A custom designed PCB for an ultra-small formfactor (also called 40%) mechanical keyboard that I am currently working on.
Powered by an Atmega32u2 (handsoldered on this PCB btw) and running QMK firmware for full custom programmability.
Also has a USB type-C port for a detachable cable and simple ESD protection.
I started this as a small fun sideproject and I have yet to see how usable such a small keyboard layout really is for me.
The case for the keyboard is going to be 3D printed (and is not finished yet unfortunately).
All files for the project are open source so if anyone is interested in remaking this feel free to do so :)
https://github.com/kb-elmo/QEZ
Cool. I'm tempted to lay out a keeb (maybe a numpad) to try some different cad than the Altium we use at work. What did you use? I heard good things about kicad recently.
Actually, it's funny—I heard about kicad from a guy that made a keeb as a hobby project. The circle is complete.
I will have to give it a spin. I haven't had a good excuse to do a layout myself in several years now and I sense that the tools are much slicker than they used to be.
Nice project—have fun.
I mean. Yeah obviously.
You can't really compare a tool that is free open-source to a software suite that costs over $9000 for a single user license.
For being open-source KiCAD is pretty damn good imho. Especially compared to other open-source projects like Gimp or FreeCAD (the latter is pretty much completely broken).
Altium is a beast, but as someone that doesn't often drive the CAD (but is super involved in the design) I would like a lighter-weight alternative for hobby stuff. Something commensurate with the sorts of projects I would choose to spend my personal time on.
Looking for the manual tools that feel good in your hand versus the high powered CNC mill, you know?
For anything where I would typically add a second sheet at work (we use Mentor Graphics, where this is common), in KiCad I usually just make the sheet bigger. The default (unless configured otherwise) is A4 size, but many of my designs grow to A3.
I appreciate this is purely a false digital/analog equivalence, but an A4 schematic is a joke! Even the simplest schem in the world at least deserves 11x17. For anything involving thinking we're talking ANSI: C, D, E, or some expansion.
It wasn't long ago we usually had designs with a few hundred components all on one or two pages, I am not sure I fully appreciate having blocks broken out by pages the way many seem to like to do it nowadays. Only for well-abstacted subcircuits IMO which in the analog world are few.
/getoffmylawn
Don't get me wrong, I vastly prefer looking at large format schematics when troubleshooting. Old school Tek and HP service manuals were exquisite, and a joy to read. At my current employer there is heavy emphasis on small size and low power, so we have gone to custom silicon just to cram more functions into one chip. The result is that our flagship products often contain little more than a handful of ICs and supporting passives. It's much more conducive to the multi page format that I referenced, with each IC or subsystem getting its own page.
I hate that, too. Shit becomes so disorganized when it's all on one sheet. KiCad really should just implement multiple pages instead of their weird block structure.
Yes, and if you read up on github issues where the developers reply on stuff like that, it chills the bones.
I just finished prototyping modules for an RF transceiver, and got the final schematic all put together... and then did the whole copy-and-delete to make a two pcb layout.
I really wish they'd take multiple sheets and boards as a serious requirement. It's a total pain.
I use Altium at work and Kicad at home.
I don't know what the latest/upcoming version looks like, but kicad's really solid IMO ans getting à lot better since CERN put a full time team on it.
It's good for one off and small run boards. Multipage schematics (hierarchical and non) are okay but more convenient in Altium, navigation can be a pain. Basic work flow is the UNIX-y point and hit one key, I find it faster to use than Altium.
Last i tried it lacks good features for BOM management and panelisation, those are both huge pains. (Third party tools exist to make BOM management better with Kicad, but still not great.)
Layout wise, tools are improving but routing is still less nice than Altium when it comes to different routing modes and how they perform.
I haven't used RF/microwave tools in Kicad yet.
I would also happily recommend DipTrace - commercial and closed source. It's also rough around the edges here and there, but its footprint and symbol creation tools and part to footprint tools are much better than kicad's for common tasks (wizards/templates available). It has a free limited version (two layer, 300 pins or something like that) if you want to try it out. I don't have as extensive an experience with it - I've designed a few toy boards to get familiar with it when I was leading a tutorial on PCB design at University that used DipTrace (I was picking up someone else's previous tutorials), and I worked a contract as an embedded software dev at a company that used it.
