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Finishing the Keyboard Backplate

2020-11-24T19:52

Over the past two nights, I have finished up the backplate for the keyboard.

This job stalled for a few weeks after I failed to make the Costar stabilisers work. Last week the Cherry stabilisers arrived and they went in without much fuss. It was slow (2 hours) and still needed accuracy, but their design tolerates less-than-perfect holes. I haven't used a keyboard with Cherry Stabilisers, but so long as they work well — and I have no reason that they wont — I'll keep using this style for other keyboards that I make.

Then last night I trimmed the plate to size and blasted it with a coat of matt black paint. I haven't filled it with switches yet — that's really the moment of truth, but I'm not expecting any problems there.

Now that I have completed my first backplate by hand, I doubt I will do it again. It isn't much fun and is actually more expensive than it seems. I didn't keep count, but I estimate it took 10 hours and I burnt through $30 in files. I can get five plates laser cut for around $150 (one plate costs the same price as five) — which equates to about $30 each. I was put off laser cutting because I worried about design errors and that any revision would cost another $150. I now think some errors can be recovered from with some time with a file. Plus, if this plate works, then I have confidence that the next won't have any catastrophically dumb mistakes.