Mechanical keyboard made from wood with metal keycaps

Finished keyboard first

Sound of the keys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYX5oO5xpkI

Keycaps and sides are CNC machined from 6061 aluminum alloy. Base is made from neighbor's walnut wood. About a year ago THEY decided to cut down their walnut tree. I got a good part of the log that was later taken to a sawmill. It was then left drying for almost a year.

Computer render of the keyboard

I started with the guts

Firstly, a circuit board was machined (or engraved) to keep Cherry MX switches in place and connect them electrically. Everything was done with my mini CNC machine with work area just under A4 paper size. Because the pice was larger than machine's work area some flipping of the material was present. Machine one side of the board, take it out and flip it, tell the machine where the board is, machine the board from the other side.

After machining came soldering

Switches are wired in a matrix. Small round and red parts on the picture are diodes. They are the solution to downside of switches wired in a matrix - phantom keys. You can read more about is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_keyboard#Control_processor

All done!

Top side of the board

Cherry MX switches. All 91 of them. It took me about 3 hours to solder everything.

Journey continues with a chunk of aluminum

Next thing I did were keycaps. They are machined from 6 mm thick aluminum sheet. Machining of a single key took about 8 minutes and with 91 keys that gives us good twelve hours. If nothing went wrong. I was making keycaps in sets of 20 (20 at a time) to reduce the number of tool changes. I made a mistake few times so I had to scrap 2 sets (40 keycaps). The worst thing is that I didn't know I screwed up until the very last moment of cutout process (after 2 hours of machining). Urgh.

Bottom side of the keys

I was taking next pictures while making last three keycaps. This is the bottom side of them and the extruded "plus" profile of Cherry switches goes in the negative "plus" profile you can see on the picture.

Center was machined with 1 mm tool.

Top side

Top side is a bit more delicate because this will be the exposed part. Top face carefully machined to make it as flat as possible and edged were deburred with quarter-circle tool. Key labels were engraved to 0.1 mm depth.

Parts on the picture are shown just before cutout.

Keycaps straight from the machine

This is how keycaps look after successful machining.

Some painting and sanding...

And this is how keycaps look after some handwork with fine sandpaper and paint to highlight the engraving.

The guts done and keycaps machined? What's next?

Electronics! Yay!

Electronics in a keyboard connect switches wired in a matrix to something more computer friendly like a USB or PS/2 port. I designed my own electronics for this purpose. This was the part of this keyboard jurney where I had the most fun and I would have regretted it if I had bought an assembled keyboard controller.

If you want more info about it and design file you should check my blog post: http://e.pavlin.si/2016/06/07/keyboard-for-cnc-recycling-a-programmable-keyboard/

Mini USB connector on bottom left. I didn't bother with PS/2 connector because it's too bulky so I just routed out the pins. I'll probably never use it anyway.

Neighbors walnut wood!

It has visible transitions from dark to light shade. Some people like it, some don't. I think it looks great because it adds a lot to the imperfection of the whole keyboard.

After machining

It took 4 flips to machine this piece because once again, my machine's work area was to small to mill whole side at once. It was a bit tricky and I made few mistakes the first time (I was using cheap wood) and got everything right in the second try with proper wood. It took a lot of sanding to make it smooth and some linseed oil for protection.

Everything assembled

Few more shots of the assembled keyboard.

Lock key indicators

You might have noticed that I tried to get as far away as possible from the common "sexy plastic" style of most keyboards preferably with colorful LEDs under each key.

Another step away from it were lock key indicators for which I used warm white LEDs placed under the keyboard. Light from them is natural and discrete. This way I kept the natural style of my keyboard intact.

USB controller

USB controller mounted on bottom cover of the keyboard in 3D printed housing.

Bottom view of the keyboard

Here you can see the placement of lock key indicators.

Imperfection

Wood has three imperfections on the surface. I didn't try to hide them.

That's it! End of the journey. I'll soon make a post on my blog about this keyboard with design files, tips and everything I learned. I'm too tired right now and I also have the last part of final exams to prepare for. Urghhh.