So, once design was sorta stabilized, it was time to assemble everything and add some finish.

I've settled on a fairly easy to implement and jarring palette of red-white-black as i did with previous project here, so this is what i got:

Here's a lifehack for those poor souls who decided to do spraypainting jobs in cold weather: heat sources and air movement accelerate drying process drastically. And a 3d printer is a heat source and air movement source at the same time:

Though it's still will be better if you allow paint to dry just a little bit outside since it stinks.

And in regard to paint drying procedures, what i've learned the hard way is that several coats of paint dry much longer (since the bottom one will be covered by something that you have painted over), and that patience is MANDATORY if you do not want to remake everything from scratch. 

I'm not patient, but i was kinda ready to endure a few cycles of print-sand-glue-prime-paint procedure. What i was not ready is for the damage that it did to my sleep schedule.

But hey, past mistakes are the history we learn by, right?

After everything has dried enough not to stick right away (it still sticks to things if you press hard and long enough tho), it was time for assembly. This RP2040 board i've chosen has USB broken out and connected via FFC - allows you to position primary connection wherever you wish. Everything else was straightforward also.

Buttons were tricky. See, i left so little space between the top cover and the PCB, it made coming up with the piston solution not trivial to approach. I've made these joined and flanged triplets so i could print them as is and then cut to fit the task of holding one under the cover, or hold a group of them - but not too many in one group. And it kind of worked. Needs more flanges though.

Primary connector assembly:

Add some silicon tubing to protect the leads:

Boom, the peak of impracticality: achieved.

Add some low profile key caps. Encoder knob pending:

A little logo screen animation + key test mode to close out for now: