Desoldering, Mill-Maxing, And Why You Might Want To Learn Both
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...
Jan 13, 2025
Materials
Plastic vs Metal Broadly speaking, most mechanical keyboards will either be “plastic” or “metal”; of course, the specific plastic or metal of choice will impact how a board feels, but these are the two main categories. Most beginner and/or mass-market keyboards are made of plastic while most boutique or custom boards are metal. After all, if you’re going through the effort of designing and manufacturing a small production run keyboard, why not go all-out on the material? Manufacturing/setup time accounts for most of the unit cost of CNC-milled products anyway. Most newcomers to the hobby have their eyes set on a nice metal keyboard as a “someday” purchase, and rightly so. The extra weight and premium feel is certainly appealing and an indication of build quality. Keep in mind, however, that the case material has a huge effect on the sound of a keyboard, and in many cases a more basic plastic case can sound better than its metal counterpart without modification. Metal
Plastic
Types of Metal
Aluminum By far the most common type of metal used in custom and semi-custom keyboards is aluminum. There are slightly different grades of aluminum used, but you’ll never notice a difference between them. One nice benefit of aluminum is that it can be anodized to a variety of colors, giving a quality finish and appearance that won’t chip off. Aside from anodization, there are a whole host of other finishing techniques that are commonly used when producing keyboards, which will be covered in a future article. Steel/Titanium Second and third to aluminum (in no particular order - if anyone has actually tracked this, let me know) are steel and titanium. Both are harder to machine than aluminum, and come with their own processing difficulties that make them far more niche than aluminum. Titanium is also expensive, so there’s that too. Brass The last metal that I’ll mention is brass, and it’s mentioned last because it’s more often used for plates and weights than entire keyboard cases. Brass is very dense, adding a nice heft to otherwise “light” aluminum cases, and the coloring can provide a nice accent as a plate material. Differentiating between all these materials in terms of pure quality is pretty dicey, since most of it comes down to personal preference. Brass weights are generally considered to be more desired than alternatives, and truthfully I think aluminum has so solidly dominated the case landscape that you’d be hard-pressed to find anything else not on the fringes. Types of Plastic