deskthority

Hello and Welcome!

As of right now I have just ordered the PuLSE keycap set and its inspired me to create my own custom keyboard. Forewarning I have no experience whatsoever with building anything except for putting together my PC. I would also like to thank matt3o for inspiring with design that got more ideas flowing.

What I Know I Want

A TKL board with a set of dedicated arrow keys, print, delete, and function keys.
I have already purchased the PuLSE set so at least I have one part down for sure.


Switches?

Currently I own a Corsair K70 w/ MX Blues. I love them, however I've begun to notice how loud these babies can be. I've tried the MX Browns on a friends Varmillo VB87M and it just did not feel right.
I've been told to look at MX Clears, but I am definitely open to anyones suggestion that would fit my criteria for satisfying clicks.


Case

I've browsed a lot of keyboards and LOVE the Orion v2 (http://i.imgur.com/p3b3TQo.jpg) by /u/q_phazer light bar on the side of the case, but I also love having a floating key look to the board. Thankfully my father works at a company that can cut me out the Case I want and the plate that I'm currently having trouble deciding on. Preferably I would want the case also made of aluminum with a thin form factor with some small feet to allow for angled typing.


Plate

I've spent too many hours using http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/# an amazing keyboard editor that will also layout a CAD design after you're done. It started with deciding whether or not have a numpad

Then I had to decide whether or not to keep the F row, and where to orient the keys that I wanted in relation to the rest of the board





I then decided I wanted a more minimalistic keyboard and scratched the F-row



THEN FINALLY I BELIEVE IT WAS DONE: Note the white bar is a placeholder until I actually do a size I want for the eventually acryllic window for a LED shine through


Now I have the plate layout I just have to figure out how to use a CAD program to create the plate and a case that I am satisfied with.

I am totally open to suggestions of how to move forward or any tutorials on how to do anything past this.

Thanks!

If you want a sandwiched case, check out Swill's plate builder. It outputs .dxf files which you can send directly to a lasercutting service. Otherwise, QCad is simple enough to be figured out with a few quick youtube tutorials.

Once you have your plates/case, you'll need either to hand-wire your switches (you can see that on lots of projects in the Workshop) or design a PCB, which may be unneccessary if you're just making one keyboard. Use a Teensy as a controller, and program the firmware with TMK (there's a great tutorial about it by Matt3o).

I really like your very first layout, that's an interesting take on the Cherry 1800 layout.

Nice! One thing to consider, especially with a smaller board, is that you will probably want a Fn key somewhere so you can have a 'layer' with all the keys that are missing (compared to a full board). I notice your last design in particular doesn't have one, and that may be something you want to think about.

Otherwise, this is very well thought out. Much more thought than I put into mine - I went with a pretty standard ISO 60% layout!

Looks good!!, agree with Plasmodium about fn layer, but the Pulse base kit comes with an R3 "Function" key, ditch caps lock and have it served by Shift+FN. Agree with Matt about Swills plate builder, takes the guess work out, and speeds up the entire process, although it wouldn't hurt to learn some basic CAD skills.

I've been trying to get to grips with Draftsight, not as easy as others might be, but useful none the less.

Definitely need to look out for resources from Matt3o, really useful, this was my starting point...
Good luck and I advise getting some Caps before your Massdrop ones arrive... once you get started the build will fly along and you'll be looking for caps to complete the build and get using your board.