ErgoMechKeyboards

Disclaimer

This is a review of the services offered by FK custom. I was not gifted a set nor paid to say anything positive. I paid for a custom set with my own money. I’m writing this review mainly due the lack of reviews on it and the lack of pictures that weren’t taken with a potato camera (no offense).

Background

I love the simplicity of blank keycaps especially for choc boards. But ever since I saw pictures of the MBK Legend Keycaps with Hiragana legends I’ve felt the urge to get me a set with non-latin legends just for the cool look. Unfortunately, the MBK Legend Keycaps were sold as a group buy which I missed out on.

Ever since then I was on the lookout for extras but haven’t had any luck so I decided to give FK custom a shot and get myself some MBK keycaps with customized legends.

Ordering

The ordering process is fairly straight forward. You choose your preferred material option and base color, then add the number of keycaps you’d like to customize. Finally, you can go ahead and put your custom legends or icons on the keycap. The web tool offers different font options right out of the box but also makes it easy for you to upload your own font and even vector graphics. It also lets you create templates to apply a setting to other keycaps.

I loved to fiddle around and try different font styles and font placements. I think I've spent too much time on creating weird sets that I will never purchase - but it was fun nevertheless to play around and pretend to be a keycap designer.

Delivery

After giving up the order I was shortly contacted by FK customs who wanted to make sure I put up the right order and informed me that it might take a bit longer to deliver than usual due to the summer break. I appreciated the open communication and I frankly do not expect a delivery in couple of days or even weeks due to the nature of this commission.

After 3 weeks the package safely arrived. Being in the keyboard hobby you’ll learn to be patient and always expect a late delivery so I was fairly surprised by the swiftness of it.

Packaging

The keycaps came in a simple box.

And the keycaps were neatly vacuum-packed.

I definitely prefer this sort of packaging instead of having loose keycaps in a plastic bag which could rub on each other during transport and potentially damage the coating or the keycaps.

Keycaps

I ordered a set of MBK PBT+PU keycaps which are made of PBT and have a PU coating on it similar to MBK Glow (according to the website). The base material is white and then colored in your chosen color.

I was very surprised at the crispness of the lasered legend and am very happy with the result.

I wasn’t sure that I would like the light grey colored legend on a black keycap, which I assume is the result of the lasering process, but seeing it in person made me actually love them. It isn’t too contrasty and gives it a bit more of a stealthy look.

The coating also makes the MBK keycap feel smoother than the normal MBK blanks but it still has some subtle texture to it. I however do not mind it at all and it is as comfortable to type on as on normal blank ones.

Final words

So, all in all I’m happy with my purchase and time will tell how well the lasered keycaps will hold up. I hope this review was of some help to some of you.

You may of course ask questions and I’ll try to answer them to the best of my abilities but do note that I’m just a customer myself and questions regarding the service or product are best answered by the vendor.

Introducing Heron, a Dactyl-inspired columnar keyboard with each column mounted on a laser-cut acrylic scaffold.

With this keeb, I wanted to get as far away as possible from the "big plastic brick" look of the Dactyl. I was inspired by the Glove80's sleek look and in particular by its "hey, just bend the FR4!" construction, but I wanted staggered columns and a more "weightless" look and I was sick of flat thumb clusters slowing me down.

The columns are 0.8mm FR4 PCBs screwed into 8mm acrylic; FFC ribbons run down the back legs, and diodes are on the mainboard.

Column positioning is essentially stolen from a Dactyl, with an extra partial row at the top so that I could use the same 4x1 PCB for each column. (It's a 3x6 at heart.) I'm quite proud of the thumb clusters, though, which are inspired by the DataHand: wrapping around the thumb, with a heel-toe motion for the middle, makes it quick and easy to press virtually any combination of keys, and thumb travel is so much less than the flat Manuform cluster.

More pics at https://postimg.cc/gallery/Vwfqb1Q

Video of the thumb cluster in use at https://youtube.com/shorts/eb4dZot1eeI

Everything's open source, because why not, but the files are in a moderately execrable state right now (particularly the main case, which I designed while [and, honestly, before] learning FreeCAD). Repo at https://github.com/Sneftel/heron .

Learned a lot, not completely satisfied with the turnout, but I'll have more ammo for the next build.

