Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
Atari 130XE with Box Pinks
An Atari 130XE turned into a mechanical keyboard by ScreamingAtTheRadio.
Published September 16, 2021
Atari 130XE keyboard rebuild: vintage keycaps on modern switches
There's been a number of previous projects to put a modern keyboard on Atari 8-bit computers. However, ScreamingAtTheRadio has done it while preserving the original keycaps.
This required the 3D-printing of modified stems for Kailh Box Pink switches that take the Atari XE key footprint instead of the Cherry MX cross.
Cheap resin printers can print at an amazing 50 micron resolution, which is enough to print very small parts with very fine details. Switch stems are such parts, and must be printed very precisely to reproduce the touch and feel from the original. It took a lot of tinkering to get there, and trying a lot of different resins (in the end, Elegoo black and translucent red were the most reliable), but the keyboard feels absolutely great – ScreamingAtTheRadio.
Some more pics here:
Source files in this Git repo.
Published on Thu 16th Sep 2021. Featured in KBD #44 (source).
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