Today I’m gonna go through how to build a 60% mechanical keyboard.
I’ve been reviewing keyboards from Banggood.com for a while, and thanks again for their continued
support.
And I noticed that they have several parts to make a keyboard.
So that’s what we’re gonna do today and it’s absolutely nothing to be scared of.
The biggest hurdle is having access to soldering equipment, because all we’re doing is the
simplest of through hole soldering.
And this truly is the gateway to much bigger things.
60% boards aren’t for everyone though, but these are by far the cheapest to make, and
has the most universal and interchangeable parts available, allowing for greater customisability.
Other kits are available for larger keyboards, but are harder to come by and are more expensive.
Alright so let’s go through the parts.
Again this all sourced from Banggood.com, but there are so many other vendors out there
with many more different parts and of course higher quality, more exotic, and expensive
stuff.
First we have our PCB which stands for printed circuit board.
This is the very common and accessible Satan GH60 60% PCB.
And this will connect all the electronic components together.
This is only one out of many different PCBs.
Next we need our keyswitches.
I have 87 Gateron Black switches, which is more than enough for our 61 key keyboard.
We can use any Cherry MX style switch.
This includes Outemu’s, Gateron, Kailh, Greetech whatever you want.
We then need a mounting plate to mount our switches on.
This is the very common 60% aluminium plate that’s available on all the Chinese sites,
and Ebay, and these 3 colours are the most common, and these support various layouts.
To stabilise the longer keycaps, we need stabilisers.
Cherry style stabilisers are very easy to obtain.
If it doesn’t say they’re genuine, then they’re just copies like these.
These still of course work, but tend to be more rattly, so get genuine if possible.
We need a case to fit everything in.
This is a Poker 2 style plastic case in white.
All these 60% cases should have this standoff layout, so just double check that the screw
holes are the same.
Alternatively, you can make your own case.
And finally to top it off, we need some keycaps.
Now to the equipment needed.
To do this we need a soldering station.
It’s best to get a proper variable temperature station, rather than just the irons that plug
straight into the wall to keep temperatures safe to avoid damaging your parts.
Input Club have a great list of soldering equipment which you can check out.
But definitely the most recommended and the best value soldering station is the Hakko
FX-888D.
So if you can get that for a good price, then just get that.
We then need some solder wire, if you can, then get the ones that Input Club recommend.
But you basically want leaded solder.
The numbers like 60/40 or 63/37 just refers to the percentage of sn which is tin, to pb
which is lead.
Both is absolutely fine.
And we want a rosin core solder which has flux in it.
We also want a solder sucker to fix up any mistakes.
A pair of tweezers.
And some flush cutters.
Ok so now that we have everything.
The first thing I recommend is testing your PCB.
Without it, this all means nothing.
To test it, open up a keyboard tester.
Plug the PCB in.
Grab your tweezers, and individually just touch the two points with the tweezers, and
each key should register.
The GH60 is the most common PCB out there and provides everything that we need.
So we already have the controller, diodes, resistors, and all soldered in.
Leaving us just the job of putting in switches, and LEDs if we want to.
Now to the stabilisers.
These are Cherry style stabs, and are pre-assembled.
You can also get them apart.
For a normal 60% to a tenkeyless, we usually need 4 2unit stabs, and 1 6.25u stab, which
will usually come in a set.
If you have different requirements like a larger spacebar, or different layout then
make sure you consider that.
An optional stage is to clip the stabilisers.
Basically there’s these two long prong things that act as a kind of dampener for the stabilisers,
and it can make the stabilised keys feel kind of mushy.
So just take them apart, and keep a stabiliser intact for reference.
And we just need to snip off the pieces that look like this.
And it should look a little something like this when done.
This isn’t absolutely necessary, but you might as well do it to get a sharper feel,
and you won’t be able to do this later.
When that’s done we pop them onto the PCB.
Make sure you go to the top side which is the one without all the components on it.
There are 2 holes for these, with one small and one large.
The bit that looks like this will go into the smaller hole, and the other end just slides
into the larger one.
So we slide it into the larger hole first, then push the other side in firmly.
It won’t fit in the other way, so don’t worry.
Now to the switches There are 2 types of switches.
There is plate mounted and PCB mounted.
If you have no mounting plate, then get PCB mount switches.
But if you have a plate like we have here, then it doesn’t matter.
PCB mount switches will have these 2 prongs, which you can easily cut off to make them
plate mounted, and that really is the only difference between the two.
This PCB though has the holes for PCB mount switches, so you can go without a plate, and
you don’t need to cut off the prongs.
