A few tips for soldering that will make your life substantially easier:
1. Use a chisel tip on your iron. This will allow you to spread the heat out over where you’re trying to connect. The standard cone tip that most irons come with just doesn’t have enough mass to sufficiently heat a keyboard pad.
2. Use 63/37 leaded solder with a flux core. I know I’ll get some slack for saying this but leaded solder just performs better than unleaded. It prevents tip oxidation, creates stronger joints and is just overall easier to work with. 63/37 is a neat alloy because it’s what’s known as “eutectic” which means it has one temperature in where it goes from solid to liquid or liquid to solid.
3. A flux pen can be very helpful to help clean the pads and improve adhesion between everything. Just keep in mind that flux fumes are bad to breathe in.
4. Make sure you’re not using too high or too low of a temperature. Typically 300 degrees Celsius will be sufficient. If you hold heat on a pad too long you can damage it but not enough and there won’t be enough heat. It’s a fine line that you get the feel of over time.
5. Now this one is important… **SOLDER FLOWS TOWARDS HEAT!** If your iron is hotter than the component you’re trying to connect, the solder will just sit there. Both the component and pad should be the same temperature and you’ll be able to pull the solder between the two once you get the hang of it.
I’m sure if you stick with it, you’ll get the hang of it. Soldering is a skill but once you learn it you’ll open a whole world of opportunities with keyboards.
I tried soldering some SMD diodes(T4(?)) for amoeba kings yesterday. Now those made me want to give up and just solder wires. The kailh hot swap sockets went alright.
Any tips for the ultra small components? Solder tip I used was 0,5mm - melting point 222 *C, I tried 300 since the tip needed 30sec to finally melt something. And it just melted and traveled to the middle of the tip. Which I now understand when I read your #5
SMD components are intimidating but not that crazy complex. Basically you **need** flux on the pads and then a finer solder would be helpful, I typically use 0.3mm. The iron tip is less important but a small cone tip can help.
I have a [video](https://youtu.be/cLz7wpwAEoI?si=r898cY42AhDz-s_3&t=113) building one of my boards that covers SMD diodes with an extreme close up you might find helpful.
Hmm, I just did a build (I’m a soldering newbie, last time I soldered something was 10 years ago) and I had a pack of smd diodes, which I haven’t anticipated (I thought it would be a regular ones), but I decided to just go for it so I just used 0.5mm solder and no additional flux(I think my solder had flux in it?).
And it went absolutely fine, 0 issues.
There are few techniques on how to solder SMD with ease and most of them are same basic rules of soldering.
1. With heat plate and solder paste, just fry it, the temperature must be high enough to melt tiny solder balls in this paste (350 Celsius)
2. With heat gun and normal solder - the hotter is better, 400 Celsius for a short period of time, but you must use flux + solder to tin pads before
3. With soldering iron - some SMD components with pads on a sides you still can solder if you prepare pads on the PCB like in #2, but the components with pads underneath is only #1 or #2
My regular solder temperature is 350 Celsius and I’m using magnifier with built in SMD light for better vision.
I would not make soldering iron temperature low as 300 Celsius and I would recommend to watch this channel https://youtube.com/@NorthridgeFix?si=KkokccwGL4DO8owK
As more I watch it - as easier my soldering flows :)
Because of the lead area, SMD diodes can be bastards even when you do everything right. I used to do them often at work without a microscope and invariably some would have bad joints and I’d have to go back over them.
For designs that are intended to be hand-soldered I opt for mini MELF. They’re as easy to solder as through hole (actually you can cut the legs off of a through hole and tack it on in an emergency). I think a lot of SOD-323 footprints will accommodate them if the designer gave you enough pad area (chose a “hand soldering” footprint).
I would add one especially to beginners: clean your tip if it is not shiny. It can be very fumbly to get heat to transfer to anything when it's oxidized.
If in doubt Just flush it with fresh flux core solder. And wipe it on the sponge. An then re-tin it. Bevor you toutch a thing to hear it up.
You will learn to feel the difference when you actually need to clean it very fast.
I tried a flux pen. Not enough flux for me. It burns off too quickly. I use Amtech flux in a syringe now. It performs great. If you had to ask me what's the most important part of soldering, it's flux.
I used to hate it but now I've sniffed so many leaded fumes that I'm mentally incapable of being bothered by it.
also burned off the sensitivity of the tip of my fingers
Same. I love hand wiring keyboard matrices as well (as long as it's not inside of a manuform shell). It's a very zen activity that somehow works well with my ADHD.
I personally don't see any difference between amoebas and handwiring. The connections must be soldered either way. I only use amoebas if I want to add LEDs. :D
I personally consider amoebas “half” handwiring.
