Custom Mechanical Keyboard :: Will Yager
Some years ago, I wanted to make a Nixie Tube clock from scratch. PCB manufacture was so expensive that I ended up just making the PCBs by hand. I figured I would give the market another look, and dang has custom PCB manufacture become cheap! The best/easiest service that I found was OSH Park. I'd never had PCBs made professionally before, so OSH Park's user-friendly process really drew me in.
I had recently been interested in purchasing a mechanical keyboard. The closest to what I wanted was the ErgoDox, because it used a Teensy microcontroller board (which I could re-program). However, I figured it would be a lot more fun to try my hand at creating my own design, now that I could afford high-quality custom PCBs.
I can be very, very patient if I feel that it will improve the quality of whatever I'm working on. Therefore, I opted to design my keyboard in very small, deliberate iterations. I had the following three requirements:
· The keyboard had to be relatively inexpensive. · The keyboard had to use mechanical switches. (I chose Cherry MX Blues) · The keyboard had to be highly customizable.
