Can a 3D printed keyboard last three years? | Hacker News Reader

Can a 3D printed keyboard last three years?

danwilkerson.com

38 pointsdanwilkerson25 comments

> I also pack it up every single day and bike it to work

For three years!?

Why not make another one and leave it at the office?

I lasted less than a week after buying a split, ergonomic keyboards before I bought a second for the office.

Some of us don't have permanent desks at work (not saying that is what is going on here), but there can be many reasons to 'pack up and bring home' work stuff.

Not even a permanent drawer?

I worked at companies that had 'clean desk' policies. No desk, no drawer, no nothing for questionable benefit (it was touted as a security policy).

I can't imagine working at a place like this for one day longer than I really had to, before finding a better job.

That is what I did. I took the job as a knee-jerk reaction from losing projects because or covid as a freelancer. I think it has to do with the ISO security certification. It brings lots of little nuisances.

Very common in Pharma/Life science as documents are highly controlled, also anything visible to an auditor is seen as a risk to be managed. Auditors if the want can ask to see inside drawers, cabinets etc

The ones that I've worked at still allowed you to keep your things in a locked drawer. I'm surprised to hear there are places that don't even allow that much.

In such companies it should be straightforward to request a particular keyboard for health reasons (risk of RSI). If you're lucky you can get exactly what you want, at worst it would be a Kinesis Advantage or Maltron.

I got in the habit during the early days of RTO. I did start a second board, but (as is tradition) I upped the difficulty and it's now gathering dust on my bench.

I have broken a few Cherry compatible keycaps on my ageing original Corsair K70. Corsair were not able to provide spares and I have ended up 3d printing the keys using a OpenSCAD key designer. I created really close matches using that. They are holding up better than fine, the design is better than the Corsair ones around the stem so I can't imagine them breaking they are clearly stronger.

The only issue I had was making the light shine through (not that I use that much). So I used white plastic and then spray painted it black with a mask out for the character and it worked but the characters are quite hard to get the perfect shape. Printing the key upside down also means layer lines on the top which is the one place you ideally don't want them but its unavoidable with keycaps since they are sloped. I did use a very small layer height for that phase to improve the finish but the layers are unavoidable. While they are smoothed with sand paper those tiny gaps accumulate grime and show up even though you don't really feel them.

Doing this has extended the life of the keyboard and it feels the same to type on and unless you know they are different you will have a hard time finding the keys I replaced but they do look slightly different.

Would love to build one one day. I started building a custom KB, but moved house, packed away the 3d printer, etc, and never got back to it. Settled on a Kinesis Freestyle Edge in the meantime and it's.. ok. I'm not in love with it. The config software is ghastly, too. Though it's hard to find split mech KBs that haven't dropped a lot of keys in favour of layers, or haven't moved keys like [] away from their original locations. I would still buy a second though, rather than carting one to and from work. Guy must love that thing.

> it's hard to find split mech KBs that haven't dropped a lot of keys in favour of layers, or haven't moved keys like [] away from their original locations.

I think once a keyboard design strays from the 'traditional' layout, it becomes harder to justify features like having a big spacebar, having an asymmetric layout, having a row-stagger.

Especially with a focus towards ergonomics, it's nicer to reduce hand movement and hand stretching; and reduce usage of the pinky fingers in favour of allowing the thumb to be used more. -- Albeit, yeah, layers do trade that reduced hand movement for additional complexity.

I see many designs retain the number row. It's very rare to see designs which retain a row stagger, but clearly intend for the thumb to have 2-3 keys within reach.

The layers do take a bit of time to get used to, but they become transparent, after a while. As for punctuation locations, I've exploited that to my advantage, I have brackets and braces (which I use a lot of, for Clojure) just next to my left ring and middle finger, and parenthesis are also trivially reachable, of course. (all this on a Dactyl Manuform, with 46 keys total)

It's great that layers work fine for you. But they may not work for other person. Other person may not want to invest his time into learning layers. Or he also has to use a normal keyboard with standard shortcuts. Or there may be any other reason.

Market is definitely missing a full split keyboard (87+ keys). I'm also looking for one and I hate using keyboards with reduced number of keys.

This isn't totally up to date, but it might help: https://aposymbiont.github.io/split-keyboards/

(My site.)

| Guy must love that thing.

We're approaching "tattoo this on my body" levels of affection for the keeb.

| I started building a custom KB

I hope you pick it back up! I lost interest for a few months in the middle of building the one in the post, and I'm really glad I got back into it.

Take a look at the Keychron Q10. It's a single piece but with split layout.

https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-q10-alice-layout-...

It is perfect for me because I wanted a split layout but like you said, needed keys to be in the same place.

Search for "tenkeyless" aka TKL. Plenty of good ones on the market. IKBC historically had good quality.

I built a Dactyl Manuform about 2.5 years ago, and it's holding up well, there hasn't been any degradation (even with it shuffling back and forth between office and home daily). I would recommend it to anyone, really. After a couple of weeks of "adaptation time", it's the best keyboard I've ever used for work (I still use a regular keyboard for gaming, when I do game)

I use a 3D printed mouse from https://ploopy.co/mouse/ for years and it's doing just fine.

It looks like you've devised a way to mount your keyboard to the armrests of a Herman Miller Mirra chair: https://danwilkerson.com/static/92bcd474239a7f376b33d3be05d4...

Would you mind posting a couple more pictures of the mounts from different angles? I have the same chair and would really like to have it setup the same way!

Take a look at this post and if you need more info send me an email!

https://danwilkerson.com/posts/2022-02-20-the-captains-chair

I use a Dactyl Manuform every day, mounted to the arms of my chair like OP, and it’s been one of the better investments I’ve made in my setup in a long time. I can sit typing a lot longer than I used to be able to without back/wrist pain, and it’s so much more comfortable than sitting upright at a desk that I’d never go back.

The only sure thing for productivity is use the same keyboard everywhere preferably forever.

Even if the brain is a master at slow context switching (absorbing the office keyboard) it will lead to slower typing.

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