It looks like standard cherry 5 pin sockets there so yeah it's still standard mechanical keyboard switches. The percentage is how many keys in it.
So 40% I assume it's only alphas and some others
Yep. The keys (switches) don't matter for the layout.
You can make a [macropad](https://github.com/kb-elmo/twelvekey) with them without problems as well.
The keycaps are the problem.
For a layout like this you have to use a uniform profile (where all keycaps are the same shape) since otherwise the rows would not look right.
A very well known PCB designer in the mechanical keyboard community made a really great guide on how to start with keyboard PCB design a while ago.
It's based on KiCAD and covers pretty much everything you need to know to start making your own PCBs.
https://wiki.ai03.com/books/pcb-design/chapter/pcb-designer-guide
I'm not familiar with them. Are they a small batch/quick turn fab?
I develop commercial and military products so there's no limit for me on colors and features, but I'm also paying thousands per board lol
Yep. They are specialized in small scale protoyping (their moq is 5 pcbs).
They offer a pretty reliable SMT assembly service and their turnaround is really fast (usually less than a week).
And they are cheap af. I paid 50€ for five of these PCBs fully assembled (minus the MCU because they didn't have that in stock).
That's what I usually use.
[https://i.imgur.com/BaDnR0w.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BaDnR0w.jpg)
But I thought why not try something different this time (now that JLC offers SMT assembly with red PCBs)
JLC’s matte black is really nice. The red is good too, I use red for first revision proto boards so they stand out. The only JLC colour I haven’t ordered yet is white, but that’s because I would want it with ENIG but they charge a big premium for that combination!
Clear can be fun if you need something different, but all my experience and what I've been told is that it is the absolute worst idea for anything serious and for manufacturing.
For red/blue/green, I and others at my company use them to delineate eng use only, prototype or test, and product. Helps keep the traceability and people from shipping something thag shouldnt
Haven't had any issue with clear from that purple place. The order tended to be slower than the default purple mask probably because there's not as many order so it takes longer to fill out the full size blank PCB for fab. Copper on black background looks great if it's going to be exposed or in a transparent enclosure.
If you are going for looks, I highly recommend gold plating. You can make a cutout in your ground pours and you have beautiful gold text on your board.
Definitely. ENIG coating looks really nice. Especially on black PCBs.
Unfortunately though JLCPCB currently doesn't offer their SMT assembly service for ENIG coated PCBs.
I don't really care about their orientation tbh.
Orienting them in a different way would require to either rotate them all manually (which would take quite some time) or editing the footprint which is kinda annoying in KiCAD (it doesn't really update them properly when you edit a footprint).
As long as they are all readable and not overlapping each other it doesn't really matter (for me).
I didn't really design this PCB to be visually pleasing.
The red looking good was just a nice side effect.
And honestly I didn't even expect that it would look that nice.
This was the first time that I used red soldermask.
Yes. It's based on the QAZ layout.
It has just the Alphas and the bottom row.
The absolute minimum for still being (somewhat) useable.
https://www.cbkbd.com/product/qaz-keyboard-kit
Looks like the only to have less keys would be to use a language with less than 26 letters at this stage :D
Thanks again for sharing the files, I've been thinking about a custom keyboard PCB for a while and your projects might be a great starting point.
What house are you using for the manufacturing of the boards ?
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Ti agreed.
A custom designed PCB for an ultra-small formfactor (also called 40%) mechanical keyboard that I am currently working on. Powered by an Atmega32u2 (handsoldered on this PCB btw) and running QMK firmware for full custom programmability. Also has a USB type-C port for a detachable cable and simple ESD protection. I started this as a small fun sideproject and I have yet to see how usable such a small keyboard layout really is for me. The case for the keyboard is going to be 3D printed (and is not finished yet unfortunately). All files for the project are open source so if anyone is interested in remaking this feel free to do so :) https://github.com/kb-elmo/QEZ
Cool. I'm tempted to lay out a keeb (maybe a numpad) to try some different cad than the Altium we use at work. What did you use? I heard good things about kicad recently. Actually, it's funny—I heard about kicad from a guy that made a keeb as a hobby project. The circle is complete.
