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• Abort Mission

  Radomir Dopieralski • 04/15/2016 at 12:58 • 5 comments

  Last Monday I worked a little bit more on this keyboard. I decided to start on the wiring. I did the rows, and then I decided the keys are not sitting in their holes well enough. So I decided to do what I did with my previous two keyboards -- glue the switches in place.

  Unfortunately, this time I used instant glue, and applied it when the keyboard was up-side-down, so that the glue got into the switches. Sure enough, they are all glued hard, and there is no force that could budge them now. I suppose I could try removing them, opening each and cleaning, but they would never again work as well as before, and I honestly don't have any stamina left to do it.

  So I'm aborting this project, with a small possibility of reviving it if I get my hands on some spare switches again.

• Backplate

  Radomir Dopieralski • 04/06/2016 at 10:55 • 0 comments

  OK, the power of procrastination is immense. I already made the backplate. Started by cutting a rectangle from a piece of sheet metal. Who needs laser cutters when you have a hacksaw?

  

  Next, I taped the two plates together and drilled the holes, then did some filing and dremeling to make the metal plate smooth and to round its corners. The result:

  

  I used nylon spacers to connect the two plates together, cutting off the excess pieces of the bolts.

  

  Next up: wiring.

• Keycaps

  Radomir Dopieralski • 04/06/2016 at 08:45 • 0 comments

  The blank keycaps I ordered finally arrived. I decided to use blanks, because this keyboard layout is really non-standard, and it would be difficult to get the right keys with the right letters on them, especially since some of the letters repeat. I might figure out some way of adding the letters on those keycaps later on, we will see.

  

  The keycaps are low-profile, but the keyboard is still pretty high -- as is expected with a mechanical keyboard. Next I need to cut a bottom plate for it, but that's after the conference.

• Designing a Keyboard

  Radomir Dopieralski • 03/26/2016 at 19:53 • 0 comments

  I've been through building a keyboard twice already, so this time I knew exactly what to do. First I went to http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/ and made a keyboard with the steno layout, which, for English at least, looks like this:

  

  Then I clicked on the "raw data" tab, and copied the keyboard definition, which looks like this:

  [{a:7,h:2},"S","T","P","H",{h:2},"<i class='fa fa-asterisk'></i>","F","P","L","T","D"],
  [{x:1},"K","W","R",{x:1},"R","B","G","S","Z"],
  [{x:2.5},"A","O","E","U"
  

  Then I went to http://builder.swillkb.com/ and pasted that code in there. After selecting some options, it generated me an SVG file that looks like this:

  

  I opened that in Libre Office (Inkscape has problem with exporting PDFs with very thin lines), changed the line width to 0.01mm, saved that as PDF and went to the nearby FabLab to have it laser-cut. I actually choose too weak laser power, so the cuts were not whole way through, and then I moved it, so I couldn't repeat the cutting, but nothing that can't be fixed with a bit of demeling. Final plate looks like this:

  

  I still have some Gateron Brown switches left from my previous keyboard, so I will be using those. They just snap into those holes -- easy enough. Keycaps are a bigger problem -- as you can see, I will need several with the same letter, and also for different rows than normally. The keys on your keyboard usually have different height depending on which row they are.

  So I went to http://pimpmykeyboard.com/ and ordered myself some blank keycaps. I also picked the low-profile ones, which are all the same height. This is actually the most expensive part of this project. Now I'm waiting for the keycaps to arrive.

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