So, I’ve made the mistake of entering a keyboard store in Berlin. Nothing ergonomic there, so all they deal with are great looking boards, heavy, well built, and quiet!
I’ve built and designed my share of boards, and the sound hadn’t bothered me at all until recently. I’ve designed my first 3d printed case, it’s a one piece, just needs a bottom cover.
It acts like an amplifier to my typing. It’s not a pleasant sound at all.
What would be the best way to design a quieter one piece board? What materials could make a difference? I was thinking of a metal switch plate, can It be used together with 3d printed layers? Wood? Should I use foam?
Looking for a choc build (more difficult due to lack of silent choc switches) as well as an mx build (probably bobba u4 switches, which will take care of most of the noise)
Thanks!
You could add rubber feet, sub-pcb foam liner, lube the switches, o-rings work too but feel awful. Also having a neoprene keyboard/mousepad helps too. I’d recommend positively affixing the pcb+plate to the case so it doesn’t rattle either.
Because of the material, affixing might create the problem, or at least make it worse. I think affixing the plate with rubber layer might be the solution, but never tried that.
It could but the concern weird be rattle if you have any. I what wouldn’t fall do the whole “keyboard specific dampening foam”, I use packing foam on my keyboard between the case and PCB and it’s totally fine. But the PCB is also screwed into metal standoffs in a wooden case, and I have no plate. Surprisingly I don’t have an issue with switch movement. And the seller stopped selling plates while they unloaded stock of PCBs. I’ve been too lazy to reverse engineer the plate design, which the seller also for some reason did not want to release (even though they had released other plate designs). Really dumb. But keyboard works so whatever :)