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)...
The Real Switches Behind These ‘Innovative’ Modern Switches
Alright, I’ll finally own up to it – there’s a lot of “copying” that happens in the mechanical keyboard switch world. While I don’t think that “everything is just a recolor of some other switch” nor do I think that “all linears are basically the same” as so many newer people to the hobby would claim, there’s definitely quite a bit of heavy handed inspiration taken from the past in the development of newer switches. A sort of ‘copy my homework but mess up a few answers’ vibe, if you will. Fundamentally, though, this shouldn’t be too surprising when you consider the limitations that exist in switches being developed within the very specific MX footprint. Gone are the days of companies developing entirely new switches, actuating mechanisms, and machinery to produce such all on their own and in order to make your switches marketable to the masses, they need to fit in with the shape, size, and style of MX switches. Naturally this near standardization of designs in the hobby leads to 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...
My first sub $200 board since 2018.
Okay, I’ve used sub $200 boards since 2018, but to be fair, I’ve not bought any to add to my collection. That all changed with the Neo Ergo. Last time I purchased a brand new keyboard kit at this price range was the original Tofu60. At the time, there weren’t many budget keyboard kits, and they were nowhere near as premium as budget keyboards are today. Many times they didn’t even come with PCBS and plates. It was expected that you were a hobbyist and that you were going to do your research in order to source your own internals.
The Ergo's internals are simple, but completely custom and proprietary.
Which comes to the next point when it comes to older budget builds. It was all standardized. For better or worse, universal 60 percent boards were the norm. The Poker series keyboards popularized a standardized standoff location that was carried through early custom traymount keyboards like the once famous Hammer case. There is a...
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...
Keymap optimization: language statistics and important indicators
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...
Hey all The Skeleton here i've been talking with some users of geekhack and been seeing all of there amazing artisans and I have told them of getting more artisans on MD and they weren't exactly pleased they don't think artisans belong here.
But what do you think? Would you want some more artisans on Massdrop, they would of course have to be small drops but they would still be there at least.
I've noticed that there are many people from Europe which would love to join more drops but are confronted with huge shipping costs and taxes making most products more expensive than they'd be on retail.
Also, I've seen that some products actually come from Sweden, Germany etc. in the first place.
Is there any chance that European vendors could ship directly to European customers or that we'll se a department for other countries in the future?
Mechanical Keyboards 101 - An Introduction To The Hobby
Introduction
Let’s tackle the first and most obvious question here: “What’s the deal with these mechanical keyboards, and why in the hell would you pay $100+ for one?!” This simple question is unsurprisingly difficult to answer in many ways. Here's one reason and a thousand words worth:
Hate the way this one looks? I guarantee you I can find one you'll adore somewhere!
Mechanical keyboards are more than just a fancy tech accessory or noisy-disco-show to display on your desk. Mechanical keyboards are a full blown hobby with a huge cult following, years of history containing community DIY projects and group buys, dedicated forums (and silly forum drama), niche’s within the niche (like artisan keycaps), and more recently big brand names investing, collaborating, and directly interacting with the enthusiast community.
Personally, I’ve been heavily involved in the mechanical keyboard community for many years. I run KeyChatter.com - a website dedicated entirely to...
I thought it would be exceptionally helpful to have a post discussing keyboard layouts, showing what "standard physical layouts" are, and showing what keys differ for many popular alternative layout keyboards. I am not pointing out correct legend placement with these pictures, with programmable boards that would just be a nightmare. It should also be mentioned that I am basing this guide on sculpted profiles (SA, DCS, Cherry, Alps, etc) and NOT uniform profiles like DSA or XDA.
Here is the standard keyboard layout (ANSI and ISO). I have color coded the graphic in this way:
60% - Light Blue
TKL/80% - Green
TK/Fullsize/100% - Yellow
ISO - Dark Blue (Keys that differ from standard ANSI)
So, with this system any keyboard that is covered by light blue/green/yellow caps alone SHOULD be covered by a standard 104 keycap set (like Ducky, Tai Hao, etc). Keep in mind a few more boards can be covered by these sets, just not with the correct profile for each key.
At the end of this article...
I've designed a few keycap sets (Jukebox SA and Jukebox Cubic, GMK Honeywell: The Deskthority Set of the Year in 2017, and GMK Mint Dolch). I've collaborated on countless others, and I've picked up a few good tips and tricks for creating a successful keycap set along the way.
Massdrop has been heavily involved in the mechanical keyboard community for a few years now, and has really become one of the go-to places for custom keycap set drops. Before Massdrop most group buys for keycap sets were run on the forums, which had its ups and downs.
Almost two years ago I created the Jukebox keycap set, which ran on Massdrop as their first SA profile drop, with my second run of the set happening earlier this year. Though the overall design (color, profile) stayed the same, many aspects of the kit changes as a result of the ever changing community and popularity of custom sets since my first drop. A lot of thought and consideration went into the second drop, and I thought it may be...
Artisans are my favorite parts of keycaps, they are a labor of love that are unique and beautiful, and with all of these new artisans coming to Massdrop I ask. Which one is your favorite? my favorite artisan is the nebula series from jelly keys.
Migaloo is the only known all white humpback whale in the world. “Migaloo” is the aboriginal word for "white" in Australia
He was first sighted in the Australian waters in 1991. Since then, people have met him more than fifty times at different times and places, and one of the occasional encounters was particularly exciting. It was captured by photographer Jenny Dean at the Egira Bay in northern Queensland, Australia, the wonderful scene of Migaloo jumping over the water.
