Custom 65% finally finished

[matt3o]

Did you cut out parts of the case yourself, or did someone laser it for you?

It's stainless steel, no way to cut it yourself I had it cut from a service here in Italy.

Thumbs up for that 3,5" floppy disk

[Grond]

That's a great result! I think the case would look even better without the screws in sight. I once had this old Abekas board. The top of the case was a heavy duty steel plate. The screws were headless and soldered directly under the plate itself. Maybe this could be a solution for your case as well? You can kind of see what I mean here:
http://deskthority.net/marketplace-f11/ ... lit=abekas
And here:
http://imageshack.us/f/853/p1000708k.jpg/

[matt3o]

I must say that I like the look the screws give...

[Muirium]

I must say that I like the look the screws give...

Same here, actually. The exposed switches also add to the no nonsense style of The Steely. It's a bare minimalism thing.

[JBert]

PCB takes away the fun. How sensible, do you think, it would be to make this into a kit for interested DIYers where the main thing we would have to do is look up all those time consuming wires?

Hard to say, depends on the number of participants I'd say. Probably we could cut the cost of the plate a bit and of the components. The real discount would be on the PCB if we want one.

It would be great to be able to find a controller with a micro-usb (smaller) or even without an USB and just D+ D-, but I couldn't find one.

I'm not aware of any without a socket, but Soarer did find a controller with a D+ and D- pinout in his Teensy 2 alternatives thread

[matt3o]

I'm not aware of any without a socket, but Soarer did find a controller with a D+ and D- pinout in his Teensy 2 alternatives thread

I've seen that but it has a mini USB anyway (so it's not actually shorter than a teensy). We would need to desolder the usb port, which is not easy.

[Muirium]

Loving the look of the hand wired matrix complete with NKRO diode array. I'm definitely up for a group hack on this project. And I'm not alone in this thread either.

[tlt]

I agree that hand wiring is actually better for DIY keyboards. It's cheaper, easier to fix/mod, lower risk, faster lead times. There are even some low volume commercial keyboards like the Maltron that does it. It's just that I like PCBs . But I'm going to skip the PCB on my next keyboard project because of all the benefits.

[matt3o]

I believe that an home made custom PCB would be a nice experiment anyway

[katamari]

Your board looks very nice!

But I wonder about the case and mounting plate, did you consider 3D printing it instead of laser cutting? If yes, why did you discard it?

[matt3o]

3d printing is too expensive and resolution is too low. laser cut is relatively cheap.

[cookie]

Man congratulation on this beautiful keyboard!
I really like it, clean and nice work

[photekq]

Beautiful build Matt3o. If you dont' mind me asking where did you get the steel cut? 60 euros is cheap as hell, and I think I might do a similar case for my GH60 build. If I could get it done for 60 euros aswell then that would be amazing.

[matt3o]

Beautiful build Matt3o. If you dont' mind me asking where did you get the steel cut? 60 euros is cheap as hell, and I think I might do a similar case for my GH60 build. If I could get it done for 60 euros aswell then that would be amazing.

it's a local service, I can proxy if you need. they can do steel and some other materials (ceramics mostly), I don't know if they have aluminum, I have to ask.

[photekq]

Beautiful build Matt3o. If you dont' mind me asking where did you get the steel cut? 60 euros is cheap as hell, and I think I might do a similar case for my GH60 build. If I could get it done for 60 euros aswell then that would be amazing.

it's a local service, I can proxy if you need. they can do steel and some other materials (ceramics mostly), I don't know if they have aluminum, I have to ask.

That's very kind of you and I may take you up on that offer. Of course nothing's set in stone but if I do end up making myself a GH60 case it'll most likely be layered, laser cut sheets to make sure it's cheap.

[tlt]

I believe that an home made custom PCB would be a nice experiment anyway

It's going to be interesting to see how that works out for you. I decided to not try that when I made the MeC64. It not hard to make a one layer PCB at home but I could not figure out a way to do all precision drilling needed for a keyboard.