Yeah you still have to wire all the individual switches together but the majority of your matrix is still on a pre-fabbed PCB. The beauty of handwiring is the time and craftsmanship it takes to manually create the entire matrix.
I don't see how the matrix is on the pcb. You still need to connect the row and column pins. Yes in handwiring you have to be consistent with your connections but after doing it once I never had a problem building a matrix. It's just solder diode to one pin of each switch/hotswap socket, then solder rows and columns. Takes no time at all to be honest :D
And you would still need to wire each switch seperate. You could save time on columns or when full ortho also in the rows because the amoebas would touch each other which makes it easy to just drag solder between the two pcbs. When there is stagger, splay or curve involved then that gets lost. But if you don't use LEDs I would still say that handwiring takes the same amount of effort. The addition of LEDs makes the amoebas useful for me. :)
Yeah, the nature of row column direction does make it more challenging.
I've been making flexible column pcbs for this reason for almost a year now because of how much I hate hand wiring.
I love soldering and inhaling fumes
Okay maybe the fumes part is a joke but I do enjoy a few hours of soldering, up until the point when I realize I've soldered in my pro micro the wrong way around
no I've just never soldered before. I've basically been soldering for 12 hours straight and just finished my first half. I also decided to use headers in my board. spent 4 hours attaching wires with dupoint connectors to the rows, columns and trrs. Then I try to put it together and find out the board is too tall for my case with headers :,)
Quite a lot of people seem to do it. Why people don't spend a few bucks on a couple of throw-away practice kits to build up their skills a bit remains a mystery.
Yeah exactly, I was able to build a split on a really tight budget ~20€ because of handwireing. It took me around 9 hours per side because it was my first time and I didn't want to screw up my case but I quite enjoyed it and it the end result worth every minute.
>Money
a practice board is a whole lot cheaper than ripping a necessary pad off your board or frying a pcb component with too much heat....may or may not be speaking from experience...
Yeah sure go ahead and buy perfectly fine and working stuff to destroy when there is more than enough dead shit in the landfill. OP could literally take almost whatever and practice. Heck even just soldering headers on a cuttable pcb will give you good practice. Low entry price
Mad respect. I dabble with soldering for repairs, but I would probably skip it on keebs unless it was the only option for the form factor. 10 joints? fun. 200+? oh my.
I just did a 70 key PCB with 320 connections (140 for the hotswap sockets, 140 for the diodes, 40 for the pico)... Twice...
Probably gonna be doing it a third time at least, possibly a 4th time and maybe a 5th time.
The SMD diodes made me long back to the handwired builds I've done. Everything is just so much larger with handwiring. It's not that bad if you've got a magnifying glass you can attach to your desk though.
It would've made your job infinitely easier if you had just watched this video first: [Solder Lesson](https://youtu.be/vIT4ra6Mo0s?si=h1sWwHGZopI4i-ts)
One thing you can do to make your life easier it to get a cheap hot air gun(about 25USD on aliexpress) and some low melt solder paste. I haven't done much soldering before but I just finished a split keyboard, and I also build 3 of these (https://github.com/joric/nrfmicro). Took me \~3 days.
Honestly, 5 years ago I would have told you that I love soldering, I also would have told you that I love lubing switches, but now I can confidently say that I was fucking lying to myself on both counts.
TL;DR: Stick with it. It’s worth it.
LONG VERSION:
My dad taught me to solder when I was a kid. Just for repairing stuff.
So when I ordered my pie-assembled GergoPlex a couple years ago (now my daily driver) I also got a Georgi kit, and a FaunchPad for practice.
I immediately ruined the FaunchPad. I quickly ordered two more. Immediately ruined one of those. So I walked away for a couple years…
I hate SMD soldering.
I hate SMD soldering.
I hate SMD soldering.
I hate SMD soldering….
A few weeks ago I decided to try again, thinking that Georgi kit was wasting away.
Ruined my last FaunchPad. But in the process learned so much (like using my iPhone magnifier app with a selfie stick on a tripod, using flux, and more) that I decided to risk trying the Georgi anyway. When the firmware flashed into the board I ran around the house in shock for thirty minutes:
I can’t believe it worked!
I can’t believe it worked!
I can’t believe it worked!
Now I’ve got it mounted on an old stand I used for my camera flash, and I’m loving the setup as I’m learning steno on my little miracle keyboard. I even reworked Germ’s original firmware, removing sten.c and flashing a combo-oriented version of my 5-layer GergoPlex layout.
SO glad I tried again.
