I 3D Printed a Custom Keyboard... (So you don't have to) 

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wow hipyo im so proud of you thank you for struggling and wasting over 30 dollars of fillament great work hipyo

There are different ways you could have approached this, but for someone who isn't as experienced with 3D printing, you did well.

Your z-height looked a bit too high on there, but overall, super solid work. Especially considering you're not super versed in 3D printing. The hardest part is starting and not knowing what you don't know or how to ask. One cool thing you could have done was use the 3D pen to fill in the seam and then take a soldering iron with a flat tip to melt the plastic into the seam and then sanded it smooth. That's what I do to bond stuff together when I don't want to use glue or get rid of seam lines.

Overall, it came out great. Parts warping can usually be solved by increasing the bed temperature a bit (i usually do 60-65 deg C for PLA) and for parts that take up a large surface area on the print bed I usually raft them in the slicer (where the print is on a "raft" of material). Now the 2 parts being floppy is simply just a matter of tolerancing your design to tailor the 3d printer, since not every printer is super precise and exact and tolerances vary from printer to printer. Not to mention that plastics shrink as they cool down. The more you'll print the more you'll get familiar with everything! If ya got any questions feel free to ask.

I have printed multiple keyboard and I love them all. 3D printed plates are flexy and soft too, i have replaced some plates with printed ones in some of my other keyboards. I have even designed my own top mounted tkl to print and its one of my favorite boards.

Good job Nola. You're doing great, Nola. Keep it up.

yo hipyo, thank you for preventing me from buying a 3d printer. youve saved me easily thousands of dollars at this point from saying "so you dont have to"

Wow hipyo I'm so proud of you thank you for struggling and wasting over 30 dollars of filament, great work hipyo!

Thank you so much hipyo for making such entertaining videos!

As someone who 3D prints a bit, that case did come out quite nicely. I might build my first keyboard this way because of you :)

Don't use glue, just clean the print bed properly with 99% isopropyl alcohol and ensure there are no draughts blowing near the printer (that's usually what causes warping).

You did a very good job for your first official print, sometimes prints just don't go as planned, and you pushed through. Good job.

Good job Nola! Good job 3D printing. I'm proud of you Hipyo. Maybe more cases for music gear? Like a box for a pedal.

I was actually planning to print out a keyboard design, so I'm curious on how this will turn out. And I have a budget keyboard I recently got as my 'experimental' for tinkering. Going to be lubing up switches and doing some foam treatment for the first time.

This was really cool to watch and i'm excited about the outcome! great first try. i'm excited to see you in this new hobby!

I'm so happy you did this. I've been looking to 3d print my own case for a while now and was really hoping you would do this. I will be doing this exact build for my next board.

Hey Hipyo, a few things to note from the footage regarding printing: Make sure your bed is leveled correctly, if you dont have an ABL probe (auto bed leveling probe) then grab a thickness gauge (pretty cheap) and set you bed to be about .07mm from the nozzle (about the thickness of a standard sticky note). This should give you a nice first layer and is the first step towards successful printing. Next there is a technique for preventing curling on the corners called "mouse ears" and I highly suggest them for prints with sharp corners or large flat printing areas. Pusaslicer makes them really easy but you can make them in most other slicers too. Finally I suggest checking your room temperature, if the room is dramatically lower than the temp as you're printing it can exacerbate the conditions which cause print curling in the first place. My printer is an Ender 6 so its not dramatically different than yours in a number of ways and touching these things up got my printer going perfectly almost every time when I was struggling. Also clean your build plate, you shouldn't need anywhere near that much glue, too much can actually get in the way. Try using a little isopropyl to thin and evenly spread the glue rather than globbing it on across the whole bed.

Wow Hipyo, I'm so proud of you. Thank you for working hard* and using* over 30 dollars of filament. Great work Hipyo!

