I bought a gaming keyboard at Walmart because it was on clearance. Figured I'd harvest the mechanical switches off it, but alas, it's a membrane keyboard i.e. no switches. It works like a classic Logitech or Microsoft keyboard, where a little rubber dome under the key rests above a circuit board which collapses when pressed and bridges the contacts.
Problem: Mechanical keyswitches for keyboards are pretty expensive, easily $0.75 - $1 a pop. I thought I was getting a great deal, getting over 100 of them for $30!
But it got me thinking. I find it rather funny that some of the most expensive keyswitches on the market are not actually mechanical at all, or are considered only "semi-mechanical". Topres, for example, are electrostatic, or capacitive. Others are optical, and something else is added to the mechanism to provide the tactile feedback, often a rubber dome.
They just make the rubber a little heavier so that it makes a more solid thonk. This shows that it is possible to offer an extremely pleasing feel without an actual mechanical switch.
We will still offer a model with real mechanical keyswitches for the typing enthusiast, but naturally it will cost 3 times as much. Maltron uses them because they need to be hand-wired into the vacuum-molded case, the contours making the use of a flat circuit board impossible.
But we could solve this problem another way. Who says the keys need to be mounted on a single board? Each key can simply sit atop a discrete PCB. If you don't think it will work... fight me.
EDIT: You know what, I just checked again and these switches are only $0.31 each. So a set of 64 would only cost $19.73, not too shabby.
I bought a gaming keyboard at Walmart because it was on clearance. Figured I'd harvest the mechanical switches off it, but alas, it's a membrane keyboard i.e. no switches. It works like a classic Logitech or Microsoft keyboard, where a little rubber dome under the key rests above a circuit board which collapses when pressed and bridges the contacts.
Problem: Mechanical keyswitches for keyboards are pretty expensive, easily $0.75 - $1 a pop. I thought I was getting a great deal, getting over 100 of them for $30!
But it got me thinking. I find it rather funny that some of the most expensive keyswitches on the market are not actually mechanical at all, or are considered only "semi-mechanical". Topres, for example, are electrostatic, or capacitive. Others are optical, and something else is added to the mechanism to provide the tactile feedback, often a rubber dome.
They just make the rubber a little heavier so that it makes a more solid thonk. This shows that it is possible to offer an extremely pleasing feel without an actual mechanical switch.
We will still offer a model with real mechanical keyswitches for the typing enthusiast, but naturally it will cost 3 times as much. Maltron uses them because they need to be hand-wired into the vacuum-molded case, the contours making the use of a flat circuit board impossible.
But we could solve this problem another way. Who says the keys need to be mounted on a single board? Each key can simply sit atop a discrete PCB. If you don't think it will work... fight me.
EDIT: You know what, I just checked again and these switches are only $0.31 each. So a set of 64 would only cost $19.73, not too shabby.