The first mechanical keyboard

In the late 2010s at the end of my bachelors I stated to program more and got interested in mechanical keyboards. Many big tech youtubers were talking about them and I wanted to get a feeling what all the fuss is about. As I usually don't settle with half way solutions, I immediately went for the ergonomic rabbit hole and wanted a split, ortho keyboard. At that time I thought, that I needed a number for the programming and data analysis of my physics degree, so in the end I bought an Iris v2 PCB and case plates. Then I still needed switches, electronic components, controllers, keycaps, laser cut acrylic for the case and most importantly (/s) LED-strips for the underglow. I then took courses at the local fab-lab to learn how to use a 3d-printer and a laser-cutter to either print the missing spacers for the case, or laser cut them. After finding all the required components from various different electronic stores (easy to shop at keyboard stores in the EU didn't exist yet, or I just didn't find them), I borrowed the soldering iron of a friend and soldered everything together. When I started typing on it I didn't understand all the hype around the ergonomic mechanical keyboards. Because of the orthogonal layout, I was mistyping on the bottom row a lot. The high profile of the case and the Cherry-MX keycaps caused my wrists to flex up while typing and my wrists started to hurt, while they never hurt on a normal, cheap, rubber-dome keyboard. So after a few weeks I decided that ergonomic, mechanical keyboards, where not for meant I took a break.

The keeb-free time

Sometimes I still saw pictures of mechanical keyboards in my feeds which looked interesting, but I never really got tempted. One keyboard stood out to me a bit more and it was s-ol's 0x33 based on hexagonal keycaps. It's price and all the hoops I needed to jump through with the Iris made the decision to not buy one very easy.

Get one good row-stagger board and be done

A few years went by, a Bachelor's thesis got written, all classes for the master's degree were passed and it was time for a bigger coding project (the master's thesis) again, so I thought, I might treat myself with a nice 65% board my computer at the office as a nice Christmas present. By that time I had a topre-TKL for my computer at home which I liked quite much. So I went for a random 65% board with a nice aluminium case and some matching keycaps. Because I was already buying something and I saw that the mercutio from mechwild was very cheap and looked super cute, I bought that as well. When it came to Christmas I soldered both boards and started typing on them. To my surprise I liked typing on the small board more and it was more then a gimmick for me.

Click Clack Hack and the first board

At some point I started listening to the Click-Clack-Hack (CCH) podcast. The CCH is a German podcast were the host talks about different aspects of mechanical keyboards. He likes small keyboard too and ordered some Corne PCBs, the leftovers of which he donated to the listeners of the podcast. I asked whether I could get a set of them and luckily I got a pair. Then I build a choc version of it with Darryl's sunset switches. I was amazed by how nice keyboards can be. I really liked typing on it. My wrists didn't hurt and typing was fun. Now I was really hooked on low profile boards. I joined the CCH-discord server from which I got an invitation to the discord server which shall not be named. On that server many keyboard designers have their own channels and post their designs and the process on how they got to it. Most of them focus small (40% or smaller) boards. I got really inspired by the designs of the other members on that discord and wanted to design boards of my own. However, I felt like the small keyboard design space has been explored a lot, and I felt like it was hard for me to innovate there. Then I thought back on the hexagonal keycaps and I thought hexagons are the bestagons. When I then saw, that the keycaps are available for sale I went ahead and designed the hexatana. Starting from there I designed all the other boards that can be seen at projects.