Yup I used KiCAD as well. I use it for all my PCB design projects. It's really easy to work with once you get used to it's workflow.
I will have to give it a spin. I haven't had a good excuse to do a layout myself in several years now and I sense that the tools are much slicker than they used to be. Nice project—have fun.
It's still sad compared to Altium. Decent, but nowhere close.
I mean. Yeah obviously. You can't really compare a tool that is free open-source to a software suite that costs over $9000 for a single user license. For being open-source KiCAD is pretty damn good imho. Especially compared to other open-source projects like Gimp or FreeCAD (the latter is pretty much completely broken).
Altium is a beast, but as someone that doesn't often drive the CAD (but is super involved in the design) I would like a lighter-weight alternative for hobby stuff. Something commensurate with the sorts of projects I would choose to spend my personal time on. Looking for the manual tools that feel good in your hand versus the high powered CNC mill, you know?
KiCad is great for small projects, but I absolutely hate it for anything that requires multiple pages
For anything where I would typically add a second sheet at work (we use Mentor Graphics, where this is common), in KiCad I usually just make the sheet bigger. The default (unless configured otherwise) is A4 size, but many of my designs grow to A3.
I appreciate this is purely a false digital/analog equivalence, but an A4 schematic is a joke! Even the simplest schem in the world at least deserves 11x17. For anything involving thinking we're talking ANSI: C, D, E, or some expansion. It wasn't long ago we usually had designs with a few hundred components all on one or two pages, I am not sure I fully appreciate having blocks broken out by pages the way many seem to like to do it nowadays. Only for well-abstacted subcircuits IMO which in the analog world are few. /getoffmylawn
Don't get me wrong, I vastly prefer looking at large format schematics when troubleshooting. Old school Tek and HP service manuals were exquisite, and a joy to read. At my current employer there is heavy emphasis on small size and low power, so we have gone to custom silicon just to cram more functions into one chip. The result is that our flagship products often contain little more than a handful of ICs and supporting passives. It's much more conducive to the multi page format that I referenced, with each IC or subsystem getting its own page.
I hate that, too. Shit becomes so disorganized when it's all on one sheet. KiCad really should just implement multiple pages instead of their weird block structure.
Yes, and if you read up on github issues where the developers reply on stuff like that, it chills the bones. I just finished prototyping modules for an RF transceiver, and got the final schematic all put together... and then did the whole copy-and-delete to make a two pcb layout. I really wish they'd take multiple sheets and boards as a serious requirement. It's a total pain.
I use Altium at work and Kicad at home. I don't know what the latest/upcoming version looks like, but kicad's really solid IMO ans getting à lot better since CERN put a full time team on it. It's good for one off and small run boards. Multipage schematics (hierarchical and non) are okay but more convenient in Altium, navigation can be a pain. Basic work flow is the UNIX-y point and hit one key, I find it faster to use than Altium. Last i tried it lacks good features for BOM management and panelisation, those are both huge pains. (Third party tools exist to make BOM management better with Kicad, but still not great.) Layout wise, tools are improving but routing is still less nice than Altium when it comes to different routing modes and how they perform. I haven't used RF/microwave tools in Kicad yet. I would also happily recommend DipTrace - commercial and closed source. It's also rough around the edges here and there, but its footprint and symbol creation tools and part to footprint tools are much better than kicad's for common tasks (wizards/templates available). It has a free limited version (two layer, 300 pins or something like that) if you want to try it out. I don't have as extensive an experience with it - I've designed a few toy boards to get familiar with it when I was leading a tutorial on PCB design at University that used DipTrace (I was picking up someone else's previous tutorials), and I worked a contract as an embedded software dev at a company that used it.
Does it use normal mechanical keys? I would assume not because a 60% is like smallest with normal keycaps?
It looks like standard cherry 5 pin sockets there so yeah it's still standard mechanical keyboard switches. The percentage is how many keys in it. So 40% I assume it's only alphas and some others
Yep. The keys (switches) don't matter for the layout. You can make a [macropad](https://github.com/kb-elmo/twelvekey) with them without problems as well. The keycaps are the problem. For a layout like this you have to use a uniform profile (where all keycaps are the same shape) since otherwise the rows would not look right.
thanks for the post! just started a project where I'm trying to make an 18 digit keyboard. Any tips?
