Put some HMX Xinhai in my U80 with MT3 Dancer. Contemplating lubing these. Just not up to it at the moment
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I think I just finished my longest build. Took damn near all day.
Safari Arc60. Thought GMK Katakana would look better or evoke something more in me.
It’s got a lasercut PC plate, gasket (plate) mounted, and bone dry Cherry Blacks (off aliexpress) that I spring swapped with 50g TX XL springs. Sounds and feels great, though I have to work out some ping/hollowness in the mods.
Build
Dremel’d the pcb notches all around for the screwless screw points of the case. Figured out the DB pinout and soldered on a cable.
Luckily the screws sit below the pcb when assembled, meaning I can assemble and put in these switches last, over/around the screws.
I just pulled off the Poron pads from the original plate and stuck them on the custom plate.
lol I can’t believe this worked. These switches clipped in fine and work just fine too. lol
I had GMK Serika on this before doing the pcb retrofit but somehow it didn’t feel right either. Felt too bright for this earthy Safari color. But now Katakana feels like it’s weighing the whole thing down a bit. I don’t know, maybe it fits.
What do you guys think, or what color should I pair with this Safari?
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The only thing that would have made this better is if those switches had dustproof stems to make sure nothing got in. 
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On the printer today: Some quick-n-dirty sidewalls for my original no-stabs handwire. On another, more recent board, I liked how they dressed up the sides – just a touch, mind you – on a Masonite sandwich that otherwise looks a bit too much like what it is. 
Next actual build: I’m going to use one of my spare PCBs and make a travel board using heavy linears. I have a blank set of “JWA” low profile blanks, which I am going to laser into a set loosely inspired by the Sinclair ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000’s awful but visually distinctive keyboard. The red will probably come out more pink, but it’ll be fun.
The decisions to be made are (1) whether to purchase mid-height blacks or use the JWick Yellows I already have, (2) how to adjust the case to be lower profile (switches will matter here… IMHO the JWA look AWFUL floating on full-height switches with nothing concealing the sides), and (3) whether to snap off the numpad from the PCB, since it looks like I would only need to bridge one trace.
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Don’t mean to spam this thread but I have sinned again. Gateron Grayish this time.
Can anyone guess which case this is for based on notches and hardware?
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Transplanted my fc660c MX (nt660) build into the Motorsport yellow case today to try out the white accents on FTRO.
I still have a free keyboard to redeem from HMKB, so I’m thinking I might have to pick up a yellow case for these caps
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Yeah that looks super good with the yellow board & white alert row!
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I played around in Inkscape today, and drew up a 65-key set to work on the low-profile keycaps. This JWA profile looks an awful lot like somebody pulled up their Solidworks CAD file for XDA and retained the typing surface while doing violent things to every other dimension. On the plus side, that ought to mean I don’t have to re-size my template’s “active” area, and that moving it up a little should get me where I need to be. I also ordered the GTMX mid-height switches. I bought enough to leave the numpad, but I’m leaning towards snapping it off by putting it in a vise and scoring with a boxcutter. With extra keycaps around, I can also do some tests to see if I can find the exact export DPI to get slightly better alignment. I feel like my laser, jig, and files are around 1% off from each other, and I want to see if I can “fix it in software,” as this design looks to be a little less forgiving than the last one, with the added variable of a new profile that is uniform but off center and not quiiite flat.
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I finally built my BD60 (Robocop colorway) with my custom PCB. Gateron Grayish tactiles and GMK Redline.
Mutilated more switches HEhehehe…
BD60
I love/hate this case. It’s a gorgeous case, but it feels like a $130 keyboard that’s going for $230.
It has awful case ping/reverb–I force broke it to hell
and then I filled it with polyfill (no pictures). It still reverbs a bit on mods, though it’s acceptable to me now. I think the case material is maybe just too thin, or it could be lower grade aluminum but I’m ignorant on that topic.
It’s screwless, so have fun taking off your keycaps to find the screws. But wait! The screws are non-magnetic and the 1.5mm hex heads are off tolerance so they barely fit the bit (too tight). So while you’re fiddling with the screws, you can go ahead and nick the thin AF ano off the case 
Then the weights and DB are held in with phillips head screws for whatever reason. Phillips screws have got to be the worst offence in a higher end keyboard, especially the cheap silver looking ones who strip just by looking at them wrong. (I hyperbolize. The phillips screws look well machined. I just don’t like how they look).
It also has a wonky ass DB because screw you and screw unified. At least it comes with an extra DB in case anything ever happens.
Original PCB is 1.2mm with a flex cut–irrelevant for me.
