The Worst Keyboard I can Build

Learning and discussion Custom keyboards
1

What’s the worst keyboard YOU can build?

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Tbh I didn’t think it sounded that bad. Lol I have some early kailh blues that are nightmare inducing in feel and sound.

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I love the keys falling off

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Yeah the final swipe across the keys got me :rofl:

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Seeing all these keycaps falling made me laught hard :smiley:

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The keys flying off at the end, I’m dead :joy:

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I bought that keyset :man_facepalming:t3:

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Ha. I had a cheap set of keycaps, too. Here’s what you do… build a cheap board but put love into it. Lube up the stabilizers. Put foam in the plastic case. Got caps that fall off? Put them on box switches to snug them up. Polish the turd. It will actually be a pretty nice keyboard. GIve it to a friend.

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Sadly I managed to build a worse keyboard without trying to make it bad, with authentic honest good intentions:

What was wrong with it?

  • Wrong key spacing, slightly smaller than 0.75" or 1U. I thought that slightly smaller keyboard would be cute. Turns out muscle memory disagrees.
  • The key caps only come in 0.5U increments of sizes, so the row staggering is wrong if I used them the way they came. I tried to fix that, but that left some holes between the keys.
  • The sunken choc switches are horrible. They click when you press them, but only contact when you bottom out. Makes you miss most of your key presses.
  • The stabilizers turned out to be mounted on the bottom side of the PCB, and that did’t work with my idea of just a flat PCB lying on the desk, so I made my own stabilizers out of paperclips. They kinda work, but not great.
  • No plate, no case, no screws — magnetic or otherwise, etc.

Then again I learned a lot building it, so it was totally worth it.

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That was hilarious.

Just that sound alone communicates to me that isn’t a confidence-inspiring board. It sounds like the keys are bouncing up and down on the stems, which they probably are. Shudders noooo

Obligatory “bobas tho” aside, I think the least pleasant mx-compatible switches I have ever experienced are the Outemu browns on my dad’s Velocifire TKL. Big nope.

Edit:

I’ve done this once so far, and am working on a couple more very budget-oriented custom projects - all for friends. Definitely learning a lot along the way, as most of these projects involve de-soldering cheap boards and replacing the absolute trash bits with modestly-priced good ones, or just giving them enough love for them to stop being awful.

The one I finished so far went from being your average rattly mess to a tuned, stream-friendly silent-tactile board. Switch housings were donated by someone here on the forum, the springs were random leftovers, but the stems were V2.2 Gazzew silent tactiles. Cheap pudding caps, has RGB and bluetooth, even has a horizontal volume knob above the arrows. All-in, it cost me ~ $100 to build.

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