Another keyboard

During building my first keyboard (which you can find here) I learned a lot and also found out some stuff that I wanted to try to do differently on my next build.

The case

The biggest gripe with my previous board was the case. I printed two versions and even the second one did not fit correctly. Before I got around to design a third one, reddit user Abtswiath published this excellent model: https://www.printables.com/model/345568-fortyorty. So I just used that one for my new build.

The wiring

As I had some trouble with wires breaking in my previous build, I decided not to use just any wires that I had around, but built wires and cables for purpose. For the rows and cols I choose a 1mm cooper wire and for connecting to the microcontroller board I used the same silicon isolated flexible wires as before, as they worked flawlessly. The thick wires that I used look much better and feel sturdy, although you have to use a little more heat to solder the diodes and switches to them and I was a little worried about melting the switches.

The rows:

The cols wire:

Completed wiring:

Switches and keycaps

I used the same Kailh red switches as in the previous board, I decided not to waste more switches and disassembled that one.

I used some of the keycaps I had printed before, only one that I had to print new was the 2U spacebar to fit over 2 switches. I used this model: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2934020

Controller, firmware and layers

The software was the part from my previous build that worked the best, so I just used that one. I may experiment more with my keymaps, but you can always find my current keymaps along with the firmware itself in this repo: https://github.com/matejpokorny/40-percent-ortholinear-rpi-pico-keyboard

Conclusion

Overall this board feels much more sturdy than the older one, the switches fit better into the plate (due to dedicated cutouts for the switch lock in the board) and wiring with the 1 mm wire is much more solid. I am not yet 100% used to the tiny 39 key layout, but I am loving the challenge.