What is on your desk today?

wow what a chonker! :smiley:

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Finished my KBO-5000 today, which really just involved installed the short USB-C interconnect cable.

Build Details

  • Keebio KBO-5000
  • P3D stacked acrylic case, in high-vis orange.
  • Drop MT3, white-on-black keycaps. Susawatari MT3 spacebars.
  • Gazzew Boba U4 and U4 RGB switches.
  • P3D switch foam.

Mistakes Made

This is the first time I didn’t go with sockets for hot swapping and boy howdy does my planning needs to be better.

  • The bottom row was a real challenge for me as I could not find a configuration I liked. I settled on what you see here.
  • I soldered the switch for the right space bar in the wrong location, but because I used stabilizers, and wasn’t willing to desolder everything, I ended up cutting the stabilizers out with the wire cutters then shifting the switch over. So no stabs there, and a lesson learned.
  • I do NOT like the Function key to the left of the spacebar. I keep hitting that instead of the spacebar.
  • Read the note too late that the 2.75U right shift wasn’t support by the case so I had to cut a portion out to accommodate the wider shift cap.
  • The switch foam was a little too thick and made it really difficult to solder the switches in.
  • The LEDs I used for the back lighting were a little big so they get in the way of some switches. I’ve been manually moving them out of the way where it matters.

Overall though, I’m reasonably happy with this. It’s a very quiet board, but loud AF visually.

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I will often put the keycaps on before soldering the switches, makes it clear right away that the bottom row is all in the right place and that none are rotated a bit or not straight or anything

I did that, but I still managed to make a right mess of things. In the past, when I’ve used sockets, I’ve just quietly added another set of sockets and pretended like the abandoned set was something I meant to do. :smiley:

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Always love seeing another split keeb! I’m really digging the theme you went for :wink:


We ended up going for different bottom rows - I decided to put the FN key just at the edge of the left half as I tend to use my right thumb for space usually (a larger spacebar helps!) Plus with so many keys, there’s less need for layers, so the FN is usually used to activate macros and media keys

The keycaps are a mix of two profiles - my brother preferred my DSA keycaps (a DSA Granite knock-off) so I took his XDA keycaps instead. I think it makes for quite a nice visual aesthetic, accented with the colored mods. I was trying to channel some Bloomberg terminal keyboard vibes. Surprisingly, it’s quite comfortable having both DSA and XDA profiles on the same board.

As for the switches, they’re also silent tactiles (Aliaz 60g in Cherry Black housings). I think silent tactiles have the best of both worlds: tactility of mechs and the quietness of membranes :smiley:

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That looks really good, but I don’t recognize the board or case. It kind of looks like a Sinc, but the case is throwing me off?

I think it is one of those VEA clones you can get :eyes:

Well, I’m keeping my eyes peeled for a high end split. I’m sure there will be another one at some point here. I like all these Keebio boards, but having a solid aluminum or PC case would really hit the spot.

I know Kprepublic.com have a similar keeb. :thinking:

@djmantis hit the nail on the head :slight_smile: they’re rather accessible too, you can grab them from YMDK or their Aliexpress store if you’re not too keen on Taobao.

The acrylic certainly doesn’t feel as “premium” as a CNC aluminum slate, but neither does it feel cheap or plasticky. The construction of the 6 acrylic layers come together to form quite a solid product. That said, the trend nowadays is towards Alice/Arisu keyboards so you might have better luck looking for a premium split in that layout

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I’ve got a Basketweave and Jabberwocky that I haven’t built yet, so I’ll get to try that layout soon and see how I like it.

I’m a little dubious I’m going to like that more though only because I can get more separation between the halves on a true split. Plus I can make the angle anything I want, but we’ll see.

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What mouse is that? I like the look of it.

Modern M0110 with T1’s.

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Been so nice to go back to my good ol Planck for in the go use.

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Pwnage Ultra Custom Ergo or something. There’s a symmetrical version as well.

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That’s a beauty !

Sick. Is that copper I spot?

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You know it!

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FL-Esports FL980 three-mode, hot-swappable RGB (wireless) with Boba U4 Silent Tactile switches. I’ve been typing for well over thirty years (always just using whatever was available/nearby for keyboards). Although not my first mechanical keyboard, unbelievably it is my first custom/modified keyboard. I don’t think it will be my last.

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It looks great! Good to see the extra keycaps set matches your original one so well.

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