I’m sincerely confused as to why you would want more than one keyboard. To me it sounds like owning more than one printer, but even less convenient. Can you explain it to me?
Not OP, but personally I own 4 or 5 different keebs and I like swapping between them for different reasons. Sometimes it’s just because they’re different colors/lighting options and I want to switch up the look of my desk, other times it’s because I want the feel of a linear switch for long bouts of typing for the feel of a blue switch for precise feedback in gaming.
I think of it like knives in a kitchen. Yes, you could just use a very nice chef’s knife, but knives come in all shapes and sizes for different applications.
I got started simply because I had been using the same dirty gaming keyboard for over a decade and it finally died. I knew from peripheral experience that most consumer electronic devices are e-waste so I went the custom route so that I could control the quality.
I settles on a case pretty quickly but couldn’t decide on switches. I got a sampler pack but that doesn’t really give you a good idea of the full typing experience so I went ahead and just bought 3 full sets of switches.
I quickly got tired of switching the out of the keyboard whenever I wanted to try a different set so I went out and got a second good but not AS good case just to serve as a test bed.
Well that meant I needed another set of keycaps. So I went looking and there was a deal I found for purchasing multiple sets.
If you are counting we are now at 3 sets of switches, 3 sets of caps, and 2 cases. I think you can see where this is headed.
What I ended up learning is that you can REALLY dial in the feel and responsiveness of a keyboard for what you want.
Do you want a commanding, powerful keyboard that feels like you are accomplishing something with every keystroke? Heavy, clicky switches with THICK PBT caps.
Do want a smooth fast speed demon for gaming/typing? Start looking into shirt throw linear switches with choc caps.
Good every day workhorse for all around use? Tactile are a great place to start?
But what case material do I choose? Metal, resin, plastic? Gasket mount pcb? Foam underlayment? What type of Keycap material do I like? PBT, ABS? maybe some resin, or metal even. How about some exotic ceramic keycaps?
How am I going to discover the combo that I like the best? You try them all and end up with a massive collection.
BUUuuuuUuut… There are several different ways to make your own keycaps.
Silicon molds for resin pours. Sometimes even multistage pours for different parts of the cap.
3d printing/laser sintering is also an option and probably the easiest entry point into custom keycaps.
Clay/Ceramic can be sculpted to make caps.
You can order blank PCB caps in nearly every style of profile possible. You can then custom design your own legends and dye sublimate then onto the keys.
Some actual lunatic even went as far to manually load every blank Keycap into a CNC mill to carve out the letters so he could backfill it with a different material of his choice (I don’t remember the specifics).
I think for others it’s having different switches and keycaps for different feeling when typing. For me it’s trying to find what I think is the most optimal typing experience and the least amount of strains on my hands while typing.
That’s why I’ve gone from row stagger and qwerty to Ortholinear. I switched to that because it makes sense to me that your fingers move up and down better than they move laterally. Lateral movement like in a row stagger layout is more strain since you have to stretch to reach keys. Qwerty also never made sense to me since alphas aren’t optimized based on location but rather purposefully unoptimized as a hold over from the typewriter days in order to slow down typists to help stop keys from jamming.
When I was on my Ortho boards I learned about layer switching that allows for keys that are further away to be moved under my fingers by activating a second layer. This was when I moved from my 60% Ortho to my 40% Ortho.
After that I got interested in ColemakDh since it fixed a lot of what is wrong with qwerty. So I decided to learn it. Then I got real into column stagger and wanted to try my hand at soldering. I ordered the parts to make a board called a Cantor Remix. I had enough parts to build 2 and did that. Building my own keyboard from basically parts and programming was a lot of fun and I got bit by the bug.
It’s a dumb argument since most people don’t care but I believe that something like a column staggered layout and something like Colemak or Canary should be the standard keyboard format. It’s hard to relearn typing all over again as an adult so the default is an archaic row stagger that feels unnatural and a very unoptimized alpha layout. I know most people just don’t care and I hyper focus on stuff so it’s just something I don’t bother telling most people, unless they ask of course.
I don’t think everyone needs a bunch of keyboards but I’m on this weird journey to find what feels the most optimized for me. I’m deep in the rabbit hole lol.
I got into it cause you can switch out the keys for custom keys. Plus I really like specific aesthetics so I have a pink keyboard and one in lavender where the keys look like sweet tarts candy.
I’m sincerely confused as to why you would want more than one keyboard. To me it sounds like owning more than one printer, but even less convenient. Can you explain it to me?
