following the wood fashion

[jeff]

During the last week, I wanted to know if I could switch from metal sheet to wood for my experiments. I did a try with a very basic shape that I wanted all made of wood, from case to keycaps.

Pure orthogonal keyboard, only one size of modifier and spacebar, all 1. Here is some pictures of the result :







I made the case from beech wood which is enough homogeneous to create the matrix. It would have been easier to assemble a metal plate with a wood frame but it wasn't the goal, maybe next time.

The keycaps are made from usual materials from hardware store, less than 5 euros. Some more work is needed to get a better keycap regularity for a better visual result. I did a try to engrave them, not very convincing, so I think I will leave them blank. Thus don't know yet the layout I will use (probably a kind of bépo).

I didn't wired it yet, wondering if I wouldn't get some mx brown.

[imp]

Can you post a picture from the bottom side of the caps?
I ran some tests on making my own wooden caps some time ago. They are working but I should cut them to size and I fear, the stem-mount will break off some day.

Spoiler:

wooden keycap prototype

wooden-keycap.jpg (83.23 KiB) Viewed 6557 times

[jeff]

imp: there are few more pictures on the page http://bepo.fr/wiki/Utilisateur:Jeff/structure_bois. It's in french but I'm not sure a translation is mandatory, pictures tell enough, otherwise ask me.

Here is the one you asked for :

I wanted the simplest and the cheapest solution, so I did a kind of low profile keycaps. I will probably need to squeeze the tube a little bit to avoid keycap from turning but for the first test it seems tight enough.

I was not courageous enough to do something like you.

[imp]

Thanks

[jeff]

As I'm still waiting for my brown switchs, I decided to solder my wood keyboard with MX Black. Keycaps are the most difficult part to do, every single centering mistake has a visual impact. For the next one I will maybe try a DSA set.







It is now usable even if a plate is missing at the back. Now working on layout optimization.

[Muirium]

Great experiment!

I'm a sucker for wood. Intrigued by your wooden caps. How heavy are they compared to the usual plastics? I've heard that metal caps are problematic because of weight: they interfere with switch operation as an extra load on the spring. Low profile looks the smart way to go.

How do the caps feel to touch? Plastic has its strengths, but designers break out other materials for the touchable parts of their products whenever they have the budget. I'd love to see similar work with other textures like metal, stone and glass!

As for blank keys, all the better.

[jeff]

After some tests with my kitchen balance I found something like 1.2g per keycap vs less than 1g for a wyse keycap. Not sure that with black MX there will be a big difference, I will see.

If you want to test other textures you can try using mosaics tiling, in 2cm*2cm or 1,5cm*1,5cm. I'm not sure you could find a square of 1,8cm. For example http://www.leroymerlin.fr/v3/p/produits ... cm-e141605 -- http://www.leroymerlin.fr/v3/p/produits ... cm-e141684 -- http://www.leroymerlin.fr/v3/p/produits ... cm-e141526.


But in that case, yes, the switch must probably be adapted and I think you can forgot the idea of 5mm a hole on each tile. Maybe ALPS mounting slider could be interesting for that. Or, just a modification of a scissor and dome keyboard (would be OK with 1,5cm squares).

For metal it is already common (http://deskthority.net/post107664.html#p107664). But still something to do.

[jeff]

I didn't acheived layout but present it as I begin to use it. It's not fully functionnal, some adjustments are needed (delays, layout change logic).

It's designed to be used with windows, keeping native keyboard mapping (french). It could be plugged on any computer without changing system parameters (constraints to use this keyboard at work)

Yellow : layout change
Orange : mouse movement (LUM = left up mouse ; SUP = scroll UP ; LC left click )
Green : cursor movement
blue : space, enter tab, backspace, escape
grey : modifiers

Defaul layout is KOS (keyboard and OS). It goes back to this mode after a while.



M1 to M15 are macro keys, (not working for the moment)
MNG (manager = ctrl E) DSK (ctrl D) ... are shortcuts to OD functions or applications (mainly windows oriented for the moment)



It's a bépo layout (http://bepo.fr) and a simple chorded keyboard, composition of two keys can give a specific output ( e+t => "ement" quite common in french)

Pressing ACC after a letter cycle thru different accented version of the last character pressed (e -> é -> è -> ê -> ë -> e )

I will probably modify a bit special caracters (add / somewhere for example)



DES (drawing) was mainly added for fun.

LED mnemonic reminds the layout in use :

Code: Select all

KOS XXX
MOS OXX
MIN XOX
MAJ OOX
SPE XXO
NUM OXO
DES OOO

The simpliest solution would have been to do it with TMK (or to add function to TMK) but I was to lazy and I thought I needed something special (chroding). Probably wrong nevertheless alway funny to reinvent the wheel.

edit : reading back my notes, I think there is a link between this layout and that post by william on GH http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=407 ... #msg833095