What quirks or whimsies have you adopted in building your personal keyboards?

Learning and discussion Custom keyboards
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For example, I serendipitously found that I like using a silent linear for my spacebar (regardless of what what switches I use for the rest of the keyboard) when I used one of my boards as a switch tester. I like it so much, I’m planning on continuing this quirk in all my builds :slight_smile:

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i always have my spacebar springed much heavier than the rest of my switches.
even when using pretty heavy switches already. right now i’m using box blacks with 95g springs, but the spacebar is about 120g now.
get those thumbs to work!

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:muscle: :muscle: :muscle: :muscle: :muscle: :muscle: :muscle: :muscle:

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I dont like hollowness/pinging. I fill whatever case with as much foam as I can stuff in

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I always use a heavier switch in the space bar.

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Dremels come into play much more often than I expected

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Curiosity piqued…for what?!

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I think that’s a general rule of life. :wink:

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9

Converting full plates to half plates

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10

Full plate to half plate like @Manofinterests said & removing those pesky middle standoffs in tray mount cases. Also useful to remove all standoffs in tray mount cases for the O-ring/gasket mod if you want to go that far with a tray mount case.

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To some extent, I haven’t experimented much with spring weights and plate flex yet because I’m a fairly light typer. I would venture to say I bottom out infrequently, and when I do, it’s not a heavy bottom out (I think) or it’s mod keys that I’m pressing with emphatic flourish. But now I kinda want to try some super heavy springs and shave some standoffs just to see what kind of sensation if offers :nerd_face:

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12

For a while, it was sorbothane struts and/or sorbothane in the bottom of the case - and while I’ve mitigated the need to an extent with a combination of better-designed cases and better lubing technique on switches and stabs, there are very few boards that I think wouldn’t benefit from some case dampening and PCB/plate dampening.

My whimsies revolve around QMK, though. Every board I build has to have two things:

  • Alt keys mapped to switch desktop left/right for Windows - I became addicted to this almost immediately after building a few boards, and now I can’t live without it.
  • Fn-U outputs the URL for the keebtalk page where I did the write-up for the build for that board. That’s right - every board I build can tell you about its birth!
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wow that sounds amazing i gotta try it out

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14

That last point is so damn cool.

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I do something similar, but instead of using a silent linear I often put a “zealencio” on top of the spacebar switch. For those that don’t remember what a “zealencio” was: Please Log In

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16

Those silencing clips seem pretty neat. I’ll have to check them out if/when they come back in stock to see what they feel and sound like :slight_smile:

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I like them as flat as possible. Low-profile, no angle, as little as possible extra height from anything.

Also ortholinear, one-piece split, clicky, and narrow, but that’s pretty specific.

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https://uniqey.net/en/accessories/17/qmx-clips-pcb-mount-110-pcs.

@txeni I thought that i’m the only one :slight_smile:

I’m currently using a fc980m with mx clear and these silencing clips on the alphas.
Pretty good feel.
https://imgur.com/jZ6kkjs

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19

The fact that you have PCB cutouts to sink switches into, you are perhaps the most dedicated to having as flat of a mechanical keyboard compared to anyone in the world :joy:

Absolutely love seeing your builds to see the crazy thinness!

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In that case you will love my latest project…

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