-End rant-
Despite my bitching, I absolutely love how it looks with Redline. I can just look at it in low light so I don’t see the 2 nicks on the top case, and force break and polyfill has calmed its pingy tits enough for me to really enjoy it.
On the Redline theme, typing fast on these tactiles makes it sound like rod knock 
The end 
PS: here’s the BD60 DB pinout if anyone ever cares (components facing up/you)
Here’s pinout for the Geon Unified DB
and here’s the pinout for the Arc60 DB
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Have you ever tried pouring a silicone case dampener for it? I’ve had some decent success doing that to give some extra heft to exceptionally ping-y cases. It’s not a miracle, but it’s fairly inexpensive mod to test out and easily reversible if it doesn’t fix the issue.
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This was on my workbench over the weekend
I tried using the KAM_Superuser keyset but did not like the profile on this board. I don’t know if I’ll keep SA Nuclear Data on it but for now it works.
The main thing bugging me is the color-shift mismatch between the two board halves. I know why it’s happening and I know there’s no good way around it but it rubs my OCD the wrong way. Overall though, I love the Burnt Titanium color.
Switches are Grain Gold Mint Bubblegum, spring swapped to 65g single stage. I also moved the lube around while they were open and cleaned some excess out. These things are oily AF, and they’re loud in this board. Very poppy on return, nice and deep sound on strike though. I will probably swap to a quieter switch if I use the board more often at work.
LOVE the Boston map on back. This back and the plate are printed on shiny black FR4.
Now, for the worst part. Stock this board is very, very pingy. I put two layers of blue painters tape on the PCB, that helped. But it also needs some sound deadening to cut the hollow, plastic sound back just a bit. This will appeal to some but I like a quieter board. Overall, I’m not in love.
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Forgot to add, there is no per key LED on the hotswap board. I was disappointed but it is what it is.
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Nuclear Data looks great! Dig up anything 1.75u for that RShift and I can’t imagine a significant improvement for a Battlecruiser.
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Color mismatch is unfortunate but par for the course for 3D-printed. If it makes you feel better, in the photos I skimmed right past it until you mentioned it, and overall I still love the way it came out.
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Ultimately, I have to think that people buy this for the aesthetics and some sense that they can leverage the layout to good effect. I also know its history was that it was intended to be a GB in CNC’d aluminum, so the acoustics may have been considered, to the extent they were at all, with that in mind. Seems like a good candidate for foam or poly, though, and I wonder if people’s experiences with the NCR80 would be useful.
Having built more than one board myself where I’m not in love, I am truly empathetic, though. Sometimes we don’t know what we don’t know, and everything off the beaten path is still so niche, sometimes you just have to try, and the Boston in particular seems like a vote for the community and the hobby. 
I also bet you’d find a buyer pretty quick.
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I very much appreciate the comments!
Planned experiments with poly, silicone and foam, as well as different switches to find the right sound. I do have a 1.75u shift key coming from SP, that was an absolute necessity. Considering what it is, I like the board just fine. There’s just no “wow” factor. Perhaps after some mods it will grow on me. I plan to keep the board for now, if for nothing else in the hopes that I might find a CNC case or there is a re-release in the future.
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Heh, so after all my whining, I went back and backed out every top mount screw and backed out every case screw half a turn. Now there’s no more ping. 
Guess I finally have a nice BD60.
(I have tried silicone pour and I loathed it. Have to level it perfectly, mix and clean up, and in the end it didn’t even help with case ping one bit albeit it was a shitty ZT60 from China).
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If it’s any consolation for the ping, that board looks amazing!
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That’s kind of wild it fixed the issue; huzzah for simple solutions!
Hah, I’ve really enjoyed the silicone pours I’ve done but your dremel and soldering projects seem like torture to me! There’s something for everyone in this hobby.
I will say that if my silicone pours didn’t help the case ping, I’d probably feel much less enthusiastic. The best result I had was on an incredibly ping-y aluminum GK64 case where I slightly over-poured the silicone and had to compress it a bit when I screwed down the PCB. The hotswap sockets have actually left permanent dents in the silicone, but the sound of that case improved dramatically. It has an incredibly muted sound signature which doesn’t sound as interesting as better case designs, but still night and day difference compared to the clanging of the stock case.
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Haha I guess if the silicone’s up to the PCB there’s not much room for reverb/ping.
I did that with some 1/8" neoprene foam on my Salvation because I could NOT get rid of horrible ping. I’ve yet to figure that one out–I need to because I have another Salvation yet to build and I’m not digging how stiff it is with the foam right up against the pcb. Sounds fine but lacks character and feels like normie tray mount.
Meanwhile, I think I found an expensive wrist rest (man I’m over these screwless cases lol back to the Dremel).
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