Today we have a fun build courtesy of my friend Qlavier, who makes a bunch of sweet acrylic
mechanical keyboard stuff, check out his Instagram for all the goodness.
And probably one of his more striking creations is the Keeblade case.
Been keen to do this build for a while, just had to get all the parts together after receiving
it.
And this is from a while-ish ago, and I know he’ll have new ones some time in the future.
So yeh, being dark, shiny, reflective acrylic, this is an absolute dust magnet, but don’t
worry, I’ll clean all that up for the final shots.
So it’s using 3mm thick acrylic, and there are 6 pieces, so 18mm thick.
The one I have here is a pretty dark translucent blue, which does look quite lovely.
The Keeblade case was actually made for the Zlant PCB, which is basically like an ortholinear
40% keyboard, like the Planck, but slanted to the left.
And because of that slanted nature, it was just a perfect opportunity to make something
like this.
It has 48 keys, but you can change the bottom row up a bit.
This revision doesn’t support any in switch LEDs, but it does have spots for RGB underglow
LEDs, but I didn’t use those.
For the keyswitches, I went purely for aesthetics, and got the Gateron Ink Blues, which are a
clicky switch, and probably the least popular of the new Ink range.
But they do look really cool, like the rest of the inks.
Unfortunately with my unit, the switches were too loose, so as you can see, the plate couldn’t
hold them tight enough, and basically pulled up the PCB with them.
Because it is 3mm thick acrylic, they don’t actually clip in, so it’s usually a friction
fit.
But again, this is an older revision, and this will be fixed in the future.
Fortunately, Ziptyze, the guy who created the PCB, also provided a plate, and it acts
as a perfect spacer between the mounting plate and the PCB.
Because of where the microcontroller is, the 2 middle keys don’t have the holes in the
PCB for the plastic legs on the keyswitches, so I had to snip those off.
And then it’s just a matter of soldering.
I haven’t talked about soldering in a long time now, because I’d be repeating myself
in every build video.
But it really is such an easy task, and you shouldn’t be scared of it.
Personally, I use a Hakko FX-888D, which isn’t cheap by any means, but there’s a lot of
budget options, and I use 0.56mm 60/40 solder, which is probably a thin as you want to go,
but anything to like up to 1mm thick is fine for keyboard stuff.
I set my temperature to about 330 degrees celsius.
But this will also depend on your iron, and your solder, and you may require more heat.
Basically you want enough heat to liquify the solder, and whatever temperature you can
do that comfortably quick, then that should be fine.
And then you want to have a nice shiny concave cone shape like this.
Doesn’t need to be perfect, and I definitely recommend you watch a couple of videos that
will go through it much better than I just did.
But yeh, what I’m trying to say is that it’s easy as, and is a very useful skill
to have.
Because I am a foolish boy, for whatever reason I thought 40%, okay buy 40 keyswitches.
So obviously that wasn’t right, and the closest thing I had in colour and feel were
Cherry MX Blues, and I put those to the outside of the board.
But I really really hated how they looked.
However fortunately because of my high IQ, I did this.
Honestly, this isn’t a bad idea regardless of the rest of the build.
Like you can colour any clear housing keyswitch on the outside and it won’t affect the feel
of the keyswitch at all.
And it really did make a huge difference.
Now for the keyset, I actually bought something from KBDfans, but I couldn’t find it.
Which ended up being a good thing, because it really deserves something blue, and that’s
why we ripped apart this unopened set of GMK Striker.
Sorry Eric.
And here it is.
I love this thing, and am super stoked how it all came together.
And I just love the idea of it, having a keyboard in the shape of a blade.
And the design is beautiful.
Qlavier has been doing these staggered designs for a lot of his other stuff, including the
Gherkin build that I did somewhat recently, and it fits the theme unbelievably perfectly.
And the way the light hits the acrylic and the staggered layers is so nice to look at.
It’s really sturdy as well.
There’s not much flex to it, and the handle feels perfectly fine.
And it is really comfortable to hold.
Again with the staggered layers, and this little bump here goes between the index and
middle finger.
So blade ergonomics, not bad.
I’m really happy that I did get the blue switches, because you can see them from the
side, as it isn’t a full high profile design.
And GMK Striker.
A beautiful keyset, and I’m extremely lucky to be able to borrow it.
Thanks again mate.
Not as dark as the case itself, but Striker.
You can’t get any closer to the theme of the blade.
Don’t pay too much attention to the keycap legends.
Especially that bottom row, it’s just what was available.
So yes, it does have a spacebar, you just can’t see it.
I opted for a full 1u grid.
And I’ve always had difficulties using ortholinear keyboards, because I just can’t invest enough
time to get used to it.
And without really thinking about it, I thought that this was pretty much unusable.
But actually, it just like a normal keyboard, because it does have a stagger.
It is a uniform stagger, so the 2nd bottom row is to the left just a tiny bit, but disregarding
the 40% nature of it, this was perfectly fine to type on.
I could pretty much type at full speed no problems.
I did have to move the spacebar key a bit to the left, and yep, this is fully programmable
via QMK, so you can change up whatever, and customise your layers which of course you
have to use on a 40%.
But yeh, surprisingly really fun to type on.
As for the typing feel, I’m pleasantly surprised with the Gateron Ink Blues.
Ever since the introduction of the Kailh Box Clickies which use click bars, I’ve found
click jacket switches, so like Cherry MX Blues, Gateron Blues, Outemu Blues, to be kind of
underwhelming.
But these are surprisingly clicky in both feel and sound.
You can hear quite a noticeable difference between the Ink Blues and the MX Blues.
The Inks are clickier, higher pitched, more tactile, and just cleaner feeling, whereas
the MX Blues are a bit grainy.
I think they’re a great alternative to click bar switches.
They do still have that bit of rattle from the click jacket, but the click has more substance
and depth to it, compared to a click bar.
Awesome build overall.
I love doing stuff like this, because keyboards can get a bit serious sometimes.
It isn’t the most functional thing, and the novelty of it is the best thing about
it, and that’s what I love.
I mean you can hurt someone with this, just like most keyboards.
But having a handle makes it that much easier.
Not that you should consider doing that.
Just saying.
Big thanks to Qlavier for the case.
Again, I’ll link his Instagram for all that cool stuff, and you can watch out for new
creations to come from him.