Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
Preonic + Plank
u/MomonaBoy's Preonic + Plank combo became his ultimate gaming keyboard.
Published March 24, 2022
This gigantic ortho board is actually two boards merged together. It's as wide as a 40% and has 107 keys, a full numpad, full arrow keys, "every single key and macros".
Leaves lots of room for my mouse but can still handle all tasks outside of gaming.
Coming from consoles, where you use your thumbs for almost everything, MomonaBoy felt like they were underutilized when he switched to PC. This keyboard and mouse combo seems to solve that issue.
u/MomonaBoy cut the top of the aluminum Preonic case and bottom of the aluminum Plank case that came with the kits and 3D printed a housing to hold both of them together.
He masked off and painted certain parts of the housing so the underglow LED lights could shine through the clear plastic.
This keyboard uses 2 custom coiled cables that intertwine into one. To achieve this effect, the Preonic cable is 3 inches longer before the coil to compensate for running underneath the Plank PCB.
My first thought was that you can't use your (bottom row) modifiers with numbers or F-keys on the top part but the author reports it works perfectly. It behaves like one single keyboard in the operating system. Hm.
I cut the top off the Preonic and the bottom off a Plank and stuffed it into the 3D printed cases.
The stock screws from those kits are actually what are holding everything together.
Screws go up through the plastic then into the aluminum case, then into the PCB and plate then little nuts hold it tight.
The plastic case is split in half, left and right.
The author doesn't intend to share the case files since "it's kinda tailored to fit the aluminum Preonic and Plank cases I cut with a Dremel, even if someone else decides to cut their cases it won’t match up exactly".
Regardless, this project may serve as inspiration for others.
Published on Thu 24th Mar 2022. Featured in KBD #71 (source).
Related
IBM Mmm Ortho
Mod Mmm ortho PCB by Ming-Gih Lam – turn your IBM Model M into a hotswap MX ortho keyboard.
Little Foot keyboard
Little Foot – a 45% ortholinear keyboard designed by The-Royal and built by wayduh.
OK35
OK35 is a split ortholinear keyboard designed by u/Y2ff – with exposed through-hole diodes arranged nicely at the top.
Yasui Umo with DIP caps
A Yasui Umo build by kaz_shares featuring DIP caps by rutomoda.
Ghoul keyboard
The Ghoul by u/tzarc is a Planck-like ortho but also a development board for QMK.