@@conorarchdeacon I'm pretty sure a comment from SMH is the holy grail of any aspiring engineering RU-vidr. If you pursue this, you are gonna go far ! BTW I love your humor, it's rare that a video makes me laugh out loud, especially when it's that educational. I hope you'll keep making videos !
A 1k sub engineering RU-vidr getting a comment of praise from the ~4.5m sub engineering RU-vidr is legit a certificate of "you did well, keep it up". Congratulations on both that, and making this awesome keyboard!
A lot of people laughed at me for building a keyboard with a numpad on the left. "Oh you put it on the wrong side"... But even for right handers there is a good reason to put the num pad on the left. I do a lot of CAD and my right hand is occupied with the mouse and i need to punch in number constantly. A left numpad makes this so much better!
The "standard" num pad is supposed to be on the left. That's why the large enter and + keys are far right. They are supposed to be hit with your thumb. Pre smartphone people thought of their thumbs as their least articulate digits and thus would need larger targets.
Im right handed too, Id love a proper mechanical keyboard with a numpad on the left since Im a tkl keyboard kinda guy just because I need more space on the right since I use an insanely low edpi but still miss the extra buttons on my keyboard. with it on the left I could have the same amount of space on the right side while having a numpad available and even more buttons accessible within a short range of my left hand.
okay first of all you are brilliant my guy, this video randomly showed up in my recommendation I was thinking it's going to be some person doing cad/pcb design and manufacturing from china like the others but my god!!! I am blown away, you got access to crazy machinery, you have the skills to work on all that, you have amazing faculty/co-workers who supported you through all this and this video is perfectly documented as a sales pitch/thesis
Thank you for the kind comment! I gotta give credit though, it is not like I magically learnt how to use these machines. I've had courses in machining and design where I learnt the basics. This project helped refine those starting skills and I asked a LOT of questions throughout. The staff was fantastic for letting me work on this. And towards the end I was pretty independent! Thank you for watching!
This is sick. Congratulations on graduating! Sometimes there's no better motivator for a project than wanting something super cool that you made. Hoping to harness that for myself
This is so awesome! Would really recommend to get a solid, flat wristrest, not a wobbly one, but like a solid 3cm wood box. You could even machine it yourself to perfect height ;)
respect the grind man, really took the time to made the keyboard and I love it! I'm right handed but I have never felt the numpad feel good at the right side so I really love the left handed numpad
Hey happy graduation! (Hopefully times lines up 17:14 ) this is a dope project and has me wanting to think about making a version of my own. The pcb creation being the main part that has me worried 😅
Hey thank you very much!! Pcb was a little intimidating but there is a lot of documentation out there to help out. Kicad is great at streamlining the process (you draw a circuit diagram, then assign footprints to components, and then place the footprints on the board). And Kicad ensures what you draw in the diagram gets hooked up in the board when routing. Two thumbs up from me. Best of luck with your projects!
Man, I just feel worthless now after doing my degree in Mechanical Engineering, this guy went ahead did all this on whim. I am astounded, I hope you reach new heights my man.
not even 10k views? holy shit this was insane, this might just be the single best keyboard in the entire world! of course production isnt feasable as is right now but pulling that off single handedly (more or less) is quite impressive!
The pcb actually has the routing/footprints for RGB lighting, I just never did anything about it since you wouldn't be able to see it through metal keycaps. Maybe something to think about in the future. Thanks for watching!
Small mistake in the video: in the section where you show your schedule, there is no block dedicated for finding project-related cat pictures. I hope to see this errata fixed in a future revision alongside accompanying apology.
I don't intend to distribute cad files at the moment but if you found this interesting I would encourage you to give it a shot with something small like a numpad! There is a lot of documentation out there to help you along. It looks intimidating but a lot of the up front work is done in a circuit diagram, then the "hard" part is routing everything aesthetically. Thank you for watching :)
Damn... Great Video... Insane Project. If only we got graduated students that are this motivated. But I guess its a rare occurrence :D Also thanks to the YT algorithm for this serving.
Maybe!! Mice are a bit different since one of the "performance parameters" of a mouse is how light it is. Maybe as a statement piece :) thank you for watching!
Those keycaps for one printer would be so much easier and cheaper to produce using metal Printing, can do it all in a single job taking up the full build volume.
I use Parallels (a paid subscription virtual machine) to run Ansys and Solidworks on the go. For heavier computations/modeling, I use my PC. But my laptop goes wherever I go and on the fly stuff is possible with Parallels which is invaluable to me. Thanks for watching!