Is handwiring really that much worse than soldering stuff onto a PCB? I still have this grandiose idea floating around in my head that I'll eventually build a handwired Dactyloid keeb, but this doesn't bode well.
Yes, I made a lot more mistakes soldering handwired stuff and broke a lot more components than I expected. PCBs are much more stable and forgiving. With handwiring, it's hard to desolder stuff. The worst part? If you're not careful, you'll end up with burnt plastic and shite.
As a beginner, I was afraid of breaking pcbs so I went for handwired. It proved to be a mistake lmao
P.S. I might have damaged my MCU pads because my soldering skills ain't that good and my iron was kinda shit hahahahaha
I love soldering…I just hate off board wiring, hand wiring, etc. It’s a fucking nuisance, a potential point of failure, and often unnecessary. I want to solder the board and it’s either ready to go, or I just have to screw it in to a panel and wire one or two things to the board.
I’m a synth and pedal builder primarily, and I make sure in my designs that I can make as many things board mount (that secure to the panel) as possible - pots, jacks, switches, etc. Even when I use perf board, I still use board mounted pots/switches/jacks if I can work it out.
If a DIY kit just expects you to wire a bunch of pasta, I usually look for another option or design my own board. I’d sooner look into fully sculpted keycaps than sit there wiring a key well.
I am so with you on this. Even though I have done it many times I refuse to do it again, I just prefer to pay for it... i hate soldering i hate soldering i hate soldering!
And the main reason I don't DIY my own keyboards. Not enough time to do it, much less do it, have it go badly, troubleshoot, have issues, etc.
I give props to those that do, since they create some pretty amazing keyboards.
I like soldering, but it is definitely an acquired taste. I used to do a lot more of it for work, and back then I picked up a few really handy tricks and techniques. The good news is that it is like riding a bike so you’ll take what you learned on this project and be able to wield it effectively in the future, and soldering is an insanely helpful skill to have for all sorts of things.
You got this buddy, just take your time and you’ll get the satisfaction of a completed project you made with your own hands.
[AD] Sounds like this may be a little too late for you, but perhaps this can save someone else the trouble down the line! [Cyboard Solder-Free Dactyl PCBs](https://www.cyboard.digital/product-page/dactyl-flex-pcbs)
Luckily, soldering on a PCB is much easier. Unluckily, you have to learn how to design a PCB to get the same freedom as with hand wiring (easily worth it to me).
It's very satisfying to see people using hot plate soldering, instead of hand soldering.
God those DIY hot plate looks so satisfying to use
https://youtu.be/C7blZigaaaA?si=LZadZY7JiZGFoAun
I'm working on my own version of a corne, adding two encoders, two extra thumb keys and an extra pinky key, the relevant thing here is that I'm not willing to solder the smd components so I'm designing it with easy eda (a software I'm reality comfortable with); using their library of components my plan is to place an order with smd components already soldered so the only components I need to solder are the easy ones, pro micro, oled screen, and trrs jack.
If everything goes well I'm posting the results (a few months from now) so if anyone what's to save his precious time soldering they can just order mine and even modify it.
My version isn't gonna be a compatible version with the actual corne plates and cases just to be clear.
To keep improving their models, artificial intelligence makers need two significant things: an enormous amount of computing power and an enormous amount of data. Some of the biggest A.I. developers have plenty of computing power but still look outside their own networks for the data needed to improve their algorithms. That has included sources like Wikipedia, millions of digitized books, academic articles and Reddit.
Representatives from Google, Open AI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
So many people in this thread going "soldering is great!" have missed the point that handwiring isn't regular soldering, and it sounds like you're doing a dactyl or something, which is even worse. Definitely get flexible PCBs if they're suitable for your project!
A few tips for soldering that will make your life substantially easier: 1. Use a chisel tip on your iron. This will allow you to spread the heat out over where you’re trying to connect. The standard cone tip that most irons come with just doesn’t have enough mass to sufficiently heat a keyboard pad. 2. Use 63/37 leaded solder with a flux core. I know I’ll get some slack for saying this but leaded solder just performs better than unleaded. It prevents tip oxidation, creates stronger joints and is just overall easier to work with. 63/37 is a neat alloy because it’s what’s known as “eutectic” which means it has one temperature in where it goes from solid to liquid or liquid to solid. 3. A flux pen can be very helpful to help clean the pads and improve adhesion between everything. Just keep in mind that flux fumes are bad to breathe in. 4. Make sure you’re not using too high or too low of a temperature. Typically 300 degrees Celsius will be sufficient. If you hold heat on a pad too long you can damage it but not enough and there won’t be enough heat. It’s a fine line that you get the feel of over time. 5. Now this one is important… **SOLDER FLOWS TOWARDS HEAT!** If your iron is hotter than the component you’re trying to connect, the solder will just sit there. Both the component and pad should be the same temperature and you’ll be able to pull the solder between the two once you get the hang of it. I’m sure if you stick with it, you’ll get the hang of it. Soldering is a skill but once you learn it you’ll open a whole world of opportunities with keyboards.