Genuinely Impressed with the print quality and model assuming you had all the parameters set correctly the first print. Genuinely takes myself and others at least a few iterations before getting the measurements correctly for your model! Now I’m very curious about making my own custom keyboard, hopefully if I go through with it I can make something as nice as yours!

It's great looking, thank you for doing it as I'm planning to do my own as well here soon and was using this video as reference.

Bro thanks for getting me into this hobby, kind of expensive but one that fits me perfectly! Great content man keep it up!

Wow Hipyo, I'm so proud of you! Thank you for struggling and wast...err...testing over 30 dollars of filament. You're a inspiration to the 3D printing community and make it look so easy.

Good job Nola. Your doing great Nola. Keep it up!

Good job Nola, You're doing great Nola, Keep it up.

So for a first FDM project it turned out good. Good Luck on your 3D Printed journey and as a keyboard youtube you should definitely 3d print more keyboard stuff

good job nola! keep it up nola! also very cool keyboard! 3D printers can be so silly and finicky

I 3d printed a 30% case for a co worker. Real excited to see what he does with it. Thanks for the fun video brother!

This looks sick! I’m just wondering, what marble pla filament was that? I’d love to order some for myself!

Your 3D printed case sounds waaaaaay better. Well done, hipyo. I plan to get into resin printing and might give printing a case a go once I do :)

Proud of you for enduring through this. I'd check closely next time for popping noises though, moist filament is a killer!

Good job bud! You will learn some tricks along the way but that was a great start to 3D printing.

Proud of you for taking that first dive into printing! I had a bunch of the same issues! Some things I noticed (though you probably already sorted this out lol) is that you definitely needed to dial in that first layer, its not adhering enough, and thats how you are getting the print peeling up in later parts. Basically the printer IS printing on top of filament, BUT the lowest later of that portion isnt touching anything, so its curling up as it cools! It may help to level your bed while its hot as well as during the print. Here’s what I would do. Set your printer to 200c for the nozzle and 60 for the bed (assuming you are using pla), and then level each corner as well as the center a few times, going around the bed. Use a business card or something of the like, maybe just a post it note, and make sure theres friction, but not too much! Then, when you are in cura, switch from a skirt to a brim, so it actually connects to your print. You dont have to, but it helps. The biggest part though of this step, is also to increase the number of lines on the skirt or brim! I do about 10 lines minimum, that way I can do some micro adjustments as the brim keeps printing, and I pull off the lines that aren’t adhering well so they dont get caught up and mess up good lines later! I hope it helps!

Been 3d printing for about 5 or 6 years now and as first prints go that's pretty good!

The new song is so fire. Ive listened to it in loop for i dont even know how long

Good job Nola! And thank you for this, Hipyo!!

Good job Nola, you're doing great Nola, keep it up!

I am pretty impressed!!! Great work!

Good job Nola. You're doing great Nola. Keep it up.

i'm also new to 3d printing. a lot of the quality of a print is due to the filament, bed temp [40-50 celcius is standard], and the nozzle temp [filament dependent]. certain filaments, especially ones from amazon, can be low quality, exposed to dust/moisture, have imperfections. you have to get higher quality filaments if you want somewhat decent quality prints.

That's pretty good, especially for someone inexperienced with 3d printing. That pen for fusing and then sanding down the joins is super common.

There is some really awesome 3d printed keebs out there. I have one too :D Also, looks pretty good in that marble filament!

Good job Nola, you're doing a great job Nola. Keep it up.

Fantastic job, Nola!!!

Looks solid, and your experience with 3d printers is pretty common. My ender 3 pro still gives me issues every now and then, and it took months for me to figure out how to get it to print something that doesn't look horrible. So it's not like you're the only one.

Warping often happens due to the bed temperature being too high. A good way to fix this is to incrementally lower the bed temperature by 5° until it works.

Just get a bambu lab p1s as a plug and play printer and make more keyboard cases with it! I'd love to see you diving deeper into this. This video combined my 3d printing addiction with my newly found (thanks to you) keyboard modding addiction. Cheers!