Only 2/4 of them lol! the holes were tapped so it didn't really affect anything. I just lost the head so I couldn't get them out (hence needing to weld a arm to them to get more leverage. Thanks for watching
I use both but I find the HSMWorks integration a bit clunky. Fusion is also more streamlined for Apple silicon, and my laptop is with me wherever I go (and thus my models/real time editing are also). Other options include running Solidworks virtually or remoting into my PC, but it's not fantastic. Thanks for watching!
Holy shit. As an owner of a few custom mechanical keyboards and a fellow incoming mechanical engineering grad student this has to be one of the most impressive and tedious projects I've seen. Love that you ran FEA on it just because you could.
Is it? Like not to disrespectful at all and I do not have a doctorate in mechanical engineering. I thought the video was great and well produced and covered a great learning journey! but nothing of a PhD level imo. Keep up the videos man
@@theorangebaron1595 Definitely not a phd haha, it's just a slide show with voiceover. But hopefully you got something out of it :) and thank you for watching
This is absolutely nuts, the sheer dedication needed to go into the machine shop day after day, week after week to toil away at fabricating all these keycaps is just insane to me. Props to your uni machine shop for letting you go through with it, too!
Hey thank you very much! And yes big props to the machine shop people I definitely exasperated them a few times lol. Appreciate you watching and commenting!
I chuckled! The reality is stuff is expensive and by doing it myself through subsidized resources like university machines, I really did take the cheap route. Having something like this done by a shop would be tens of thousands of dollars. So when I say cheap, I suppose I am talking relatively. Thanks for watching!
I’m glad I clicked on this. When I started, I just wanted to know where you got all-metal key caps, as they’re rather elusive. Then I realized you _made_ them yourself. In Awe. I have to settle for the ones I bought that almost, but don’t quite, work for the 1800 style keyboard I put together. When you decide to up yourself, I have three words for you: split contoured ergo.
Be excited!! It's a great time to learn and discover what you are passionate about. And once you find that interest, pursue it! Thank you for watching :)
Might be weird to admit but I have such a strong desire to roll this keyboard along my face, I love the feeling of metal in the morning when its all cold like an untouched pillow face being flipped over in the middle of the night. Absolutely beautiful keyboard man, the amount of times I was literally jaw dropped while you casually joke about hundreds of hours of work blew my mind lmfao props to you man that's a piece of art right there. Edit; P.s: There's a huge number of keyboards that have faceless keycaps and no lettering on them so I'm sure that's what you were going for, but would you ever consider etching the key names on the front face of the keys? Not the top? Definitely wouldn't be as clean but could help for the times you forget which key is which 🤣
I saw this and had to give the face rolling thing a shot lol. It feels good! Yes I have considered putting symbols on the side, I think this is a great idea and would preserve the aesthetic I was going for. Will look into implementing. Thanks for watching!
300th subscriber here :) This video was super interesting and entertaining at the same time. As someone who gave up on big project years ago (programmable guitar pedalboard looper thing), I admire you. Congrats Edit: oh and you're a fellow FPV pilot, neat !
Hey thank you very much!! And yes I dabble in fpv a friend got me into the hobby. Unfortunately the hobby is becoming a bit regulated. Thanks for watching!
I'm a leftie too. Can't get behind your OCD tho bro, sorry. Numpads are a curse unless you're an accountant, in which case buy a custom wireless separate. And super low-profile scissor switches are king; full travel measured in a few MM. I'm over 60 and really don't get the millenial / gen-Z obsession with the hideous keyboards of the 80s I had to live through. Buckling-spring, Cherry MX, whatever. Honestly, nice fab and all, but, just, wow. Any KB larger than 60% - 75% is needless if it has the right keys, and don't get me started on RGB!
I don't want to be "That Guy", but why didn't you forge the starting aluminium block from metals you mined out of a quarry you excavated with a shovel? Apart from taking a bit of a shortcut, good effort ;p Subscribed!!!
This looks awesome! Good on you. Also, a CNC mill in the garage is a very good feeling. Unfortunately, you then want a saw. And a grinder. And a lathe. You have been warned! After grad school, consider Intel for manufacturing jobs that matter!
hey mechanical engineer here with specialization in FEA/CAE, I have always dreamed of doing projects like these but couldn't (did not have the financial support). You should definitely do a masters before getting a job in the industry, it seems you are extremely curious and have the talent to reach the stars. Jobs these days be like explaining why you can't use Bernoulli's law for asymmetric flow over an inclined plate in ABL conditions to your boss with 15 yrs exp.
