PART 1 ~ PART 2
The PCB/bezel kit came in, and good news. The stabilizers are already installed, and lubricated. The keys were pre-lubricated, also, so that speeds things greatly (and I've heard lubricating switches can be a tedious task).
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| The disassembled keyboard includes the bottom half of the housing with battery, the printed circuit board (PCB) with stabilizers, foam padding, and finally the metal plate at the bottom There is also a bezel not shown above. |
INSTALLATION
Before fully assembling the keyboard, one thing I wasn't sure about was the inside of the case. I took a look, and it was a rather open chamber underneath the PCB. I took some leftover foam from a flooring job we did and cut it into three layers of strips that could fill the empty space. With that, it was time to assemble. First the keys, then (after a wait due to an ordering problem), the keycaps. I also applied my own logo. When installing the key switches, I opted not to use the plastic spacers running around and rather see how they fit first. The Gateron switches snapped in perfectly. No need at all of spacers.
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| The foam padding provides additional sound deadening. It's cut into strips as there are ribs running horizontally across the bottom of the keyboard housing. |
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| Iblancod C87 with Gateron red switches. |
The keycaps fit rather snugly, and were easy to install. They too, feel a little cheap, but they were the lowest-priced caps I could find on AliExpress, so yeah - cheap. I'll upgrade to something nicer later.
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| The mostly completed keyboard with the keycaps installed. |
The keyboard has been in use now for a few months, and I love it. I did notice one additional annoyance. Every now and then, I would feel like maybe I hit the CapsLock key, but no status changes on the keyboard. The next time I look up, I would see that I did hit caps lock. Looking back over the board, I saw the obvious design flaw. The LED for the CapsLock switch is located "on" the PCB. The top surface of the bezel sits approximately 1/2" above the LED. The space in between is filled with a black hallow tube leading down to the LED. As the inside of this tube is black, it reflects only a tiny fraction of the light being produced. If you want to see the light, you need to have your eyes hovering directly over the LED, which is clearly not practical. So, I took a hot-glue gun and made some elongated teardrop shaped drips of glue. I then fitted them into the center of the tube and marked where they stopped. I then cut off the top (wider part) of the teardrop, and fitted them back into the tube until they were flush with the surface of the bezel. When dry, the glue allows enough light through to be able to easily see if the LED is on, but also spreads out the light into more directions, so it can be seen from any angle.
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| The semi-transparent glue helps to spread out the light in all directions, making it easier to see. |
That brings us to the next problem I noticed. For whatever reason, this poor typing of late has also manifested with the symptom of hitting two keys when I intended only one of the two and double-tapping keys much more frequently. If you think step-by-step at what happens when we copy and paste text using just the keyboard, double-tapping a key can be really problematic. Well, as it happened, I had done a lot more reading about different switch types, and when I purchased a set of Red Dragon red switches, they also threw a set of five or so other switch samples. I decided that what I needed was a switch that was tactile like the blues, but quiet like the reds. From that set of extra switches, I found that both the brown, and the purple fit the description. The purple seemed like it required just a tiny bit more force than the brown, so I decided on those (later research confirmed that this was the main difference between the two).
They came in the mail on a Saturday, and I had them in the board before dinner. One significant issue with the purple switches, however. The pin on the right (when looking at the switch from the top, as if inserted into the PCB) is significantly thinner than the one on the left. While swapping out switches, I ended up bending 4 pins and having to replace the switches. (This is, by the way, why I buy a pack of 100 switches for an 87-key layout). Looking back, the sample switch that came with the Red Dragon reds was an Outemu purple, not a Red Dragon purple. A bit of looking around reveals that the thin pin is specific to Outemu switches and housings. (Red Dragon branded switches are manufactured by Outemu.) I found it odd that I didn't run across this in pairing the switches to the hot-swap mounts, but something to keep in mind for the future. I am also considering looking for a slightly stronger set of springs. That could also help with double-tapping, though possibly at the expense of keyboard fatigue.
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| The new purple switches have a tactile feel without the loud click. |
I have definitely noticed a small improvement in my typing, and significantly less double-tapping of keys. I keep the back light set at low with a color like a faint violet (the closest to white I can get), and the transition from a light background to dark is perfectly seamless - the keyboard always seems to have the right amount of light for my liking. The tactile feel is really unpredictable with the Outemu (Red Dragon) purples. If you press on the key while pulling slightly toward yourself, the feel is different that when you press while pushing the key away from you.
So, the question is, will I build the next one? Probably not. The discount you get on ordering in smaller quantities is lost when you add in shipping. Since most boards in the $50-75 range are pretty nice, it's hard to justify building one with the essentially same feature set. What you do get, however, is the ability to build something with your requirements in mind. Having gone through that once, I don't think building is really the best route for me going forward. From this experience, I know what works for me, and what doesn't. If I need another in the future, I'll pick up something that already has what I want (and maybe macro support, too), and pay less for it.
