Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
Custom handwired stabless build
Stabilizers begone! A custom handwired keyboard by _wumpus without any stabilizers.
Published November 7, 2021
I decided to regularly feature handwired builds since it seems some people don't even know they exist.
Let's be honest: handwiring sucks. It's slow, tedious and most of the time ugly.
However, it offers many opportunities at the same time: it's cheaper, there's no waiting involved in contrast to PCB manufacturing, no minimum order quantity either, you have some wiggle room with the design, you can repurpose the whole circuitry or parts of it, easier to debug and repair, etc.
All in all, it's perfect for prototyping or to build a single keyboard.
So here comes this week's featured handwired build:
After completely overlooking the stabilizer quality on his last build, _wumpus went straight into another full custom and built one that uses no stabs at all.
It's a UK 65% layout but without the fat enter and it's as low profile as possible with regular switches.
As for the stabless nature of my build: any key over 1.75u in length needs a stabilizer so it doesn't tip when you push off-center. I've chosen a custom layout and sourced shorter keycaps to ensure I don't need a stabilizer on any of them. Whilst it's hard to notice on my shorter Enter or Backspace, the two spacebars are the obvious giveaway.
Gallery with a short project description:
https://ditherworks.github.io/keyboard/index.html
Published on Sun 7th Nov 2021. Featured in KBD #51 (source).
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