Good job, Nola! You're doing great!

Ohhh that does sound really nice, not sure if or when i will be able to get a 3d printer but i love the idea of printing a keyboard

Great job man!

you're doing Great Nola, I'm so proud of you

It’s cool that even though you’ve perfected the art of modding aliexpress keyboards, you’ll try things you aren’t good at, like 3D printing or making listenable pop music.

Good job Nola, you're doing great Nola!

wow hipyo another great video. i started building custom keyboards because of your videos. i just want to say thank you.

Good job, Nola. Great job, Nola. Keep it up! ❤

I am really tempted to try this on my resin printer... 😁

Keyboard and technical difficulties aside, I love your jokes!

wow hipyo it souns so good you might have had some plroblems but it works out really well at the end

Here in the PH, we have online sellers on a local shopping site that have been 3D-printing keyboard frames that you slap on top of the stock case. They cover quite a lot of keyboard models actually, with some printing bongo cat and pikachu-themed frames. The more traditional frames are great canvases for spray painting imo. I personally spray painted one of them and the added mass made my keebs sound deeper. Neat custom stuff really haha

thats actually a really good print for your first time!

Ok working with an ender as a full 3dprinting noob, hats off. They are very cpapble machines but theres a WHOLE bunch of what you need to do to make them work right. I'm like 90% sure it was temps. The lack of extrusion quality and TERRIBLE layer adhesion indicates you were not printing hot enough. Teaching Tech, Makers Muse, 3-d Printing Nerd ect all have great guides on how to dial in new printers.

Looks fantastic. I feel the only thing I would have done after 3d printing and designing for a long time wouldve been to use a bowtie seam to fit the pieces together on the bottom instead of the hinge.

That marble filament looks good. Weird suggestion, but maybe you could do a Lego keyboard with Lego keycaps. They make flat panels that you could use for the base, maybe with some cutting, and I wonder if you could cut out the center stem from square blocks to use as keycaps. It would probably sound crunchy, and if you've ever played with Lego you know what I mean, but it would look cool.

Great video! Looks like you had some pretty common fails with the printer that can easily be corrected with a little research and some slicer settings changes. No more plastic dust sniffing though, bad for health!

good job Nola!!

Honestly this turned out pretty good, I actually did this already and my print came out awesome because I was able to print it in one piece. I have a tall delta 3d printer and was able to just barely squeeze in a 60% keyboard frame. I printed mine with a pla wood-infused filament and sanded it down and the texture and look is awesome. Your method however (splitting up the keyboard into pieces) was the one thing I wanted to avoid at all cost because yeah it kinda sucks. Overall great work and the sound profile is really great as well! (Also P.S. a wood-burner is also a great alternative to "glue/melt" printed pieces together)

good job nola you're doing great nola keep it up

Hola Hipyo, Your filament had absorbed too much moisture and needs to be dried. The water in it is turning to steam in the hotend preventing bed and layer adhesion. Also, cyanoacrylate (regular superglue) bonds PLA really well 👍🏼

Hipyo, I'd love to see you print, build, and learn to use a dactyl manuform ❤

As someone who 3d prints and designs stuff for 3d printing, The issue may be you not printing with support. Printers cant make vertical lines at an angle very well unless it has the support on or the temperature matches. The warping happens when the plate temperature is too low, as the print doesnt stay heated enough to stick to the bed. Also sometimes just tighten everything: I had days of misprints on my Z axis (vertical) because the motor spinning the threaded rod was loose. Good on you for fixing the problem!

Hipyo when are you going to drop your next batch of keycaps? They are genuinely the only keycaps that I find pleasing to look at. Amazing video btw, your voice is so calming to listen to.

Good job Nola!!

That sound test was (surprisingly) quite literally good better best for me (and yes I do think the unmodded 3d printed one sounded better than the modded aluminium one.)

Good Job Nola your doing Great Nola keep it up!

Good job, Nola. Your doing great, Nola, keep it up.

