Sup, took a prolonged break, but we’re back. A new year,
sooo, time to start with a little upgrade to the setup.
I’ve legitimately have had this sitting on my shelf right next to me for, over a year, which
is pretty bad. Still has the Massdrop branding. But the Preonic is still avail on Drop, probs
always will be. And from what I can see, it still looks to be the same, so I’ll link all that stuff.
This is an ortholinear board, which I honestly just can’t type on, but what these can be really
useful for are nice sizeable macropads. So that’s what we’re gonna do today, I’m gonna transform
this into my very own Discord emoji board, because they are the backbone of every good server.
I’m sure for a lot of you, Discord has become somewhat prevalent in your life. Especially
with keyboards. It actually kinda messes you up, because it drags you deeper. You see other
people’s stuff. You wanna impress people. You end up splashing a couple grand on some metal
rectangles, and pieces of plastic. All that sorta stuff. But yeh nah it’s good to talk to people.
We’ll do a full makeover, so a quick paintjob. Gotta sand off the old branding because it was
raised. And I gave the whole thing a little bit of a rough up. I actually
don’t know what grit I was using. Probably in the 300’s, but use wet dry sandpaper.
With painting the most important things are prep, and patience. So I made sure it was properly
clean with soap. And then I’m using etch primer, which is specifically used for metals. This is of
course aluminium, and to get the best adhesion and therefore durability, you gotta use primer for the
paint to solidly stick to. So a couple coats of that with some sanding, and we end up with this.
I want something nice and bright on my desk, so I’m gonna use yellow. This particular bottle is
water based acrylic paint, which I don’t really like to use for this sort of thing because you
can’t wet sand it, and it’s kind asoft, so I usually use enamels. But I couldn’t be stuffed
going to the store. Spray cans work just fine, but I have an airbrush which gives me more control.
I started with my Sparmax Max 3, which has a .3mm nozzle.
It is a pretty small board, so not a huge surface area to cover.
And yeh .3mm is a bit too narrow to evenly cover the bottom. So I switched to my GP-850,
which has a .5mm nozzle, and I have a fan cap on, instead of round.
So that’s the top done. Pretty happy with the finish so far. But
the grey actually looks pretty nice on the bottom. At this point, I was thinking of
putting just a big Seulgi Sun on the bottom, and make it yellow, but let’s stick with grey.
And again, patience is key. Let it dry. Sand between coats if necessary. But
because this is just primer, it dries super quick, and sands like a dream.
Time to spice up the bottom. This is waterslide decal paper. Specifically the clear version.
I just used my standard inkjet printer, but in the best mode it
offers of course. It’s a great way to transfer pictures and stuff to objects.
People in like model making would be very familiar with this stuff.
Because it is clear, I don’t need to be super precise with the cutting. But
also, the surface colour will show through it. So typically you want to do this
on a light surface, white. Or like in this case, just use black as the decal.
Here I just have some water. And you chuck it in there for like
30 seconds or whatever. Depends on the paper and temps. You can also use decal setters and
softeners for better adhesion, and to reduce the lip around the edge.The more water,
and whatever other mediums you use, the more fragile it becomes. And I did unfortunately
push it a bit too hard on the left of the Discord logo. Nothing that a Sharpie can’t fix though.
And bam, looks good. I also chucked in a Seulgi sun on the inside, because it
probably is my favourite and most used emoji.
I got a bit of grey overspray on the inside because of lazy masking. But that’s okay.
Here’s the PCB, which is a slightly older version. Good old hotswap. Normally we have completely
fixed layouts with hotswap, but there is the ability to have a 2u spacebar on the bottom.
Alright, let’s put it together. The reason I had the Discord logo like this by the way
was because of that one screw hole in the middle. Needed some space for it. And yeh,
this is a tray mount board, so we screw our standoffs to the bottom.
On the instruction sheet they do mention that you don’t need the brass spacers between the plate
and PCB, which in theory should make it just a little less stiff feeling. But I’ll use em anyway.
Also because I have these Dragonfruits, which are a tactile switch by C3 Equalz
and TKC. I received mine from Switchkeys, so big thanks to them. I’ll link this too.
And these are part of the fruit family, like the popular Kiwi’s and Tangerine’s. They’re
lighter than the Kiwi’s at 63.5 grams, and are supposedly modelled on the Ergo Clears.
This won’t be a proper review on them, plus this board won’t really be a typical board
too in regards to feel. But stock was kinda sketchy. Bit pingy and crunchy.
And super summarised, lighter and weaker bump than Kiwi’s.
So I did lube them with Tribosys 3203,
oiled the springs, and used 0.18mm Laser_Ninja films. And it makes em so much better.
We’re not gonna use the keycaps that came in the box. Instead, I grabbed a bunch of
relegendable keycaps. You can just Google that, and you’ll find some.
These ones in particular are X-keys ones, which I bought locally. And I got a few different
colours because the grey ones were expensive, and there wasn’t enough stock to get just one colour.
I also got these pre-cut sheets, which I ended up ditching, because they’re not
suitable for printing, plus it’s a hassle trying to line everything up.