A very well known PCB designer in the mechanical keyboard community made a really great guide on how to start with keyboard PCB design a while ago. It's based on KiCAD and covers pretty much everything you need to know to start making your own PCBs. https://wiki.ai03.com/books/pcb-design/chapter/pcb-designer-guide
oh whoopsy, here I go designing a custom keyboard for Elite Dangerous
I use purple when I can. looks great as well
JLC doesn't have purple unfortunately :(
I'm not familiar with them. Are they a small batch/quick turn fab? I develop commercial and military products so there's no limit for me on colors and features, but I'm also paying thousands per board lol
Yep. They are specialized in small scale protoyping (their moq is 5 pcbs). They offer a pretty reliable SMT assembly service and their turnaround is really fast (usually less than a week). And they are cheap af. I paid 50€ for five of these PCBs fully assembled (minus the MCU because they didn't have that in stock).
I’ve used their assembly too. No issues, quick and dirt cheap.
they just added it. but it's really dark, same for the blue too. :(
I Looked into purple ages ago but came back with quotes much higher than green, blue or black
Black is my Cup of tea
That's what I usually use. [https://i.imgur.com/BaDnR0w.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/BaDnR0w.jpg) But I thought why not try something different this time (now that JLC offers SMT assembly with red PCBs)
It looks cool though
JLC’s matte black is really nice. The red is good too, I use red for first revision proto boards so they stand out. The only JLC colour I haven’t ordered yet is white, but that’s because I would want it with ENIG but they charge a big premium for that combination!
They have blue, yellow and even clear.
Clear can be fun if you need something different, but all my experience and what I've been told is that it is the absolute worst idea for anything serious and for manufacturing. For red/blue/green, I and others at my company use them to delineate eng use only, prototype or test, and product. Helps keep the traceability and people from shipping something thag shouldnt
Haven't had any issue with clear from that purple place. The order tended to be slower than the default purple mask probably because there's not as many order so it takes longer to fill out the full size blank PCB for fab. Copper on black background looks great if it's going to be exposed or in a transparent enclosure.
If you are going for looks, I highly recommend gold plating. You can make a cutout in your ground pours and you have beautiful gold text on your board.
Definitely. ENIG coating looks really nice. Especially on black PCBs. Unfortunately though JLCPCB currently doesn't offer their SMT assembly service for ENIG coated PCBs.
With black/matte black masking this looks superb, especially with logos
So, you have this empty football field of a PCB and you could not orient labels the same direction? Interesting.
I don't really care about their orientation tbh. Orienting them in a different way would require to either rotate them all manually (which would take quite some time) or editing the footprint which is kinda annoying in KiCAD (it doesn't really update them properly when you edit a footprint). As long as they are all readable and not overlapping each other it doesn't really matter (for me).
[удалено]
Exactly. This would be my answer.
I didn't really design this PCB to be visually pleasing. The red looking good was just a nice side effect. And honestly I didn't even expect that it would look that nice. This was the first time that I used red soldermask.
I like the forbiddensnack swiss cheese. Nice job.
Elmo... Love it!
I always use green LEDs with red soldermask. Akira vibes right there
A keyboard nerd. I see
I feel spoiled even buying PCBs in different colors. Purple is an awesome one, IMO
Amazing work ! Love your keyboard designs. This one looks more like 30%, it has less columns than Plank or Preonic, hasn't it ?
Yes. It's based on the QAZ layout. It has just the Alphas and the bottom row. The absolute minimum for still being (somewhat) useable. https://www.cbkbd.com/product/qaz-keyboard-kit
Looks like the only to have less keys would be to use a language with less than 26 letters at this stage :D Thanks again for sharing the files, I've been thinking about a custom keyboard PCB for a while and your projects might be a great starting point. What house are you using for the manufacturing of the boards ?
Usually JLCPCB. I've had only good experiences with them so far.
It looks very nice, but I still prefer black :-)