I bet they’re both wrong still. I would have to look back through my baggie to see, but I believe there were 2 in my original kit as well. You could turn them over and set them one above the other to see if the two stems are both in the exact same place maybe?
It’s not a big deal because I have a ton of keyboards with centered caps locks. It just bothers me because I know that I’m limited. The story of human behavior, right? Like… I can have EVERYTHING in the world, but I can’t eat from that ONE apple tree. Hmm… I want me some apples now.
He wrote back and said they have them in and are about to ship out. Apparently they have a few sets of corrected caps from other buys as well and they all came in together.
Pardon my kinda scuffed photo, right now I’m using my Link65 on my desk at home with lubed holy pandas and Cherry Olivia APL. This is probably my favorite board that I own in terms of overall feel.
I’m glad I built it myself as the sense of accomplishment is completely on another level and making this one of the boards in my collection I am most proud of.
The Build
I was also trying to figure out which switches I wanted to put in this board as I was going with a the FR4 half plate configuration. For all of the work that was going to go into this board, I opted to go with the switches that I spent the most time to prepare: Vintage Cherry MX Blacks that I had broken in for an additional 1 million actuations, applied RO-59 to the stems, and spray on dry lube to the bottom housings. The springs were lubed with GPL105, and Deskey films were applied to help out with the housing tolerances.
I then went to work to try to figure out which stabilizers I wanted to use, and for all of the different ones that I have tried, I keep coming back to Staebies. While the 7u wire needed a little help to straighten out, everything else was perfect. I lubed the housing with GS2 and the wires with GS3, which is a combo that I have really been enjoying as of late.
Moving on to soldering the switches to the board, which is usually a fairly simple task, the fact that these switches were only 3-pin had me second guessing my choice. I decided to soldier on and take things slow. Starting at the corners and then moving on to the space, enter, L & R shift, and backspace. I filled out the rest of the half plate and sat back to congregate myself and optimistically think about how it wasn’t that bad. Then, I tried to solder in the rest of the stand alone plateless switches…
I was able to use another plate to hold the tops of the switches in place until I could flip the PCB over. From there, I soldered in only one pin of each switch just to hold them to the PCB. After they were in place, I then took a 7u spacebar and laid it across the rows, and would reflow the solder on the one pin, and then solder down the second pin of the three switches that would connect to the spacebar. From there, I would move the spacebar over to the next switch and move down the line until all of the switches in that row were soldered in. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to me.
That’s why I always want to solder. It gives you such a great feeling about your build when you nail it.
But regards to using another plate to straighten the switches, wouldn’t it work great if you pile up the plate and just let your build rest in it like a tray before you solder?
Oh!
And @Deadeye , great write up, really got me into the mo()de.
And after reading @d3L7r0n write up, I’m definitely gonna do some tinkering with my keebs this week.
Saw the bitt101 on a Twitch stream (juliday97) a little while ago. Just stuck out to me as a delightful board - luckily - in-stock! Delivered this week - and put together this evening. The KAT Monochrome that is on there feels a little…tall - will likely swap the caps out - but it’s a fun board.
The top row of LED buttons flips between screen options, as well as, disabling the screen / LEDs - an action bar - and the second row acts as the F row.
I wasn’t sure on the sound, since the body is just bent, powder-coated steel, but with the plate and mute foam - it’s really quite pleasant.
Built with Gateron Oil Kings.
Lighting on the photo is meh - it’s a nice white - powder coat. Only a few specks which give it character