Incredible and impressive project. Over on keyboard treehouse, they have 2 different left hand keyboards available btw - EXT65 and Kangaroo. Not exactly the same layout as what you want but pretty close. Look forward to seeing your future projects. I love seeing the process, not many makers in the keyboard hobby show this level of detail, although most have their products machined over in china. Biggest exception would be salvun, he often posts short videos from his shop.
Thanks for watching! Glad you liked the progress aspect of it. I tried to take photos/videos whenever I remembered. I thought about getting stuff machined 3rd party but then you don't learn anything :) cheers!
You are so funny and smart! Can’t stop laughing and I enjoyed your video a lot. Also, your keyboard looks like something that over 1000$ worth. Thanks!!
The pcb has 2 layers (top and bottom of board) so it took a bit of thinking to route everything with minimal vias. But a lot of that time was making it look pretty and figuring out the software. Thanks for watching!
Wow, as a small keyboard enthusiast I thoroughly enjoyed your video. I absolutely love how invested you have been from the beginning and pulled through with it creating a magnificent if not the most magnificent custom mechanical keyboard. It's amazing to hear that it sounds fantastic and, what one would think, has no ping sounds at all. Congratulations, this is such an amazing and inspiring multi disciplinary project. Watching this gave me immense joy. Huge kudos to you and all the best for your future 👏🙌
Absolutely insane work mate, as you’re limited by low spindle speed for the radius of the ball nose end mill, I would recommend just buffing the outer surface of the keys to achieve a better finish. To increase production speed you could finish both long angled edges of the keys on a manual mill or with an angle fixture in the cnc. It’s always incredibly beneficial to modify less critical parts of your design to accomodate tooling and ease of manufacture, which can be hard to commit to if you become too engrossed in the design you want. If you had a cnc lathe, you could machine a fixture that grabs the keys from the backside, allowing you to turn the internal radius on the top of the key much faster. A similar fixture could be used in the mill, holding the key at the rake angle of the key side, to machine and finish the sides of the key to a higher quality. Maybe you could automate the indexing of the fixture as well. Simplification and streamlining of manufacture can save you a surprising amount of time. I am very impressed with the endurance and passion you expressed, and how you were able to stay so committed to completing such a daunting task. I imagine you will go very far as an engineer.
Thank you for the kind words. You are right there is a lot of creative ways to speed up manufacturing and I'm sure a lot of tricks I have yet to learn. Glad you enjoyed the video :)
This turned out so amazing and I only recently got access to a cnc machine and have been thinking of making this exact project. There were plenty of aluminium frames to buy, but i couldnt find anyone who had cnc'd the keycaps as well. I am not nearly as proficient with code or cad as you are, but that too is a pretty useful insight about what i could be getting myself into. I would like to know if you'd be open to making the cad files available to everyone?
I probably won't release cad files. That being said, keycap profiles are well documented and can be designed very easily. There is totally no code needed for this (besides CNC g-code which you should have a minimal understanding of what the machine thinks you want it to do but totally don't need to be proficient). Since you have access to a CNC machine and are interested in making your own I think this would be a fantastic starter project (maybe doing an escape key or WASD, otherwise it gets kinda long)! The cad is minimal, and you'll always need cam (the toolpaths) for using the CNC. There's clever fixtures and design for manufacturing, but this is just considering the sequence of operations you do while making the key. Actually making a few keycaps would take a short amount of time once you get going, most of the thinking happens up front. Hope this helps and thank you for watching!
Really Beautifully done. And yes you need to have a certain amount of insanity to complete something like this. But then I come to think of the inventor of the blue led Shuji Nakamura, and his many many many years of trial and error to get it to work. Then this is definitely totally sane in comparison.
I watched a really interesting documentary on him and the invention of the blue LED recently. I had no idea so much effort went into it. Nakamura definitely took it to the next level. Thanks for watching!!
Part of the point of the project was to get more experience with design and machining. That doesn't happen if I pa someone to do the hard work for me. Thanks for watching :)
ME undergrad is one of the most lucrative degrees you can get within 4 years. I say skip the masters and grab one on the company’s tab a little later on.
This is the keyboard man situates at the base of our Temple to Technology where human beings have long faded away and lonesome space travelers search an archived wikipedia to understand the human condition.
I’ve been a working mech eng for about a decade now and can safely say the engineers who went to industry early are miles ahead of those who went the PhD route - get out there man. You’ll learn more useful skills, much faster.
At the “tasty” metal filings, you could have put Beaker from the Muppet show in (the taste tast of metal clips :) quite impressive with all the steps - must also haver taken quite some time to edit that.
