Making a custom plate for a KBD75

Learning and discussion
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Hi everyone.

I am looking into making a custom plate for my KBD75 and I have everything set up except for the mounting holes. I’ve been using swillKB and KLE for most of it but I can’t figure out how to add the mounting holes. The CS at LaserBoost suggested posting here and on reddit (which I had already done) and I was hoping someone more knowledgeable then me can chime in. They fixed the DXF for me supposedly but since I can’t upload it here, these screenshots will have to do.

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Here is a screenshot of the fixed DXF, any help is appreciated!

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@Maartenwut is my plate guru and might make some suggestions

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As an ISO user, I wonder, what are the advantages of getting a custom plate cut like this compared to an universal plate design?

Also, I’ll probably be buying a KBD75 in the future, so I’m interested in this. Would you be willing to share the final plate design?

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Universal plates have much larger holes, so switches have much less to hold on to. This can make switches harder to align during assembly, which can lead to crooked switches/keys.

The area around the enter is especially affected by this. The ISO enter switch only has two tiny tabs to hold it in place:

The extra holes in the plate can also be visible between keycaps (depending on what keycaps you have), which doesn’t look as nice as a custom/fitting plate.

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@Maartenwut Will do as I am completely lost when it comes to CAD and all of that and thanks for the pointer, thought I had picked PCB mount stabilizers on SwillKB.

@juusu Would be no problem to send you the files, it just irks me the way the PCB shows through the plate and as @FSund pointed out the ISO keys just kind of fall out of the plate when soldering if you’re not careful.

1 Like
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This is very cool @brns. I was holding off getting a KBD75 till KBDfans gets Zealios v2 in stock so I could get it preassembled, but this might be enough to make me decide to build it myself. Please keep us posted with your progress…

Also, would this fit both the original and the V2 cases, or are the dimensions different?