@HipyoTech Just found your channel not long ago buddy and subscribed. Great content and advice. I have built PC's for years but never really thought about building a keyboard. So after watching some of your mods decided to order a few parts for my first keyboard build. I am sure I probably ordered some of the wrong things but that is part of custom builds is learning what works and doesn't work. Thanks.

yoooo the modded 3d version does sound soo good yoo

I’ve never used glue sticks myself since my bambu lab has a removable bed and before it I always used glass plates or painters tape, but to me the bed looked like it could’ve been cleaned as it had a lot of buildup. That might not be the case, again, I’ve never used glue with 3D printing, but most your problems looked like bed adhesion issues and that’s what comes to mind(I suck at bed leveling lol so I’m glad 3d printing started going towards auto bed leveling as a whole)

Well, you experienced the "fun" in 3d printing. You have to change a lot of stuff to get good consistent results and coming to a point where you have good results can be extremely hard. There are so many settings you need to get right to get a good result: 1. Get the correct settings in your slicer 2. Master the bed leveling 3. Use the correct temps... I could probably go on forever. But once you have it all set up you can easily print pretty much everything without any problems which is really great.

Good job Hipyo, you did better than most and actually got something finished! But please, give me a suggestion for the most silent keyboard ever, like something you'd use in a monastery during the meditation-hour. Preferably a working one.

Good job Nola!

Good Job Nola! AND GOOD JOB HIPYO!!

@HipyoTech I think this is a cool start buddy. What about keycaps for a next project? Definitely however you need to print a replica of Nola for sure.

this is a good marble filament worthy 3d print

There is a flowchart out there that you can follow. I've been doing it so long now that troubleshooting solutions are baked into my brain, but it does exist somewhere. At first your issue was clearly that your nozzle was too far from the bed. However, the warping has to do with the part cooling down too quickly. That might have to do with not setting your extruder to the appropriate temperature. But most likely your print bed was not hot enough. You can check your filament role for the temperature ranges of both. Also, keep in mind that filament absorbs moisture. So, when storing it. Be mindful of the fact that if you don't dry it out before using it again. You'll run into an entire new set of problems.

"this video starts with an idea, what if i could 3d print a keyboard?", as if we haven't been asking for this, lol! love you bro

Finally happy to see Hipyo use Osume keycaps! My personal favorite!

rndkbd makes awesome 3D printed boards. One of my most lively sounding boards is one of his PLA60's with an FR4 half plate

Good job Nola 👍🏻

Looking forward to a keyboard with 3D printed housing, but also 3D printed keycaps and dampening, which you can get the effect from using hexagon shapes to produce a fabric-like affect

I bought an rk61 and 3d printed a case I designed that would allow it to sit nicely over the keyboard to my laptop (m1 13"). The infill settings will really affect the overall quality of the board. Higher infill means a denser print. I had mine done by my uni's makerspace so I was able to print on a larger format printer so no separate parts. All it took was buying a second battery to keep my og case intact and its been my favorite board out of about 6 or so I've owned. I'm in the process of designing an HHKB layout I plan on printing, laser cutting, and cnc'ing a few separate components. To me, making a cheap board feel premium is way better than dropping $400+ on an ultra premium board .

Finally time for the keyboard and 3D printing hobbies to unite! You should try printing keycaps now (and get an easier/more reliable printer to use like the bambu A1)

Good job Nola!!!!

that looks nice honestly

Looking back at this video, If I ever build a keyboard, might aswell use the one I've got at home (can't remember what type of 3D printer it is, as its also modded) but it has a printing area of 50cmx50cmx60cm (L x W x H), which is really big (plenty room for printing a keyboard case), then again it can do really high quality prints, and to prevent warping, its also enclosed in a giant insulating box.

Nicely done.

Custom colours with the printing!

Something I can recommend is going with a glass print bed helps a lot

Good job Nola 👍

If you have warping problems I recommend turning off the fan (if you don’t have many fine details or overhangs)