Keyboard Builders' Digest / Projects
Tenax
Tenax is a 36-key diodeless split keyboard with pinky splay – shared by u/heyitscassio.
Published September 27, 2022
Cássio Ávila aka toniz4, fellow ergo split fan from Brazil, shared his diodeless/direct pin design: Tenax.
It's a simple design not just without diodes but also RGB, OLED display, buzzer, rotary encoders or any similar gimmicks – I'd say a keyboard designed for simply typing.
The keyboards that mainly inspired me were: Architeuthis dux for the splay, Fifi for the stagger (it's what I used daily before the Tenax), and Cantor for the use of a blackpill instead of a pro micro – Cássio.
The name comes from the latin word tenax, meaning tenacious, firm, persistent.
The author chose it mainly because it sounds cool in his opinion ("I opened a list of latin words and chose randomly"), but also because he failed to get his designs many times, so the name sounded quite apt.
The keycaps in the photo are Pseudoku's DES caps printed in MJF Nylon PA12 by JLCPCB (use the KBDNEWS coupon code for $2 off).
More info on Cássio's experiences with getting these caps manufactured in this post.
You will need to connect the keycaps, in groups of 10, jlcpcb doesn't allow more than 10 pieces by file. It's cheaper like that. The stls in my fork already are like that.
Populating a board with some extras cost about $40.
The stagger and splay is absolutely perfect for me, the sculpt and texture of the keycaps too, I just would change the angles of the thumb keycaps to be a little bit more comfortable – Cássio.
Resources
GitHub repo (missing documentation atm repo updated with documentation):
https://github.com/toniz4/tenax
Published on Tue 27th Sep 2022. Featured in KBD #97 (source).
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