MechaNICAL Keyboard

One of my hobbies is building mechanical keyboards. I like experimenting with different cases, switches, plate materials, mounting methods, lubricants, and filler materials/geometry for sound design. I especially enjoy the meditative clockwork rhythm of lubing the switches and soldering them onto the PCB. I built 14 of them so far.

This song is my attempt to capture the glorious feeling of typing on a well-built mechanical keyboard
(which is not necessarily expensive).

I strongly recommend headphones for this one.

The keystrokes throughout the song were typed on two keyboards with 60% sized cheap, generic wooden cases.

The first one is walnut, top-mount on only two columns, brass plate, Holy Panda tactile switches (Halo True stems inside Invyr Panda housings, Durock gold plated 67g springs), Durock V2 stabilizers, DZ60 PCB, GMK Camping (R1) keycaps, sorbothane foam cut into 1 inch diameter circles and spaced evenly for sound dampening.

The second is rosewood, o-ring mount, polycarbonate plate, Gateron Ink Black linear switches (70g), Durock V2 stabilizers, GH60 PCB, GMK Carbon keycaps, wall-to-wall rectangular neoprene foam topped with a mix of polyfill material and shredded memory foam.

For lubrication, I used GPL 105 on the springs for both; Tribosys 3204 on Holy Pandas and Krytox 205g0 on the Ink Blacks for the stems and housings. No switch films in either of them.