So here’s what I got. I downloaded a template specifically for these keys. If you actually do
this, I recommend thinning the lines a bit, and make them something bright. I also added a grey
background to match the bottom of the board, but also so it wouldn’t just be a plain white.
Glossy paper would probably be nicer, make em pop a bit more,
but I didn’t have any. So this is just standard 80gsm printer paper.
And just cut away. Doesn’t need to be that precise, and you’ll see how it looks in the end.
And here it is! My Discord Emoji Board V1. I’m super happy with it. Like
usually I have ideas in my head, but even when I start, I don’t really know where I’m going, but
the paint job on this looks pretty sick in my opinion. Yellow, grey, and black is a
given though, always looks good. Finish is on point. Can’t really convey it on video,
but I got it nice and smooth with wet sanding. I’m really happy that I’m getting better at this.
I also blended the decals in nicely. MendezAS is my Discord handle by the way. I primarily hang
out on Snzagkeys which is the Australian & NZ mech server. Also a bit of DailyClack and Switchkeys I
guess, for keyboard stuff, and pop in once in a while across the billion keyboard servers.
The Discord logo ended up looking really nice too. I kinda strayed from their branding guidelines, so
I hope that’s okay. But uh yeh, I think it looks nice, and again, accommodates that centre screw.
On the top. How good is that? The relegendable keycaps are very low profile. I shoulda just
splashed out on grey caps, instead of the bunch of colours I have here. Also, I would prefer proper
clear tops. These ones are textured, so you lose a bit of colour and contrast through them. Again,
just Google relegendable keycaps and there will be a few available. I’ll link the ones I have.
Alright, let’s quickly go through these. So these are kinda my most used, and favourite
ones I currently use. Obviously we go through different phases and stuff, but this is what
I have. Starting with the Gobbo’s. Such a great react, and super expressive.
The original. Then rainbow, Bunnings, Taekeyboards, and Laser_Ninja variants. Beautiful.
Then I have a bunch of Kpop girls, not super based on who I like,
but just the stuff I use. The Seulgi sun is probably my overall favourite,
bless you Zekkin for introducing me to the wonders of Nitro. Pure sunshine she is.
And right next to her is greasy Wendy. Those two are top tier girls ever.
Then some Tzuyu from Twice. I like this one because the okay hand is super clear.
Sana also from Twice with the shrug. Got some Chaewon from Izone,
really good moving reacts. I spam Chaewon shoot quite a bit.
Then some Itzy. Yuna has some of the best expressions, and Lia has the best eye smile ever.
Then got some friends. Cam, Kodazzle, Toasty,
Liam’s Dad, Idyllic, Phatty, to show some respect to the DailyClack server. Deric, and Laser_Ninja.
Then some from Snzagkeys. RAMA FOMO. Classic. Wake up cap, shoutout to Dean.
Snag of course. Old mate Salmo the absolute legend.
Mi Goreng best damn food ever. And a small homage to Yiffkeys, don’t forget where you came from.
Puppet monkey boy, self explanatory for those situations.
A few Pepe’s. Pretty standard stuff, but a clown one for all the clowns on Discord.
Old mate Jimothy. Smudge the absolute champ, thanks for the carry.
Broden Kelly.
So good.
I’ve used the police car a bunch for sus situations. Galaxy brane and stonks are
solid choices I feel. Especially in this hobby.
Obviously we need a dolphin for all the mad flippers in keyboards. Imagine flipping. Got
the country flags. Bless the Philippines and Australia. This one is me as a child,
and then a grown up version above that. Two of my favourite blobs. Tortina blob,
and Spam blob. And then these ones are a bunch of pretty standard ones
I often use. And we’ll keep it super wholesome on the right side to end it.
And that’s that! I actually found it pretty difficult to fill up 60. But I got there.
Okay, so this was quite a pain to get it to be able to output all these macros, because
I am not an intelligent boy. First I thought, oh yeah, I’ll do it on VIA. But the Preonic isn’t on
VIA, which was annoying, so we put it on VIA. But then it only supports 16 macros anyway. So
old mate Xelus completely saved me and did his QMK magic, cannot thank you enough
mate. A lot of back and forth on Discord, you're super generous with your time.
So yeh, right now as you would have seen, he set it up so that when I press a key,
it types out the actual emoji code, and then presses enter. Therefore, it’s just one at a
time. It’s also really useful when you know, you type out a sentence, and then end with an emoji,
it presses enter, I feel that’s a pretty common scenario. What would be the next step would be
to be able to toggle that enter somehow, so that I can enter multiple. But it’s totally
cool right now, and projects like these make me so happy honestly. You know it’s hours of just
messing around because you didn’t really plan ahead properly. All the sanding, the painting,
waiting, the relegendables and putting all those together on Illustrator, then cutting them up,
all that stuff. And the final hurdle with the macros, the back and forth, and finally
in the end it all comes together and it works, it’s so so rewarding.
Huge huge thanks again to Xelus for making this work. Wouldn’t have been possible without him.
Hoping for a good year for you all. It may look bleak, but keep pushing through as always.
I myself will have some pretty big changes coming very soon, which is scary. But I hope
you enjoyed something a bit different, because I have a lot more creative projects coming.
Thank you to all, and clean air for all.