[matt3o]

That's very kind of you and I may take you up on that offer. Of course nothing's set in stone but if I do end up making myself a GH60 case it'll most likely be layered, laser cut sheets to make sure it's cheap.

no problem. I need the CAD files and I can ask them for a quote.

It's going to be interesting to see how that works out for you. I decided to not try that when I made the MeC64. It not hard to make a one layer PCB at home but I could not figure out a way to do all precision drilling needed for a keyboard.

yes, definitely not easy, but doable I think. You probably need something like this to make the holes.

[Okeg]

Extremely nice work matt3o.
Could you perhaps give me an explanaition of how wiring works? It seems far superior to PCB IMHO.

[F u r u y á]

Inspiring!

[nathanscribe]

I'd also like to try SMD diodes, don't know if they are cheaper.

Unless you're making huge quantities, no. Typical 1N4148 etc are what, half a penny each if you grab a couple of hundred?

As for shorts due to low clearance, just insert a thin layer of non-conductive material over the base plate.

Nice work, btw. I am liking the keycaps...

[ninjadoc]

Very nice. Painful to the soldering of all the keys. A person with the nick " the Beast" might make you a plate if you ask if you want to do this again. White Dragon, komar007 might help with a PCB. Metalliqaz had a PCB made if you want to ask him how/where he had it made

[Muirium]

PCBs are for wimps! This was far from the last board Matt3o soldered for himself, he's done Brownfox since and there's another in the works.

Looking forward to soldering up my own board too. It's not much more bother than a PCB when you know what you're doing, and so much easier to fix mistakes!

[Findecanor]

I should have said it before: That layout is genius, if you use ANSI. The 1u Backspace is at the middle location of where a 2u Backspace would have been and the right Alt (Meta) key is in the right position. Only the Caps/Ctrl and Tab keys have unusual sizes.

As to PCB, I think that it would be nice to see a PCB with that layout and integrated controller that is made to fit into Poker/GH60 cases. As I am a die-hard ISO user I would not buy one for myself, but I think that other people would.

[Pacifist]

Sorry to bump the thread.

I am interested in this kind of design. However, I'd like some kind of PCB as I'm not up to the task of hand soldering.

One thing to note is the footprint of this board is the same as a regular 60%, meaning that we can use a regular 60% case with this board. That leaves cutting a plate for this layout and making a PCB.

If somebody with that kind of experience can make this, I'd be one really happy person.

[vamdolly]

Btw, when you say you have 10mm of clearance, where are you measuring from? I have about 8mm and i'm finding it *very* challenging to squeeze everything in...

10mm from plate bottom top base top. REAL space for wires and components is 6.5mm, with a PCB would be 4.9mm which means it wouldn't fit a teensy.

With a PCB we need at least 6mm, so the whole case height should be approx 15mm (with 12mm inside the case). The best of course would be to have an angled case but don't think that would be possible with laser cut layers.

Without PCB:

Code: Select all

        _
     __|_|__
    /       \
+-------------------+
|                   | 1.5mm Plate
+-------------------+
|   |       |       |
|   \_______/       | 3.5mm Switch bottom w/o pins
|     |   |         |
|     |   |         |
|                   |
|                   | 6.5mm Clearance
+-------------------+

With PCB

Code: Select all

        _
     __|_|__
    /       \
+-------------------+
|                   | 1.5mm Plate
+-------------------+
|   |       |       |
|   \_______/       | 3.5mm Switch bottom w/o pins
|-----|---|---------|
|-----|---|---------| 1.6mm PCB
|                   |
|                   | 4.9mm Clearance
+-------------------+

A teensy is a little over 5mm (if you remove headers standoff), so I'd say the minimum clearance would be 7mm (which translates into a case 15mm tall).

what was the thickness of all 4 layers you did as im trying to do a pure stainless steel case like this but with a custom key layout also how much did the case cost u in canada my laser place wants to charge 200 for the 4 cut outs and they only deal in stainless steel so i cant even try aluminium or plexi like u suggested for plate or walls. also what mm screws did u use.