Nice!Nano V2 using ZMK firmware, BLE, and custom PCB made with ergogen, kicad, and purchased thru JLPCB. Going to print a case and learn the keyboard layout.

Hi, I'm looking for flexible PCBs compatible with the 5x7 Dactyl Manuform (Carbonfet variant). Does anyone know if any are available online? Thanks!

I have do some research about doing dactyl manuform, and I see people mostly solder directly diodes and copper wire to the switch. So i want to know that if i build dactyl manuform with hotswap function, will there have some problems which can kill my board? And when comparing handwired and hotswap. which is easier to do if i'm a beginner? And another question: is reset buttons neccessary for this build? (because i saw many guides are always including this component)

I'm currently designing a hot-swap hub+spoke keyboard, and I'm thinking a little ahead about the gaming keyboard module. I'm considering using a thumbstick instead of what would be the WASD cluster, alongside ample surrounding keys for RTS and other such games that have big hotkey configs.

Has anyone done this, and what has been your experience? Is it worthwhile pursuing? I've seen trackpoints for mice, but I'm not aiming [heh] to replace my mouse - only the WASD cluster. A trackpoint also seems like it could be a poor fit for movement controls.

My main concern is the height of the thumbstick: I'm probably looking at a significant height difference between the keys and the thumbstick (which I picture being pretty bad for ergonomics). Any suggestions for that would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Hey! Marshall here from Skree LLC. I'm so very lazy at posting advertisements and community updates but I figured I should get off my butt and do something.

So I've been at this for about a year. The rave reviews and many customers turned friends I've made leads me to assume my work is at least of pretty good quality! I make only wireless builds unless you want something specifically custom.

My dactyls can be ordered with whatever switches you want, they're all hotswap too! I produce custom keycaps to your specifications, including font, format, size, position, etc!

I've got lots of new stuff on the horizon! Choc dactyls, choc flexible pcbs, custom MCU-breakout boards that allow for near ZERO soldering thanks to the use of FPC and JST cables! Just assembled a pick and place machine for all custom pcb manufacturing!

You can check out my reviews, customer photos, and work at SKREE.us or etsy.com/shop/TheBigSkree

If you want any custom work at all let me know! I'm always looking for fun projects!

PS: If you want kinesis board work, be it foam, switchs changed, or even repairs I'm far quicker and have no "lead time" like the current other options!

CB34S is a 34 key column-staggered choc unibody keyboard that has wireless capabilities with the Nice!Nano and supports a Nice!View display. It's my second attempt at a PCB design and I couldn't have done it without the wonderful community.

The PCB is of course open sourced and can be found here: https://github.com/bubbleology/CB34S

Yeah, it's a lot, isn't it?

This is the most feature-rich build I've done yet at Wylderbuilds.

It's a... (big breath in)... Full 6x7 Dactyl Manuform printed in translucent blue PLA with full hot-swap support, dual trackballs, dual OLED screens, dual rotary encoders, underglow RGB, running QMK... wheeze... with Vial support... gasp... on Pi Pico controllers!

It's not for jotting down grocery lists.

Well, unless it's the grocery list of the gods.

In other news, our back-to-school sale is still on. Get 10% off all orders of $50 or more with code ERGONOMICS-101. Sale ends on August 31st, so act... Well, that's like over two weeks away, so you've got time.

But feel free to browse!

Full Builds

PLA Case Prints

Resin Case Prints

DIY Build Kit

Cheers!

Andy @ Wylderbuilds

PS. The switches shown are my test switches used during builds. They're not included in the build as it's fully hot swap capable, so customers can use any switches they like. The switches on the left are Kailh Speed Copper and on the right they're Kailh Purple Pros. I didn't have enough of either for the whole, vast keyboard.

Top is Das Pro 4, bottom is ErgoDox EZ

Love the customization and quickly learning to love the split keyboard. The non-staggered keys are going to take me a long time to get used to. I'm struggling with the bottom row and outer-edge keys the most.

Still happy with it but it's going to be a while before I can use it at work or for anything useful.

Edit*** Already doing a lot better! To be fair, this was an easier sentence...

X-post from Reddit. Two new keycap profiles for Chocs.

Hello everyone! I recently open sourced the Kaly42, a cheap split Ergonomic Mechanical Keyboard and, to celebrate the occasion, have decided to tell the story of how I went from a standard mechanical keyboard to the CSTC40 and eventually to designing and building a new keyboard! The files are available here and the video here! If any of that interests you, please check them out, it would mean a lot to me!

