how preferences change, huh? For the next installment in my “Why I Love” series (the first was the “Why I Love Prototype Runs And Helping Keyboard Designers” article I wrote a few weeks back), please allow me a bit of your time to explain to you not only why I love 60% layout keyboards...