Quote (AbDuCt @ Feb 25 2015 08:45pm)
Thinking about making my own mechanical keyboard. Just can't think of a good way to bring the price down unless I use prototype board instead of manufacturing a PCB for it. Using a protoboard will allow me to one off the keyboard but I would have to create all the traces and stuff my hand via solder trails and direct connection of wires.
Basically the general size for a 120 key keyboard is about 45cm by 15cm, you can do a 60% for around 30cm x 10cm or something. Either way PCB's will be expensive unless I find a better company. The one I use will give me 5 or so for 140$.
Next is switches... if I do cherry switches price will skyrocket so I have to look for china clones. Probably Gateron or kailth (or what ever it's called) as you can get packages of 120 for about 25-35$. If I buy the 5 pack minimum for PCB's I would need at least 5 sets of these so there's another 175$.
Next is the cases. I have some milling machines and other stuff I can use to make bent aluminum cases but I don't own anything that can do square punches so it might be a bit difficult to do a single bent plate design for the case with floating keys.
Lastly is the actual micro controllers. I would need to source something that can do programming over USB or buy two different chips, one for USB communication and one for the basic processing itself. There's the teensy 3.1 for like 20-30$ but I can probably source individual parts cheaper than that (probably for free if I get samples from the manufacturers).
Over all if I do this not as a one off project and do it right it will cost me about 410-460$ for 5 keyboards... which is a fucking lot. Even if I were to sell them it would be at around 80-90$ to break even and at that point you might as well buy premade keyboards.
Decisions decisions...
So I was looking at mech keyboards more, and technically you don't need PCB's I didn't realize how simple the circuits were on them. You can legit dead bug the entire keyboard together and it will be fine.
This would potentially drop keyboard costs down to 55-80$ each ish (35 for 120 key clones, 20-45 for a milled or cut front plate to hold keys). This doesn't include the cost for logic controllers as they cost about 5$ each depending on style and model.
Still not quite low enough to make it reasonable though. I will have to source a place and get a quote on milling and laser cutting services.
It's getting there though. If I get this down low enough I might be able to bump up to real cherries or something.