We now have to join the plate to the PCB.
There’s so many plate options out there in terms of materials.
This will change the weight, feel, and sound characteristics of the keyboard.
Since the switches I have are plate mount switches, this makes this step just a touch
more difficult.
Put some switches in the corners of the plate.
Some holes on the plate have several mounting positions like on the bottom row.
So make sure you put them in the right place, which I embarrassedly didn’t do in my lack
of of attention.
You can test if the placement is correct by putting some keycaps on.
If you have PCB mount switches, then you can squeeze the PCB and plate together, and it
will lock in place.
However this won’t lock in place because I have plate mount switches, so to do that
we have to solder some in.
So now to the soldering.
This is the only thing that will prevent people doing this, besides the costs.
We only need to do very simple through hole soldering, but I absolutely recommend you
go and watch a bunch of soldering tutorial videos before attempting anything.
I could spend ages on talking about this stuff, but I don’t want it to be a soldering tutorial.
EEVblog has a great in depth tutorial, and Joe from JUJU cables will have a great video
specifically about soldering and keyboards soon, and I’ll link those in the description.
First we need to set our temperature.
All stations are different, especially the cheaper ones, so find a low temperature where
the solder melts.
This is usually at about 350 degrees celcius, but it may still be not enough, so I tend
to go around 370ish, with 400 being the max.
I’m only borrowing a friend's station because I broke mine, and I only have a conical tip
on this.
But it’s recommended to use a small chisel tip.
I’m using .5mm wire, which is quite thin, and this allows you to more easily control
the amount of solder you feed.
However it is slower.
For switches, up to .8mm is pretty good and is faster, so you don’t spend as much time
on the joints which reduces the risk of damage.
To solder all we need to do is to place our tip on the pad, which is the circle thing
around the rim of the hole on the PCB, and also make contact with the pin itself.
Then from the other side come in with your solder and feed it through until you get a
nice amount on there.
There’s a great article on Adafruit about solder joints, but basically we just want
a clean concave cone type of shape.
If you don’t have enough solder on there, then you can just reflow the joint, and feed
in a bit more.
If you think you have too much, then grab a solder sucker, reflow the joint, and suck
it out.
And redo it.
This is all very easy.
We just want to reduce the time our iron is on the PCB to avoid any potential damage like
lifting the pads on the PCB.
As long as you stick to a reasonable temperature, with probably 400 degrees celsius being the
maximum, and only leave your iron on for a few seconds at a time, then it all should
be fine.
If you’re ever in doubt, then just take the iron off the PCB, wait for a second, then
go again.
You have to make sure that your switches are all the way in.
Before soldering all the switches in, make sure that they’re all in the right place,
again you can use your keycaps to verify the placements.
Now with that all done you can chuck it into your case.
There’s so many choices out there with cases.
We can get some nice hefty metal ones.
We can get thick acrylic cases.
Or we can go with wood.
The cool thing is that these cases are universal, allowing you to choose what you want.
Probably the most accessible place to get a wide variety of cases would be Aliexpress,
but there’s also more specialised vendors which I’ll leave a link in the description.
And finally slap on those keycaps.
These are some blank tops with front printing and are pretty decently thick PBT caps.
If you’re going with a standard ANSI build like mine, then pretty much every keyset will
be compatible.
There’s a couple more sets on Banggood as well.
If you have a different layout in mind, then obviously make those changes when purchasing
keycaps.
And that’s basically it.
Again, the biggest hurdle is having access to soldering equipment, because the whole
process is truly easy and doable.
And it is all a bit of fun.
The PCB has a default profile on it.
But you can flash some new firmware on it if you wish, and I’ll put some links in
the description for that.
All these parts I picked out from Banggood.com, and they do have other parts as well.
So thanks again to them for their continued support, I’ll leave all the links in the
description.
But the beauty of building a 60% keyboard is that there’s so many different parts
you can source from a heap of vendors, and you could easily spend hundreds upon hundreds
of dollars.
The parts I have are pretty light weight, with the aluminium plate and plastic case,
and is probably one of the cheaper configurations.
And the colours don’t really match, but I don’t really care.
A black or red case would probably look much better.
And I guess I can always paint.
The Gateron Blacks are great stock linear switches though and are very smooth, and I
absolutely recommend them.
I also added an LED for the caps lock, and ended up lubing the stabilisers.
And here’s a quick sound test.
It’s really nice getting this video done, because now I show off some other builds coming
up.
Again, the Sydney Mechanical Keyboard meetup is coming up in July, as well as the Perth
Meetup, so come along if you’re nearby.
Links are in the description.