this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Mechanical Keyboards
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Are you addicted to the clicking sounds of your beautiful and impressive mechanical keyboard?
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Indeed, multiple spacebars is what really makes these types of boards work. I like having four of them personally.
You rang?
This is sexy. I need details.
DIY board. I designed a no-stabs matrix-only PCB (the Pi Pico MCU has to serve as the "daughterboard"). It's FRL 1800 and is one of my personal favorites, though I've since replaced the black spacebars with a couple of BOW keys that reflect the hold-tap mapping I set up; I've also changed it from KMK to ZMK.
Anyway, PCB orders usually have a minimum order of 5 piences, so I snapped the numpad off of one and laser-cut a "case" and got "half-height" switches. My laser can sort of half-assedly dye-sub cheap PBT blanks, so I did a Timex Sinclair design. Later, I added feet, a 3D printed "sidewall," and a MagSafe ring so it could be the keyboard for a Chrometab I converted to Debian.
You “snapped the numpad off” and the rest of the board kept working?! I wish to subscribe to your blog.
I mean, it helped that I knew the designer, LOL.
IIRC, there is one single bodge wire in there from where I did compromise the matrix, but I cannot stress how simplistic this PCB design was. It is holes for switches, holes for diodes, holes to string it over to the microcontroller dev board, and traces connecting them all. My second one is slightly more ambitious, allowing a couple of layout choices, Alps or MX, and has a designated spot to solder a specific MCU. That one requires two bodge wires because I screwed up the traces a little. If I do a third, I will know to make sure every trace is assigned to a "subnet" before I tell KiCAD to clean things up.