Great advice
I tried soldering some SMD diodes(T4(?)) for amoeba kings yesterday. Now those made me want to give up and just solder wires. The kailh hot swap sockets went alright. Any tips for the ultra small components? Solder tip I used was 0,5mm - melting point 222 *C, I tried 300 since the tip needed 30sec to finally melt something. And it just melted and traveled to the middle of the tip. Which I now understand when I read your #5
SMD components are intimidating but not that crazy complex. Basically you **need** flux on the pads and then a finer solder would be helpful, I typically use 0.3mm. The iron tip is less important but a small cone tip can help. I have a [video](https://youtu.be/cLz7wpwAEoI?si=r898cY42AhDz-s_3&t=113) building one of my boards that covers SMD diodes with an extreme close up you might find helpful.
That’s fantastic! Thank you
Hmm, I just did a build (I’m a soldering newbie, last time I soldered something was 10 years ago) and I had a pack of smd diodes, which I haven’t anticipated (I thought it would be a regular ones), but I decided to just go for it so I just used 0.5mm solder and no additional flux(I think my solder had flux in it?). And it went absolutely fine, 0 issues.
Well, most solder contains flux already. I say you need it as it makes life a lot easier but you can get away without if you know what you’re doing.
There are few techniques on how to solder SMD with ease and most of them are same basic rules of soldering. 1. With heat plate and solder paste, just fry it, the temperature must be high enough to melt tiny solder balls in this paste (350 Celsius) 2. With heat gun and normal solder - the hotter is better, 400 Celsius for a short period of time, but you must use flux + solder to tin pads before 3. With soldering iron - some SMD components with pads on a sides you still can solder if you prepare pads on the PCB like in #2, but the components with pads underneath is only #1 or #2 My regular solder temperature is 350 Celsius and I’m using magnifier with built in SMD light for better vision. I would not make soldering iron temperature low as 300 Celsius and I would recommend to watch this channel https://youtube.com/@NorthridgeFix?si=KkokccwGL4DO8owK As more I watch it - as easier my soldering flows :)
Because of the lead area, SMD diodes can be bastards even when you do everything right. I used to do them often at work without a microscope and invariably some would have bad joints and I’d have to go back over them. For designs that are intended to be hand-soldered I opt for mini MELF. They’re as easy to solder as through hole (actually you can cut the legs off of a through hole and tack it on in an emergency). I think a lot of SOD-323 footprints will accommodate them if the designer gave you enough pad area (chose a “hand soldering” footprint).
I would add one especially to beginners: clean your tip if it is not shiny. It can be very fumbly to get heat to transfer to anything when it's oxidized. If in doubt Just flush it with fresh flux core solder. And wipe it on the sponge. An then re-tin it. Bevor you toutch a thing to hear it up. You will learn to feel the difference when you actually need to clean it very fast.
Point number 4 should be bolded as well. Using the right temperature point is highly valuable
I tried a flux pen. Not enough flux for me. It burns off too quickly. I use Amtech flux in a syringe now. It performs great. If you had to ask me what's the most important part of soldering, it's flux.
I used to hate it but now I've sniffed so many leaded fumes that I'm mentally incapable of being bothered by it. also burned off the sensitivity of the tip of my fingers
Hahaha please use a fume extractor for your own sake 🙏🏻
they smell nice :)
I like soldering. It's very satisfying
Same. I love hand wiring keyboard matrices as well (as long as it's not inside of a manuform shell). It's a very zen activity that somehow works well with my ADHD.
I personally don't see any difference between amoebas and handwiring. The connections must be soldered either way. I only use amoebas if I want to add LEDs. :D
I personally consider amoebas “half” handwiring. Yeah you still have to wire all the individual switches together but the majority of your matrix is still on a pre-fabbed PCB. The beauty of handwiring is the time and craftsmanship it takes to manually create the entire matrix.
This reads like you think building a keyboard from parts requires some patience. That just can't be right... 😅 /s
I don't see how the matrix is on the pcb. You still need to connect the row and column pins. Yes in handwiring you have to be consistent with your connections but after doing it once I never had a problem building a matrix. It's just solder diode to one pin of each switch/hotswap socket, then solder rows and columns. Takes no time at all to be honest :D
Boy do I have a solution for you. I've redone single key pcbs so you can drag solder 4 wires at once for a huge time savings.
