We’re back after a bit of a break, and today we’re gonna do another 60% mechanical keyboard
build, but this time with some better parts compared to the building guide I did a few
videos back.
This is actually a build for someone, and they picked out some awesome parts.
Again, 60% boards are by far the most customisable keyboards you can build because of the universal
sizes of the plates, PCB’s, and cases.
They’ve gone for an acrylic case.
This is a TEX 60% case which is CNC’d acrylic, and I actually was able to get it locally
at MechKB in Australia, so that was nice.
This is some pretty thick frosted acrylic which does show off underglow lighting which
our PCB has.
Before working, it’s good to put on the feet, so the bottom doesn’t scratch up on
the table.
Alright so to start off we have our PCB.
This is the fake b.face PCB from China, also known as a b.fake.
One of the special things about this PCB is that it has RGB underglow lighting.
We of course have everything else already soldered in, with the diodes, resistors, microcontroller
and all that, so all that’s left are the switches and top LEDs.
However I did end up switching to a legit B.face from Winkeyless later in the process
which we’ll see.
The plate we have is just a simple 60% aluminium plate in silver, which offers various mounting
positions, but we’re just going with a standard ANSI layout today.
For the switches they’ve gone straight to the magical Zealio’s, which we bought from
1up keyboards.
These are available in a few different weights, and we’ve gone with the 65g variant, and
this is the bottoming out force, not the actuation force.
These are super well known and popular in the community for their smoothness and tactility
in its stock form, making up for the lack of common tactile Cherry style switches.
Before we put these in though, let’s lube them.
I actually already lubed them about a week before filming just when I had spare time
here and there.
But I’ll demonstrate it.
It’s pretty self explanatory, lube just lubricates the points of friction and makes
everything smoother.
Zealio’s are smooth in it’s stock form and is awesome that way, and doesn’t really
require lubing, but we’re gonna do it anyway.
And this is a Krtyox mixture, which is some pretty expensive stuff, and I grabbed this
from Switchtop.
I’ve over lubed these before, so I’m gonna do some pretty light application, mainly on
the rails.
As well as making it smoother, it does dampen the sound, and does take a bit away from the
sharpness of the tactile bump, which may be a downside to some.
Now to the stabilisers.
These are genuine Cherry stabs, so they’re not as terrible and rattly as the Chinese
copies, but still, I clipped the little dampeners.
And then also lube the stabs.
If you have copy stabs, then it’s absolutely necessary to lube them, otherwise the rattle
really does take away from the typing experience with how it feels and how it sounds.
Okay so I went ahead and popped the switches in and soldered them, but the PCB actually
just stopped working.
I must have did something to upset it somewhere, so that was unfortunate and frustrating.
These cheaper PCBs are prone to such things, so you have to handle them with care.
On the flip side though, we upgraded to the legit B.face from Winkeyless, which at the
end of the day, fits the build much better.
So here’s the new B.face PCB from Winkeyless which is a Korean site.
And maybe some of you can notice what’s wrong with mine, which was my fault.
Anyways, I had to desolder all the switches from the old PCB and put them into this one,
which is always a pain.
For the LEDs we’re using some purple through hole ones.
But we’re also gonna use some sip sockets.
What sip sockets are, are sockets that the LEDs can insert into.
These sockets are soldered onto the PCB, so the actually LEDs can be put in and be taken
out without the need of desoldering.
And to put these in, the switches need to be opened up.
And to add to that, I also bought some switch stickers with the new PCB.
I have some pink ones here, and these stickers go between to the 2 halves of the switch housings.
Not really necessary at all, but switches can have a tiny bit of play between the 2
halves, especially if you’ve opened them up for modding, making the clips a touch looser.
In stock, they hardly move at all, but whatever.
I actually like the look of it as well.
There wasn’t any purple stickers, but the pink gives it that bit of edge with the clear
housings.
And then it was just a matter of soldering everything in.
And then we hit another problem.
The PCB doesn’t actually fit into the case, which I had no idea about.
This is because the underglow SMD LEDs get in the way of the ribbing of the case.
On a normal 60% board, that area on the PCB is empty, and is the reason these line up
perfectly .
I’m definitely not getting rid of this case, and it looks to be an easy fix.
I’m using a rotary tool with a small sanding bit, and simply just sand out some small divots
into those ridges.
And since it’s acrylic, it’s easy to work with, and since it’s frosted, it’s forgiving
in how it looks.
These will be curved, and I couldn’t see an easy solution to make clean square cuts,
but this turned out pretty close to perfect.
The bottom line didn’t even require much work, with a couple of half cuts.
And here is all nicely fitted.
I’m really happy with how this turned out.
It worked perfectly with the plate now being nearly flush with the top face of the case.
And you can’t even tell anything’s been done from the outside which is awesome.
Before putting it all together I went to testing.
Embarrassingly I couldn’t get the keys to work, but the underglow lighting did turn
on and stuff.
So I played around with the firmware and everything in the bootmapper client, and had no clue
what was going on.
So I emailed Winkeyless with screenshots and photos of the PCB, and he pointed out straight
away that I didn’t have any diodes.
