Hotswap Bluetooth? This is the way.
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If this board turns out to be bad, the jokes just write themselves,
“Ikki68 is ICKY!”
“More like Icky68”
“The ikk did not stick”
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I see that the Aurora will ship with optional colour-matched stabilizers:
Does anyone have any inkling as to their quality? I have some C³Equalz V3 stabilizers on the way that are actually green, but I’m not sure how they compare to the Aurora’s.
There’s a link to a Twitch review (Andy) of the stabilizers if you scroll down a little. Might be helpful:
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Thanks! This is exactly what I was looking for!
I am leaning towards purchasing this. But I would like to know what switches to build for it.
Does anyone who has experience with the previous Ikki68 know if this design could serve as the basis for a silenced build? I just mean being not particularly noisy.
The KBD67 Lite is good, but noisy, and I wonder how the Aurora might compare.
Alexotos did a build stream of Mint Ikki68 Aurora proto yesterday using black inks, seem to sound quite good, hope it helps. He did two typing tests, one with foam and one without, first one around 02:12:00~ish.
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Awesome!
As expected, the green one looks good with white keycaps and also 9009 spacebar.
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Anyone getting in on the Aurora R2 today? Ikki68 Aurora R2 – CannonKeys
I was thinking about picking this up just stock, but I am curious if anyone has any recommendations on other plates to maybe grab. I am tempted to try the FR4 with all those flex cuts, but I typically prefer POM. My thought is that the stock PC one would be perfect.
Cheers! Thanks!
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Ya, I snagged one.
I actually bought an R1 on the aftermarket; I had already been commissioned to build a black-and-gold keeb with that layout, so when a charcoal one with the gold badge popped up I jumped on it. The client is a Wake Forest graduate and needs a good keeb for the new law office job.
I paid a hundo markup on it, ain’t even mad - of all the boards competing in that bracket, I think the Aurora takes the cake for quality and how configurable they are. I’m not about to suggest they raise the price, but for what you get, I think $130 for the kit is great. The build quality is at least a full step above all the other middle-market boards I know and love.
I still think the KBD67L has it beat for sound and feel, but then again I’ve only tried the Ikki’s aluminum plate. Anyway - after trying the one I’m working on for my bud, I knew I had to grab one for myself whenever they ran again.
I’m a little bummed the charcoal color isn’t running again, but the clear is pretty sweet and goes with anything. If they release a full aluminum case like the original Ikki68 had, I’d at least consider buying it.
I think I’m on that same page with you; if PC wasn’t the default I’d be picking up one as an extra, and I’m looking forward to trying it with the keeb. I’m considering a POM one too, but so far PC has struck a better balance for me of softness and ease of building with. I liked the typing feel of the Ikki with the aluminum, but I did find myself wanting a little more dampening. I usually go for bluetooth if it’s an option, but those flex cuts in the new wired PCB were irresistible for me. :3
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Yeah, the Aurora and KBD67 Lite are upending the low/mid-end 65% market.
I have one on the way, but it is delayed. It’s just the base configuration, but I figure it may be appropriate for silent tactiles: alum plate with heavy dampening. OA stabilizers.
If they were regular, unsilenced tactiles, I would go with the polycarb plate and poly-fill dampening. That brass weight looks awesome, as well, and I kinda wish I ordered it, but I want the keyboard to be lighter and more portable. Plus I hate the feel of moving around a plastic case + brass weight.
The Aurora and KBD67 Lite also show you what can be done with economy-of-scale from producing ABS plastic case, which can be too expensive an investment for a small GB. The MK870 is kind of like this, as well, but only uses a tray-mount system. If it just shipped with polycarb plate and top/gasket-mount, it could be a KBD8X Lite. I hear that people create their own ‘gummy O-ring’ or gasket systems for it, though.
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That’s what I’ve got in the charcoal one; OA stabs and Boba U4s. The Bobas sound and feel great on the chassis, which has a feel that’s very dense, solid, but not too harsh.
The OA stabs I have middling feelings about, at least for a silent build - so far they’re proving to be challenging to silence. I’ve got it down to just one thing still making noise: where the wire clips-in. There’s a fair bit of play there and I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about it yet. I may try some kind of shim, or replace the soft foam I have under the stab wire with something more firm. I might also just replace the stabs on the space bar and enter key with different models that allow for less twist.
Like Durock V2s, they’re plenty smooth but allow for some cap rotation, which doesn’t play well with MT3 and its slightly larger footprint. Depending on where I hit the space bar or enter key, they will twist juust enough to brush an adjacent cap as discussed in this thread. In my particular case I’m getting around the rotate-and-tick issue by sanding the caps down, but I recognize most people probably won’t want to do that.
On the top and bottom rows, there is some slight contact with the case from the keys - same deal, I’ll be sanding them - the client picked and paid for these parts, so if I can make them work together that’s what I’m going to do. He’s not so much in the hobby and just wants a finished good keeb, so the priorities are a little different than they would be for a personal build; for my own Ikki, I’m probably just going to avoid putting MT3 on it, as killer as it looks and feels with the board.
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That’s concerning to hear about the stabilizer noise. I had heard that OA stabilizers were quieter than Zeal, which is the main other choice. All I have to pick from right now are OA, Zeal, and C3 for the Aurora.
Of those three, do you have an opinion on which is the quietest? I thought C3 weren’t bad for sound, but I’ve had them pop out of a hotswap keyboard, so I didn’t consider them for the Aurora.
Are there stabilizers that you would choose specifically for silence?
I bit the bullet and picked one up. I grabbed an FR4 plate too. I think with the amount of cuts, it should offer decent flex and maybe give some muted sound. The PCB is hot swap so I may as well get two plates to play around with 
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It probably depends on how you tune, but the Zeals have a feature these don’t - that little bit of plastic you break through with the wire, which reduces the wire rattling in the stem things. Not sure about the clips.
It’s also possible the tick isn’t actually coming from that play but from something else - I was pretty light with lubing the wire-ends. I’d say the OA stabs are pretty on-par with the Durocks, but my stab knowledge is pretty limited right now.
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Hmm. That’s interesting. I was planning on using the Zeal stabilizers on the HMKB and OA on the Aurora. But maybe I should swap the two, since I don’t really care about silencing on the HMKB. It’s the same amount of stabilizers, I think, so I could do a direct swap.
Wuque is releasing a new type of stabilizer called WS. It’s supposed to be designed in such a way as to prevent the wire from popping out. But it’s GB-only right now.
Aye, I ordered some of those to go with my R2. I’m interested to see how these new ones do; one of the changes is adding rails to the inside of the stab housing like switch tops have. Aside from making them less susceptible to feeling sticky with lube, I bet it will also cut-down on the twist. 
This is not only mine, but who bought it from my country, I also asked them to look. smaller or the same cracks.
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I figured this would be as good a place as any to post documentation of the clearance issue between the Ikki68 Aurora case and MT3:
I also took a closeup of the stab clearance issue with MT3, posting here because it’s OA stabs on an Ikki68A in the video but the issue definitely isn’t limited to those - if anything it affects all stabs to a greater or lesser degree, and I guess OAs are included in those that rotate just enough for MT3 to brush against itself:
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