Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
FCS42S keyboard
Ho's FCS42S is a split keyboard with adjustable per-column offsets and pinky splay.
Published March 20, 2022
Ho, who is a Japanese graduate student in the field of power systems, has been researching the optimal layout tailored to his hands for some time. (His earlier attempts are published on his blog at https://tsuiha.com.)
However, a few weeks ago he decided to raise the stakes and launched a dedicated Twitter profile to document the FCS42S, his latest attempt of a split keyboard with an adjustable physical layout. (The codename is an abbreviation which resolves to: Free Column Staggered 42-key Split.)
This one is more of a prototyping system rather than a keyboard – similar to the Pangaea project, even Squeezebox, or @Hanachi's upcoming Ergotonic.
As you can see, the rail-based system makes it possible to adjust the column offsets relatively freely, just like the pinky splay and thumb cluster angle.
The acrylic sheets are 2mm thick and the screws used to hold the parts together are M2x10mm ones.
The board is a sandwich construction and between the bottom and top plate you use the small parts as spacers.
Here is a close-up of a column:
And here is a quick demonstration of the range of adjustments:
— ホ (@hoxyzitol) March 15, 2022
We had a nice chat with Ho and he was kind enough to share not just some unpublished photos but also the original DXF file in case you want to laser-cut the parts to try this concept:
Click here for the DXF file.
Thanks Ho, and good luck with this project!
Published on Sun 20th Mar 2022. Featured in KBD #70 (source).
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