Not OP, but personally I own 4 or 5 different keebs and I like swapping between them for different reasons. Sometimes it’s just because they’re different colors/lighting options and I want to switch up the look of my desk, other times it’s because I want the feel of a linear switch for long bouts of typing for the feel of a blue switch for precise feedback in gaming.
I think of it like knives in a kitchen. Yes, you could just use a very nice chef’s knife, but knives come in all shapes and sizes for different applications.
I got started simply because I had been using the same dirty gaming keyboard for over a decade and it finally died. I knew from peripheral experience that most consumer electronic devices are e-waste so I went the custom route so that I could control the quality.
I settles on a case pretty quickly but couldn’t decide on switches. I got a sampler pack but that doesn’t really give you a good idea of the full typing experience so I went ahead and just bought 3 full sets of switches.
I quickly got tired of switching the out of the keyboard whenever I wanted to try a different set so I went out and got a second good but not AS good case just to serve as a test bed.
Well that meant I needed another set of keycaps. So I went looking and there was a deal I found for purchasing multiple sets.
If you are counting we are now at 3 sets of switches, 3 sets of caps, and 2 cases. I think you can see where this is headed.
What I ended up learning is that you can REALLY dial in the feel and responsiveness of a keyboard for what you want.
Do you want a commanding, powerful keyboard that feels like you are accomplishing something with every keystroke? Heavy, clicky switches with THICK PBT caps.
Do want a smooth fast speed demon for gaming/typing? Start looking into shirt throw linear switches with choc caps.
Good every day workhorse for all around use? Tactile are a great place to start?
But what case material do I choose? Metal, resin, plastic? Gasket mount pcb? Foam underlayment? What type of Keycap material do I like? PBT, ABS? maybe some resin, or metal even. How about some exotic ceramic keycaps?
How am I going to discover the combo that I like the best? You try them all and end up with a massive collection.
How do you make your own key caps?
3D printing?
Oh man… short answer is yes.
BUUuuuuUuut… There are several different ways to make your own keycaps.
Silicon molds for resin pours. Sometimes even multistage pours for different parts of the cap.
3d printing/laser sintering is also an option and probably the easiest entry point into custom keycaps.
Clay/Ceramic can be sculpted to make caps.
You can order blank PCB caps in nearly every style of profile possible. You can then custom design your own legends and dye sublimate then onto the keys.
Some actual lunatic even went as far to manually load every blank Keycap into a CNC mill to carve out the letters so he could backfill it with a different material of his choice (I don’t remember the specifics).
It’s a deeeeep rabbit hole.
I think for others it’s having different switches and keycaps for different feeling when typing. For me it’s trying to find what I think is the most optimal typing experience and the least amount of strains on my hands while typing.
That’s why I’ve gone from row stagger and qwerty to Ortholinear. I switched to that because it makes sense to me that your fingers move up and down better than they move laterally. Lateral movement like in a row stagger layout is more strain since you have to stretch to reach keys. Qwerty also never made sense to me since alphas aren’t optimized based on location but rather purposefully unoptimized as a hold over from the typewriter days in order to slow down typists to help stop keys from jamming.
When I was on my Ortho boards I learned about layer switching that allows for keys that are further away to be moved under my fingers by activating a second layer. This was when I moved from my 60% Ortho to my 40% Ortho.
After that I got interested in ColemakDh since it fixed a lot of what is wrong with qwerty. So I decided to learn it. Then I got real into column stagger and wanted to try my hand at soldering. I ordered the parts to make a board called a Cantor Remix. I had enough parts to build 2 and did that. Building my own keyboard from basically parts and programming was a lot of fun and I got bit by the bug.
It’s a dumb argument since most people don’t care but I believe that something like a column staggered layout and something like Colemak or Canary should be the standard keyboard format. It’s hard to relearn typing all over again as an adult so the default is an archaic row stagger that feels unnatural and a very unoptimized alpha layout. I know most people just don’t care and I hyper focus on stuff so it’s just something I don’t bother telling most people, unless they ask of course.
I don’t think everyone needs a bunch of keyboards but I’m on this weird journey to find what feels the most optimized for me. I’m deep in the rabbit hole lol.
I got into it cause you can switch out the keys for custom keys. Plus I really like specific aesthetics so I have a pink keyboard and one in lavender where the keys look like sweet tarts candy.
I also have a keyboard specifically for my ipad.