Cross posting since I thought people in this community might also appreciate this trick.

Have been using the UT22 with the Taipo layout for a while now and am very happy with it. (Nowhere near my usual speeds yet, but very usable for recreational purposes!)

The case is Bubbleology's own closed-source design, which he kindly allowed me to get printed.

The firmware I'm using can be found here. :)

Hi I'm new to building mechanical keyboard. Can I use this diode as a smd component for the corne keyboard build (https://www.lazada.co.th/products/1n4148-1n4007-1n5819-uf4007-sma-us1m-1n4148w-smd-rectifier-diode-schottky-diodes-1206-sod-123-sod-323-i4178566886-s16430479982.html) thanks in advance

Coming up with a new layout is HARD :D

The main constraints of a Corne-style keyboard is that there are much less keys available than what's necessary to write any latin-script language besides English.

One of the main design principles I had was to push all accented characters on an accent layer, breaking with Bépo where almost all of them are directly accessible (but need a full-size keyboard to work), despite some characters like é or à being much more common than Z or K for example.

My main goal was to optimize for French first, English second. Home row is pretty good for both and based on the Bépo layout, except U which seems pretty useless in English. Top row is OK I guess. More skewed towards French, but still rather optimized for both. Bottom row is good for French despite keeping the ZXCV cluster, the right part is not great for English. W and K are pushed to slightly less accessible positions because they are basically never used in French. But they are relatively common in English. So IDK.

Loving it so far. Moved from a Corne and the pinky stagger and especially the thumb cluster are so much more comfortable for me on this one.

Currently using Gateron Brown v3 switches and Cheap OEM profiles from Aliexpress

@ergomechkeyboards Num row feels different today but cat tail why.

My 3rd build - atreyu rev2

Layout:

Been using this for a while now, had a kinesis advantage 2 but wanted more customisation without paying a premium for the new advantage 360.

There's no led lighting so the battery lasts forever. Haven't timed it but reckon I get at least a month out of it coding 8 hours a day

Build details:

3d file: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2666676

switches: lubed Gazzew Boba gum pink silent Linear Bobagum - 5pin 62g spring

controllers: nice!nano powered by some 820mAh batteries

Keycaps: mix of YMDK DSA Profile PBT Blank Keycap Set for Ergo Ergodox and Glorious ABS-Doubleshot

Mouse: Razer Basilisk X Hyperspeed that have had their dodgy switches swapped out for Kailh Red Switch

Bonus pic of my messy wiring:

Just got the Keychrone Q11 with Keychrone k pro Banana Switches.

Feels nice, but to quickly increase the Thock, i added more foam (just used the foam form the packaging).

The sound is a bit un-uniform because of the build style, but the profile of the keyboard is nice and low.

i really need help for what to do with the left knob.

Thanks to everyone here for the suggestions. Key pitch is now 19mm, I've removed the top row and added a second index column.

I'm not really pleased with the arrow pad placement, but I haven't found any better place yet.

I'm still working on the layout...

Hi all, I made a chasis & travel case for my Corne so I could take it to & from work easily whilst testing the Corne form factor.

So far it has been working quite well for me.

Hopefully someone else might also find it useful.

In the mean time I'm working on a new keyboard design that has the same basic form factor as a Corne with the following additions:

• Since I move between Windows & Mac I've added two additional buttons to the bottom row.
• I've added EVQ encoders in the place of TRS jacks as the build is 100% wireless.
• I've also increased the battery size to ~250mAh without changing build thickness.
• I've added a single colour backlight circuit.
• A fully 3D printable chassis & travel case.
• Depending on the cost I'll also be doing an aluminium case, but I think that may be too expensive (I'll see I guess).

Boards are coming from JLPCB soon, if the whole thing works I'll open source it & post here.

I’ve never been much of a musical person. But my kid was playing with a toy piano the other day, pressing buttons and whatnot. I lay my fingers on the keyboard and thought “hmmm… kinda like the home row”.

So my question to the community: have any of you built musical keyboards? Did you post a blog or guide? At first I was thinking a choc switch with a custom long cap that was held off a pivot point at one end and attached to the switch at the other. But musical keyboards vary sound depending on how you press the note. So maybe Hall effect?

Anyway, keen to hear of any adventures down this road by others?