/mkg/ - Mechanical Keyboard General

now get those optical red switches and be blown away.

You're thinking of switches not caps. Caps are the tihngs that go on top.

You can buy a sample pack of Kailh switches from Novelkeys, the sample pack includes all the normal Kailh box switches, including their clickies like the Box White, Box Jade (heavy), and Box Navy (heavy).

The box white is similar to the MX Blue but more stable because of the box design. The Jade and Navy are heavier switches that have a more noticeable click to them.

What options are there besides bloody and wooting?

how are kailh nowadays? have they solved the stem splitting issue from before?

Well I use a Unicomp and a Blues on a regular basis with no issue in terms of heaviness or lightness. I suspect this is an issue with fat fucks who need to put down the triple bacon cheeseburger and liquid diabetes and maybe lift some weights.

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They claimed that they did. Novelkeys got the new ones and he says the pack he tested were 1.3mm, which should be safe I think. The old ones had up to 1.4mm stems which were breaking the caps. Hopefully kailh doesn't screw up again.

I love my cherry mx blues through and through, but my roommate wants me to get dampeners which I thought was fair. Are they going to at least feel the same?

I've heard through the grapevine that there are still some stretching issues on the new version, but they may have been mistaken so don't quote me on that.

As a follow up to yesterday's blog posting. I'm not sure I like the outemu sky with clear top. Or the Hako Royal for that matter. All of these super tactile switches have a side effect of the big tactile bump creating the feeling of high-resistance. Whether the force need to overcome is actually higher or if it's just the sensation of the bump (a later movement), it feels stressful. I think zealios are a good spot and perhaps even less tactile. I thought the feeling would like a click but quieter but it's nothing alike, guess I'm just a dummy. Expensive experiment since I bought enough of each switch for a TKL + extras.

>a later movement
lateral movement, not later. The feeling of going sideways as opposed to up and down.

I have some fixed box navies, and the dozen or so I measured were all around 1.26mm (give or take). The prefix box switches I have measure around 1.29mm (give or take).

is custom pcb a thing? i wouldnt mind having a slightly different layout to normal for some macro buttons

Is there such thing as a hot-swap-able keyboard?
I want to test some switches, ready to just bite the bullet and buy a fuck ton of each different switches, but want a single shell, rather than buy several different keyboards.

They exist, but I heard most of them are trash

Yes. There's the gmmk, team zhuque board, the massdrop crtl &alt boards I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting.

Yeah, you just need to make it in SPICE or whatever and upload it in Gerber2. People do that all the time for all sorts of custom electronics projects. I'm waiting for a 1KV rated quad set of electrostatic amplifier power supply boards from a group buy right now. And also some custom 4 channel balanced potentiometers from Japan.

A simple little thing like a Keyboard PCB shouldn't be bad at all. You'll probably just have a minimum order of 3 or so.

cool, any rough idea on where and how much? alao gerber2 just brings up knives for me

doubling up is the only thing you can do for those type of keycaps.
Those are more expensive than QMX clips and have the same dimensions. Aside from that they are shit, the keycaps get caught in the rubber and make it feel sticky if you hit it off center + it only works on thin cherry profile keycaps (the keycaps need supports to work).

A real better solution would be to make a custom upper housing for an MX switch that's made of hardened silicon, none of this clip on external shit.

oshpark.com is a decent price for this kind of simple stuff. I wouldn't trust them with large trace values or high voltage, but they are perfect for keyboard kind of projects.

not gonna lie at $5/ square inch thats like $500 for one pcb? and they have a 3 min order?

I usually use them for small stuff. And it should be less than $5 per square inch. But just google PCB printing house and you should have plenty of chinese alternatives if you don't like that one. Even just getting some PCB raw copper plated sheets on your own and running them through a CNC at some local makerspace would probably be the cheapest.

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>tfw spent a;; weekend typing pn a ortho and am n[pw at wprl fucking i] wotj a staggered 'at[it.

