And it’s done! Everything is together and working as expected. Big dumb button is mapped to Enter, with an Fn mapping to Task Manager. I went boring on the LED and just made it a Caps Lock indicator, but I may change that someday. Additionally, I may shift around the little grouping of Backspace/tilde/backslash. So far my hand really wants to shoot for the corner of the main alphas cluster rather than going for what I see. It’s funny how muscle memory gets tied into the typing process even when you still use your sight to keep your bearings.
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POG worked out very well for me. The only thing I had to map manually in the KMK code was the encoder’s pushbutton. While tedious, once I got my printer fixed the entire build process was pretty smooth. Only burned my finger twice, only had one or two shorts in the matrix, and the POG system of laying out the keymap by pressing the keys made my weird pin-saving matrix much more manageable. Since the big dumb button protrudes so far (the board’s foot has a hollow compartment), I figured chunky in general would be fine for this build, and to be sure if you’re someone who likes a wristrest, you’d need it for this one; front height is in the LeBron James region. The encoder is nice, though the “cheap AF” ones i got don’t have super-snappy detents. I’m also glad I threw a few bucks at the knob, even if it’s nowhere near the same shade of red as the LED pushbutton. 
Typing wise, I am getting used to the Akko MDA, which is like if someone made XDA into a sculpted profile. I remain confident they’re exactly the same molds as XVX’s “ISA” and a couple of other random Chinese profiles, but I am going off memory until/unless I get another set of ISA. They play fairly nice with the green switches as well, though the sound and feel, as well as simply being budget “PBT doubleshot” at all, makes me think there’s a healthy amount of ABS in the blend. This board is just a touch bouncier than my others, but with no support in the center, I’m actually pretty pleased with how secure it feels. I think the top-mount-esque construction worked better for a big board than the loose captive-plate I’ve used on a a couple of these two-part printed cases, which were a fair bit more compressed.
This is very close to the biggest board I can fabricate with my current setup, and I think my laser may be due for the same maintenance attention the 3D printer got for this project. I am currently plum out of ideas, but in that good way where I feel like I scratched an itch. As an aside, I kept wondering why this board felt so familiar, and then it finally hit me as I walked up to my car, which looks exactly like this (except dirtier).
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