Rosaline: A through-hole 40% keyboard PCB for 60% cases

Hello Keebtalk, earlier this year I ran a group buy for a through hole ortholinear PCB I designed called the Lumberjack. Now that that’s done I’ve moved onto my next project, the same through-hole style but this time a wideboy 40% staggered layout for tray mount 60% cases.

I received the prototype PCB last week and found time to put it together this week, the acrylic component cover is still on order from the local laser cutter.

I had a little issue with the FR4 plate, the cutouts for the stabs are a little too - shall we say - cosy, so I had to file them out a little bit to get them to fit correctly.

The bottom row supports both a 7u and split setup. I went with split spacebars since I have minibars but I’m not sure I like it.

TBH, I’m so used to ortho I’m finding it hard to adjust back to staggered. Luckily I also designed an ortho PCB, so I’ll have to build one of those up and see how a 4x15 grid feels.

More info on Github.

19 Likes

I love this project. Well done.

Correct me if I am wrong, but with this layout, wouldn’t most base kits be able to cover this? Seems like a really great way for me to dip into a 40%.

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You need 7u space for big space bar, but yes other than that this is pretty base kit friendly (most GMK base kits have you covered, it’s the SP base kits that would require you to order the extra mods for 7u).

This is essentially a 60% with the num row chopped off and a unique bottom row configuration.

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Yeh I went with a rather opinionated bottom row without really thinking about it. I kinda forgot that 7u isn’t as common outside of GMK, but I like the symmetry of tsangan and ortho arrows, so 6.25 got forgotten. It’s probably impossible to support all the popular bottom rows without the PCB ending up as swiss cheese.

@peejeh thank you for open sourcing Rosaline - I took your design and changed it to support small mods and a numpad and I am very happy with the result! I call it the Rosalina.

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Oh wow, that’s so good.

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this is great! I had the same idea of lopping off the numrow and using it for tht components and being able to use the base kit of most keycap sets, and now seeing it done, I think this idea is great.

I am still contemplating on the layout of the bottom row for my design.
do you mind if I end up using your same layout for the bottom row?

Of course. The files are all there on Github if that helps, feel free to embrace and extend if you feel the need.

I have a few spare prototype PCBs if you are interested.