… here's my old 65 with GMK Dots.
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Mechanical Keyboards
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Are you addicted to the clicking sounds of your beautiful and impressive mechanical keyboard?
If so, this community is for you!
Here you can discuss everything about mechanical keyboards (and only mechanical keyboards).
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Hi, completely new to the topic of fancy keyboards but it looks soo nice. How would I go along to build something exactly like this? Do you have a bill of material or so?
Sure, idk if product links are allowed, but let's find out (not affiliated with any of the shops, feel free to find alternatives)
That's already it. I'm sure other people will comment some more entry friendly products for the hobby as well.
Be sure that the PCB of the board is hotswap otherwise you'll have to solder the switches yourself. Which for some layouts is necessary but probably not a good entrypoint. (There's usually 3 or 5 pin switches be sure to check if your PCB supports the one you choose). Keycaps have to match the layout there's usually ISO and ANSI.
It would appear that product links are allowed!
Basically keyboards are built of different parts. There are many articles, and I’m sure the old site has good resources.
Typically you choose the case (which is the physical keyboard exterior except for the buttons), which typically comes with the brains (PCB) of the keyboard. Things like layout and size are chosen by choosing the right case.
You choose your switches, which are the actual buttons that get pushed when you press keys. Each key is an individual switch, there are many types.
The plastic thing you touch when you press a key is a keycap, keycaps can get super expensive super quick for the nice designer stuff, but that does apply to everything else to be fair. There are different colors and materials of keycaps, different shapes (you know how old computers have very 3D keycaps while MacBooks have super super flat keycaps?), and even different manufacturing processes that affect how long the design will last etc (if you’ve seen a cheap RGB keyboard at a modern net cafe if those exist where you are, you’ll notice some keys peeling and stuff, that won’t happen with the keyboard in OP’s photo).
Some keys are big (like the spacebar or shift keys) and they need a small mechanism to keep them easy to press, those are called stabilizers. They sometimes come included with cases, but people like choosing nice ones and lubricating them.
There are more secondary parts available, such as novelty keycaps, or sound deadening foam, or brass weights, batteries for Bluetooth boards, etc.
One word of warning is that this hobby gets very expensive very fast. So you’re free to go with a standard decent keyboard if it satisfies you. Unlike other hobbies, building your own keyboard is much more expensive than just buying a prebuilt thing. But building your own feels nice, and being able to program it to do exactly what you need your keyboard to do is really easy.
Hey I'm also new to this whole mech keyboard thing. I'm considering going with a Planck V7, cherry reds and these keycaps. What makes them high quality like you mentioned?
These are double shot abs which is a multi step manufacturing method.
Be aware before you buy a set for your planck that keycaps have profiles (Cherry, XDA, SA). Take care that your set support the keys in the right profile row, usually labeled with r1-r5 (r1 lowest row, r5 esc and F key rows).
I'm replying to you because I'm building off your comment, but this is for the newbies in the thread
Yep, the profile thing is really important, the majority of keycap sets have profiles (ie. the shape of the cap is different on each row of the keyboard, for comfort). That's why some sets have several of the same key (a function key, for example), so you can drop that in where you want it.
In the case of GMK Dots, you could probably get away with not thinking too hard about profiles, since the keys have identical legends, you should have enough keys in the right profile to build a board.
My build uses MT3 keycaps (MT3 Extended designed by Biip and sold by Drop) for example, which have very aggressive sculpted shapes. I had to make sure that I could get the correct profile for the keys I wanted. For example, I wanted Home and End keys on my top row (96% layout), and most keycap sets will only include an End key for the row below that (and for the row below that one, annoyingly enough). But the set I was getting also had a numpad addon ( which I did want) that had extra nav keys (Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, etc) for the top row. Which makes sense, the numpad addon will primarily be used by people working on a similar concept as me.
Mismatching profiles feels really bad, it'll look and feel like driving on three tires and a bare rim. No thanks. Avoid that at all costs.
Ah yes, double shot! Wow, somehow missed that. I wanted to go with DSA which don't have this row specific profile but I see that these come only with the cherry profile. Could you explain me the typing difference a bit? I always used DSA keycaps on all of my keyboards.