I made a mechanical keyboard with 3D-printed switches
incoherency.co.uk
incoherency.co.uk
Kind of surprisingly, doing a quick search for that term online shows up a 1960's patent for one:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3034628A/en
The advent of the fluid amplifier has led to the development
of data processing and control systems wherein the
processing and control functions are carried out by elements
which operate entirely on fluid principles. That is, these
systems contain no moving parts other than the working fluid
which flows through the system.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide
a pure fluid system for inserting information into a fluid
data processing device.
> Apart from the fact that the keyboard is quite unpleasant to type on, I'd say this project was mostly a success. [...] I think my mistake was optimising for reliability instead of feel.
Existing switches are extremely reliable (if their reliability isn’t satisfactory, find some used Alps switches from the late 1980s, or some Honeywell switches, or ...), so the only reasons I can think of to make your own are to fit in some unusual spatial condition where an off-the-shelf switch won’t work, or for a better feel.
* https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toas...
As others have pointed out, these keys feel "mushy". And I agree with that. It comes down to the spring constant of printed springs. It is really really hard to make it consistent from print to print. Fortunately springs are actually super cheap and you can make those yourself pretty easily too if you want. So if you back off the "everything has to be printed" mantra just a bit. You can make a more consistent feeling switch. (and less deep which has some benefit on front panel stuff)
I know at least one mech keyboard enthusiast from reddit who went from cherrry mx brown -> clears -> ergo clears -> gateron brown -> zealios v1 -> zealios v2 -> custom switches -> cherrry mx brown making a full cycle.
My favourite of them all is probably butterfly, but obviously there's no equivalent of that for desktop keyboards, so I am running a scissor switch keyboard now. However, I have very fond memories of the low profile blue switch.
I went full circle back to blues, and blue are still my favorite... but the rest of my family does not share my enjoyment of them. I will go back to blues after they go back to work/school. :)
As for reliability, I don't know how readily available they are any more, but IMO the true "gold standard" is Hall Effect, because it's contactless.
Hall effect keyboards used to be quite common 45 years ago in heavy data entry applications (e.g. people who spent their days entering typewritten manuscripts submitted by authors, years before every writer used a word processor).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_technology#Hall-effec...
Contactless is great because there's no mechanical key bounce or contact wear. Some quick googling showed that Cherry (at least once upon a time) made hall effect keyswitches. But they're probably too expensive for most applications.
not quite readily available, but that may change soon
Totally! There are ways to make your own PCBs using presensitized boards and exposing it to light ([1] for example) to keep it DIY
Seems like with one of those you could even defeat 2FA (if you were a black hat). Swap out the victim's keyboard with the one with the embedded radio keylogger. Auto-detect when they are logging into something with 2FA. Put the characters they type into the web form and submit faster than they do.