Here's link to imgur gallery showing the process: https://imgur.com/gallery/yCZXpi6
Extra info: I moved 8 pads (in 2 rows) from the numpad that i chopped off to the spacebar area to make my beautiful 1u layout. I connected them back with wires so that the controller had no idea anything changed. I used single strands from a stranded wire, and attached them to the membrane traces by simply taping them to the traces with copper tape. Even though the tape is copper and the adhesive is supposedly conductive, i did not have good enough results by putting only the tape on the membrane traces (hence why i taped the wire strands themselves to the traces).
Final thoughts:
I do not recommend moving pads on the membrane like I did. Getting the membrane to work is a very delicate dance. I had to reassemble it 13 times, tweaking stuff, putting copper tape under failing pads, etc. It is perfectly working now but I am not confident that it will last forever. In the end, the nav/numpad chop was the easy part. Anyhow i made some mistakes with the membrane surgery that i will share. 1. turns out the top membrane is thinner (presumably since it is the layer that needs to be bent to make contact). I did not realize this until after i put a bottom layer membrane on top, this probably did not help. 2. Melting the membranes together like i did is probably not a great idea after all because it is stiff, which again probably doesnt help with making contact. I should have used copper tape.
Now that i can use my layout i realized a fatal flaw with this keyboard and it is not even my fault: 2kro... turns out when typing fast i often have more than 2 keys pressed at once. This is very annoying. On this keyboard the "you" and "ion" trigrams are especially problematic for me, and they are not exactly uncommon...
Overall its fun keyboard but this is not excellence. The quest continues