So I turned the PCB over, and of course, there were no diodes or resistors.
I couldn’t believe that I completely disregarded them, and I honestly felt so ridiculous for
not noticing that they weren’t on the PCB, and maybe some of you picked that up at earlier
in the video.
And this was because I ordered the PCB without opting for the diodes and resistors, which
I didn’t even realise because it was probably 4am when I did it.
Honestly don’t know why you would even order the PCB without diodes anyway, resistors is
somewhat understandable.
Fortunately I do have a heap of diodes with me, but these are through hole diodes.
The PCB does allow for both SMD and through hole diodes, so I was lucky there.
But the resistors are just the small chip SMD ones.
These are nice and easy to put in.
You just gotta bend the pins to shape, then cut it to size.
Like the LEDs, we have to watch the orientation when putting them in.
On the PCB it shows the flow of the current with this symbol.
And on the diode itself, there’s the bar or band on the one side where the cathode
pin is.
And it won’t work if you put it the other way.
And then it’s just simple through hole soldering.
Now for the LEDs to work we need resistors, and for these, it doesn’t matter which way
you put them.
When you’re putting in the LEDs you have to check to polarity as well.
The longer pin is the positive, with the shorter the negative.
On the bottom of the PCB it’ll show the positive and negative symbols, and that’s
the way you put it in.
Although to make these LEDs fit, we do have to cut down the pins, and in doing so they
become to same length, so you just have to know what side is what, and you’ll learn
what the bulb looks like in a certain position.
And finally to finish it off we have our keycaps.
These are DSA profile keycaps, made from PBT plastic from PMK of Signature Plastics.
You can order them from their website and they offer a bunch of colours.
We have RCB purple modifiers with a WAN white base kit, and these are dye sublimated legends
with a super clean typeface on them, just class.
The only downside with PMK DSA keycaps is that they’re pretty thin at just 1mm thick.
And also the sides aren’t textured like the tops, and are more smooth which scratch
up quite easily if you’re not using a wire keycap puller, so definitely don’t use a
plastic ring keycap puller with these.
There’s also a couple of spare alternative keycaps.
And of course we have the delicious F and J deep dish homing keys.
I just never get tired over how these feel.
And here it is all finally done.
The typing experience is something I really really do like.
It’s quite a unique experience how it’s tactile, but quite soft because it’s lubed.
Whether I prefer Zealio’s lubed or not, I’m undecided.
I like both experiences.
For those who don’t know what Zealio’s are, they’re basically just a superior version
of like the Cherry MX Browns, being smoother and having a more pronounced tactile bump,
and come in heavier weights.
And the lubed switches along with everything else make the keyboard not that loud.
The bottoming out sound is dampened a bit which I like, and because of the lubed stabilisers
there’s no rattle.
Without the lighting on, it’s a pretty cohesive build and looks good on its own.
Nothing really sticks out.
This is a low profile case, so we have a floating key design, exposing the keyswitches from
the side.
And we can actually see the pink stickering because of those clear housings.
I did try using clear stabilisers instead of these black ones, but even with lubing,
they weren’t as good as these genuine Cherry ones.
Of course the real hero of how this keyboard looks is the underglow lighting.
Winkeyless do sell their own cases, but they’re layered sandwich cases.
So I’m happy we went with the TEX case, as it gives that unified appearance where
the entirety of the case is glowing, besides the plate.
The diffusion is great as well, because of it’s thickness and the fact that it’s
frosted all the way through.
And with the LEDs being closer to the centre, we don’t get those super clear concentration
points.
The silver plate goes well with the rest of the keyboard.
We had a black plate at first, but it was too contrasting with the white case, clear
switch housings and the keycaps.
So I feel silver was a good choice to mellow it out.
In the software we can play around with the lighting with all the different colours, a
couple of effects, and speeds.
So we can have a singular colour like pink or purple to match the colour scheme, but
the slow flowing rainbow effect is the most eye catching, and is pretty soothing.
The key lighting which just serves as an underglow is so subtly tasteful.
It’s quite dim, which pink and purple LEDs usually are, but it’s such a soothing look
and not in your face like many RGB boards are.
And the colours do vary slightly because of the PCB underglow lighting coming through
just a bit.
However because this is just an acrylic case, and we’re using an aluminium plate, it’s
a pretty lightweight keyboard, but it’s far far from feeling cheap at all.
The acrylic looks great, and is super smooth with it being frosted.
The chin at the bottom does give the case more substance and accentuates that glow.
And it’s finished off with a minimal chamfer all the way round.
One negative is that you really have to handle it with care, because it does scratch quite
easily.
And we did have issues with the PCB actually fitting with the case because of those underglow
LEDs being in the way.
But I was able to easily fix that up, and the end result looked pretty decent on the
inside, but on the outside it’s completely absent which is great.
Thanks to Nicole for allowing me to do this build.
There were so many mishaps that happened along the way that stretched the project for much
much longer than expected,and I apologise.
But I did learn a lot from it, and I’m really appreciative of the experience.
It’s probably the most I’ve worked on switches, being lubed, stickered, and having
sip sockets installed.
But it was a great project to work on, and I’ll have more coming in the future.