Custom designed 65% ortholinear mechanical keyboard
- case: acrylic (4° angle)
- switch: glorious panda (67 g)
- keycaps: Drop MT3 Susuwatari
- PCB: Amoeba Single-Switch PCBs + handwired
- controller: teensy 2.0 ++
- weight: ~ 500 grams
- cable: Zap cables DIY kit
- wrist rest: tool leather (and leftover acrylic pieces)
- stabilizer: Durock
After building and using Lily58, I enjoyed the ortholinear (column-staggered) profile and the ability to type without excessive hand movement. I want a one-piece keyboard, yet the common trend among the hobbyists is 60% or less. So I decided to design and build a keyboard that tailors to my typing habit (typing angle, distance, and layout) and the Susuwatari keycaps options. The result is Franky65 (shoutout to Eiichiro Oda), a 65% keyboard that embraces the ortholinear layout.
The layout can be found here. The two sides maintain a 10° angle, which fits nicely with my hand positions.
Again going against the trend, I want a keyboard that looks and feels "monstrous". The black and gold theme and the classic Susuwatari keycap colorway add a bit of vintage look. The board is laser cut by Ponoko, and the screws are 10-32 brass. The case is sandwished mount, with five 3 mm acrylic pieces at the front and additional two 3 mm pieces in the back to create a 4° angle. I found it to type very nicely with the high profile keycaps (MT3). The designs are included in the case_design folder. The keyboard is designed to be low profile (keycaps sides uncovered, use more top layers for higher profiles).
To have a key matrix with 65 keys, the minimum column and row number are 8 x 9, which needs 17 pins. To avoid wiring complications, teensy 2.0 ++ is used because it comes with an abundance of pins (44). The downside is the mini USB connection, which is thicker than 3 mm. An extra slot was cut from the middle plate to fit the vertical tolerance. Amoeba single switch PCBs are used because my initial thought was to add a bit more rigidity to keys. However, I would prefer handiwring for space-saving. The space between the PCB and the switches is wasteful. Here a photo before the controller is wired to the matrix (please ignore the messy workstation):
Lastly, I wanted to add a custom cable to make the keyboard stand out. The cable is from zap cables DIY kit, black braided sleeve and white techflex sleave, and white heat sink. The wrist rest is made with spare acrylic pieces from Ponoko glued with a piece of tool leather. Two 10-32 screws are added to give a slight angle to the wrist rest and match the aesthetics of the Franky65.
The QMK configurations and the default keymap are included in the franky65 folder. After setting up QMK build environment, Franky65 can be compiled:
make franky65:default
See the build environment setup and the make instructions for more information for QMK.