At that time, he was rushing out of the water with his symbolic backflip action. The long fins gracefully crossed the air. After hovering for about one or two seconds, the body weight was slowly twisted and fell, making great sound and huge waves.
The graceful "dance", dazzling white, seems to be in the fairy tale world.
Please drop a vote for this project and make it a reality here!
You can see a couple renders in this link right here!
Hope you're excited about the project, let me know your thoughts!
M
I apologize for any jimmies that may be rustled by this post, but I feel like this needs some attention. I used to LOVE Massdrop when I first got into the hobby of mechanical keyboards. I always wanted these fancy GMK and SA keycap sets and Massdrop seemed like the best place to get them, all other group buys are usually ran by a single person, seemed a lot less reliable to me at the time.
My opinion has pretty much pulled a complete 180 at this point. I used to defend MD as much as I possibly could, I figured people were just complaining cause they didn't understand MD isn't the actual manufacturer of these high-end keycap sets or custom keyboards and people didn't want to wait. Now I realize that while there are still (and will always be) people who complain about this, Massdrop needs some SERIOUS customer service improvement.
Here's the reddit post & linked imgur album that caused me to want to write up this post in the first place (this is not me):
http://imgur.com/a/6kAc1...
This is the Splitography for steno/chorded input.
For anyone who doesn't know, stenography allows you to press multiple keys simultaneously that correspond to syllables, words, or phrases. The keypress combos are in mnemonic patterns so that the more patterns you learn, the faster you learn more. The end result is that you can type blazingly fast with a relatively relaxed typing pace. The strange keycaps are designed to make it easier to type the combinations of keys required by stenography: one finger often has to press two rows simultaneously.
The tooling for the custom keycaps was expensive due to such low volume production, so I'm looking to see if anyone else knows about or is interested in learning stenography. Spreading out the tooling costs over multiple keyboards can make these boards very cheap very quickly relative to their original price.
Greetings everyone! We’re excited to pull back the curtain and reveal the premium membership program we’ve been working on the past few months as well as give a little insight into how we came up with it.
Initially we started by thinking about how other websites give back and improve the experience for their most dedicated users, as well as the various pros and cons in comparison to how our site works. Free expedited shipping makes sense if you’re placing multiple orders per month or even weekly from somewhere like Amazon. Or alternatively, monthly subscription boxes work well if you have lower-value consumable items that need to be replaced routinely like razor blades or cosmetics. We tossed around a lot of ideas, but coming up with something that made sense for keycaps- which are purchased infrequently and have a high value- was a slightly more challenging task.
After looking at the past 4 years of our keycap sales, we found that typical keyboard enthusiasts bought three sets...
hello guys , this is Crazy Designers from China!
Just like our name, we are a team of crazy designers, and the [Cyberboard] is a big project now we're working on. The inspiration comes from the Cybertruck of Tesla.
Specifications and common questions:
1. LEDs:
Programmable(you can customize the pattern like time, wavy lines and other not too complicated effects)
Resolution - 5*40
Supports USB 3.0
2. Mounting style: Gasket x Top mount
3. Weight: not finalized
4. Case materials: 6061 aluminium alloy
5. Plat:CNC and anodization production
6. Painting: anodized
7. Dimensions of the case: 340.5 x 181 x42.2mm
8. How steep is the angle of the case? 10°
9. Hot-swap? YES!
10. Layout: ANSI layout
If u guys got questions about the cyberboard, please feel free to let us know!Welcome to join our discord / follow our Instagram to follow the latest progress.
Discord server:https://discord.gg/su2DXde
Instagram:https://www.instagram...
We wanted to publish this article and give everyone an insider's look into the incredibly interesting process of making the colorful plastic that we all love: keycaps.
Step 1: Designs and Inspiration
You may know from your favorite designers like Matt3o, MiTo, Oblotzky, T0mb3ry, and Cassidoo that design inspiration doesn't just happen, it needs to be nurtured. These designers spend hundreds of hours thinking about concepts, developing them, scrapping and iterating to find the right theme that will grace thousands of keyboards.
There are a ton of constraints that these professionals need to consider when thinking about their designs. Beyond obvious aesthetic issues like colors and fonts, careful consideration like keycap profiles, extended board compatibility, multilingual legends and physical materials regularly come into play.
After all this, 3-dimensional renders need to be produced using CAD software to help fans visualize the product that we intend to bring to market...
Hey everybody! Thank you for purchasing your Drop Mechanical Keyboard. We hope you’re enjoying it so far. If you’ve landed here, you probably want to take full advantage of the keyboard’s features so you’ve come to the right place.
We’ll start with the basics, then we’ll move on to complete custom configuration.
THE BASICS
Default Hot Keys - All Drop V2 keyboards, SENSE75, and CSTM80
Hold FN + listed keys to activate
LED Keys
Fn + W: LED Brightness Increase
Fn + S: LED Brightness Decrease
Fn + E: LED Animation Speed Increase
Fn + D: LED Animation Speed Decrease
Fn + R: LED Hue Increase
Fn + F: LED Hue Decrease
Fn + T: LED Saturation Increase
Fn + G: LED Saturation Decrease
Fn + Q: LED Toggle (All, Keys, Edge, Off)
Fn + A: LED Next Pattern
Fn + Z: LED Mono Color Mode
Fn + X: LED Breathing Effect
Fn + C: LED Rainbow Mode
Fn + V: LED Rainbow Pinwheel Mode
Keyboard Option Keys
Fn + N: Toggle keyboard 6KRO/NKRO (Default state 6KRO)
Fn + LCtrl + O: Windows /...