How do I fit three stabilizers on a PCB?

I am making my own ErgoDox (although I guess it’s no longer an ErgoDox if I change the physical layout) and I’m making it with 3 2U keys on the thumb cluster with PCB mount stabs, but I can’t really fit them in.

Two are easy as you can just rotate them with the smaller holes facing one another, but no matter how you rotate the third one, either the holes overlap or there’s like 1/5th of a millimeter of PCB between them. Technically I guess the screw part of the last stabilizer doesn’t need material everywhere around the hole, but the previous stab needs it for the clipping part.

I either get this:

or this:

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If it’s only for yourself and u wouldn’t mind the look.

A easy workaround could be to make one of them a 2.25u and have that stab a little “of center” :upside_down_face:

That’s the thing that I want them aligned.

There’s always the workaround that I can go for plate mounted stabs, but I’d like to see first if there is a way to fit 3 pcb mounted ones.

I am very surprised by the fact that the spec is made in such a way that they don’t easily fit. I guess Cherry didn’t take ortho keyboards into consideration when coming up with it.

Would it be enough space if you only use cherry clip-ins?

I don’t think so, because the Cherry clip-ins use the same hole sizes and distances. I took the dimensions off of Cherry’s datasheet.

One thing I noticed recently is that the “]” and the "" on an ANSI layout, a 1u and a 1.25u right below the backspace, are the right spacing that the stems fit into the stabilizer holes on the backspace key. Sort of like a 2u POS keycap, but with a wider spacing. I don’t know what to do with this information, but maybe its relevant/useful to this situation.

Ok, time to mod some stabs :wink: if u remove half of the “hook” on the stab that goes in the pcb so when the two stabs connect they will form a joint similar to the ones u do in woodwork.
Hot glue is another option.