Life os p[ain.

Nice T8000 clone there.

put some uv enamel on the pcb

You get 3 copies of the PCB, gets cheaper if you bulk order too.

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true. idk maybe if i advertise it first i might be able to sell them.

Yeah, looks pretty cool. Not mine though. I'm working on a Circlotron. Super excited for the TCD stuff to finally ship.

>tfw typing on topre switches

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>I'm working on a Circlotron
Good luck with that. Still have some circlotron boards myself. Though I'd rather wait & see a working build first before attempting mine.

At least they don't explode anymore. We'll see if these new boards kill the external noise though.

You heard wrong.
yeah this. There are plenty. I would recommend getting a gmmk to start with if u live in the US. Hotswapple boards are growing in wide popularity so waiting is also an option.

pretty much it. There are reports kalih has made one and I have actually seen them, but noone has tested them yet. Real hesitent on being an early adopter.

>This exists
Everyday we stray further from the light of God.

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hang the fuck on! Baby onions powder contains dha? We talking about that expensive ass shit we get from fish oil pills? hmmmmm

What's this? I don't understand the geometry of this case

Have there been any board revisions since the .2 output board & .4 carbon driver board? Haven't bee following the circlotron thread all that closely.

looks like regular tada68 with dust cover

pictures from phones do that.

>been*
Fix'd.

The new HV900's have a ground plane and a new current limiter.

Hmm, would the old HV900s be useless then, or is the ground plane just something to try and help with the noise problem?

item2.gmarket.co.kr/English/detailview/item.aspx?goodscode=1156346954

I want to get this Leopold with the English/Korean layout. However, gmarket doesn't seem to ship these to US. Any other places that sell Leopolds with Korean layout, or keyboards with Korean layout in general?

Also, does anyone know the difference between:
FC750R
FC750R PS
FC750R PD

It seems the PD is the newest iteration, but I'm not sure what this naming scheme means.

oh nonono!

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The PS means it has PBT dye sub caps, while PD means it has doubleshot PBT caps.

Reposting my cool new GK64 from last thread.

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in the end is there actually any point to this stuff? it feels so vapid

Ask yourself that about most hobbies.

Some people take it too far, but what I especially don't understand is all the autistic effort put into keebs that aren't split + ortholinear and/or diy

pretty pictures, and yes

no, but it's very cute

Guys im about to buy a Unicomp, theyre 110 with shipping cost. What's the best Unicomp model, should I get the black one considering all my gear is black, and am I going to be disappointed with it?

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>110 USD for a fucking keyboard
that's a big yikes for me

Well partially, but not for the prices some people are shelling out for their keyboard.
Technical keyboards greatly improve my writing speed, and because my thinkpad floats up in the air I need a keyboard to control it.
But there's certain clones far below the atrocious prices certain companies are asking that are considered better than their original counterpart.

Beyond that, I see people shelling out atrocious prices for colored keycaps, wires, and whatever else that makes their keyboard look like something you win at a ferry.
There's also plenty of keyboard broscience doing the rounds about ergonomic keyboards shaped around your hand that looks ridiculous and don't actually do anything.

My advice is to not fall for the mech keyboard meme entirely, just get a mech that actually feels like something you want to type on for the next decade, buy some retro thing if you really want to get all fuzzy about 'dem boomer days, and then call it quits.

Don't pay more than a 100 euros, with 100 euros already being ridiculous with little to.no returns for that price.

110 euros, so even worse, 60 usd shipping costs from the company itself tho.

Get an Anne Pro or Tada 68 then.

>tfw you spent 450 on a keyboard

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Yes but it's the endgame of mech keyboards, nothing beats a Model F.

A beamspring does, but they've gotten way to expensive

Tada 68 with Cherry MX caps worth it or should I go beyond when upgrading from an Anne Pro?

Holy fucking shit I am in love with light linears right now. I'm in a shell/editor/text environment most days and my fingers are loving how smooth everything is. It's like I'm typing on goddamn air.

35g linears ain't nothing to fuck with.

I would just get a ibm model m instead desu.There have been quality issues with the unicomp boards lately and frankly, the guys selling them don't give a shit. What are you going to do? Buy another model m clone from mc doesn't exist

Plum topre-like or Gateron clear?

>noise problem
This is the only problem left with the design, really. The HV900's always worked in terms of providing power. It was the bridge on the Circlotron stage that would blow during power up because the servo couldn't keep up.

Trash ass gateron clears. It's a el cheapo build but holy shit I don't even want to touch my M at the moment. Like using my membrane at work felt like a chore.

I hate to say it, but I think I can live without the clack. I don't even bottom these things out.

The explosive growth of the mech community saved a ton of old models from the crushers the last few years. Before that it was like people would find an old 50's Roadmaster in their barn and go "hurr durr fuck this worthless thing, everyone uses priuses", but now those doofs seem to understand there's money to be made. And even tards don't just throw away money if they can help it.

The autism also revived good switches for the mass market like hall effect and optical and provided the capital for stuff like the Model F repro project.

If the cost of all that is having to put up with 30% vanity boards and artisans and the other silly things, so be it.

What does /mkg/ think of gateron reds?

see

?

all the Gat linears are pretty good: black, red, and clears all feel smoother than what they're ripping off, so it's not at all a bad choice in my opinion.

the only real problem you get with gaterons is some consistency issues, i've noticed. like some will be so oily smooth that they almost feel lubed, and then one or two may be strangely scratchy.

Alright it's pretty simple, gaterons are Cherry Mx clones, but they ended up being loved more than Cherry Mx switches to a good portion of the technical keyboard community. That's because the are 'smoother', I.E, the transition between pressing them down and the switch rising again feels a lot more fluid on gateron switches.

Gaterons are also the underdog and we all know how much Jow Forums loves underdogs (thinkpad, AMD, linux) so Jow Forums loves to shill gaterons.
But Jow Forumsmechanicalkeyboards/ shills them all the time, so it's not like they're the only ones.

beside the knob-meme who has an hands on experience with the drevo blademaster?

I'm not interested in the knob rather than the layout choices (need ITA), cherry option and overall price

Think they will be good lads?

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gaterons suck
cherry mx sucks
romer-g suck dick
razer w/e it is sucks huge massive dick

nothing and i mean nothing compares to a model M.

I heard you Mr. Boomer, some of us like to leave some space for a computer.

no

Stupid boomer pretending to be a zoomer. Everyone knows that the MX form factor predates the model M

so i just fucking spilled soda in my favorite keyboard, i kept using it after i did it though and about 30 minutes later some keys started activating randomly and basically made the keyboard unusable. is it permanently fucked or is there something i can do?

Anyone interested in buying/trading my KUL ES-87 TKL w/ MX Browns? Or know how much it's worth?

wow that looks clean, whats the keyset in the background?

ur switches sound fucked. Gotta open it up and desolder them and replace them. Costs about 30-40 dollars + alot of fuckin time.

Why is novelkeys doing this to me. I am running out of money.

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The keyboard works with electricity. Salt or sugar in water conducts electricity. You have just made a bunch of new paths for electricity in your board. That's why things are acting funny. Unplug it, take it apart, wash the whole thing with a couple bottles of 90% rubbing alcohol including working it into the switches, then let dry for a couple days.

yes
I'm imagining they feel identical to the heavy spring royal mod which I like quite a lot

Sounds like they're pretty nice then. I like how my gaterons have a higher actuation point than cherries. Useful for games

>nothing and i mean nothing compares to a model M

Ever have tried beamsprings or model f you contrarian?

Terry A. Davis programmed an entire operating system and his own programming language and compiler using a membrane keyboard

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K

and he got hit by a train and died. I feel like there is some lesson here.

>and he got hit by a train and died
kek