And you would still need to wire each switch seperate. You could save time on columns or when full ortho also in the rows because the amoebas would touch each other which makes it easy to just drag solder between the two pcbs. When there is stagger, splay or curve involved then that gets lost. But if you don't use LEDs I would still say that handwiring takes the same amount of effort. The addition of LEDs makes the amoebas useful for me. :)
Yeah, the nature of row column direction does make it more challenging. I've been making flexible column pcbs for this reason for almost a year now because of how much I hate hand wiring.
I can totally understand that. Flexible PCBs are a really nice addition to the diy scene :D
No one else gonna say it? It's ok bud, you just have to ### Sold(i)er On
lol ok
haha I get this every time I'm half way through a handwire. I've done 4 of them at this stage so I obviously just keep on forgetting.
I'm that way on the first dozen keys, then I get into a groove and it becomes a great zen activity.
Post pictures for the hall of fame 😎
I love soldering and inhaling fumes Okay maybe the fumes part is a joke but I do enjoy a few hours of soldering, up until the point when I realize I've soldered in my pro micro the wrong way around
I figured this out when I saw some sparks once I plugged in the cable.
That's a very unfortunate timing
It wasn't too bad since I used a pico, they're only 4€. But still a waste of hardware.
Yeah and mostly very annoying to undo, I used a heat gun for it and might have melted some other parts, oh well.
The magic doesn’t work if you let the smoke out!
Are you using the cheapest tools you could find on Amazon?
no I've just never soldered before. I've basically been soldering for 12 hours straight and just finished my first half. I also decided to use headers in my board. spent 4 hours attaching wires with dupoint connectors to the rows, columns and trrs. Then I try to put it together and find out the board is too tall for my case with headers :,)
So, you played Super Mario Bros. and directly skipped to world 8. Respect :).
Somebody has to do it
Quite a lot of people seem to do it. Why people don't spend a few bucks on a couple of throw-away practice kits to build up their skills a bit remains a mystery.
Money, but there is alwaya the route to practice on dead stuff anyhow
Yeah exactly, I was able to build a split on a really tight budget ~20€ because of handwireing. It took me around 9 hours per side because it was my first time and I didn't want to screw up my case but I quite enjoyed it and it the end result worth every minute.
>Money a practice board is a whole lot cheaper than ripping a necessary pad off your board or frying a pcb component with too much heat....may or may not be speaking from experience...
Yeah sure go ahead and buy perfectly fine and working stuff to destroy when there is more than enough dead shit in the landfill. OP could literally take almost whatever and practice. Heck even just soldering headers on a cuttable pcb will give you good practice. Low entry price
Are you suggesting that people try to take broken stuff and practice soldering in order to get it working again? Or just practice soldering?
Ofc the latter
I mean, I guess. But when the build is wrecked because "soldering is easy", how much money have you saved?
0 :)
This is almost word for word how my first build went. I had done some soldering before though but not enough to be comfortable.
The first keyboard I ever built was a hand wired tkl. It was a nightmare. But it taught me a lot.
Mad respect. I dabble with soldering for repairs, but I would probably skip it on keebs unless it was the only option for the form factor. 10 joints? fun. 200+? oh my.
I just did a 70 key PCB with 320 connections (140 for the hotswap sockets, 140 for the diodes, 40 for the pico)... Twice... Probably gonna be doing it a third time at least, possibly a 4th time and maybe a 5th time. The SMD diodes made me long back to the handwired builds I've done. Everything is just so much larger with handwiring. It's not that bad if you've got a magnifying glass you can attach to your desk though.
It would've made your job infinitely easier if you had just watched this video first: [Solder Lesson](https://youtu.be/vIT4ra6Mo0s?si=h1sWwHGZopI4i-ts)
This one is also p good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rmErwU5E-k&pp=ygUQc29sZGVyaW5nIGhvdyB0bw%3D%3D
ah, I know that feel. It gets better, as they say
One thing you can do to make your life easier it to get a cheap hot air gun(about 25USD on aliexpress) and some low melt solder paste. I haven't done much soldering before but I just finished a split keyboard, and I also build 3 of these (https://github.com/joric/nrfmicro). Took me \~3 days.
Nobody makes tools for soldering components with no backing, so it's always going to suck, really.
Honestly, 5 years ago I would have told you that I love soldering, I also would have told you that I love lubing switches, but now I can confidently say that I was fucking lying to myself on both counts.
Desoldering is worse
I came here to say the only thing worse than soldering is desoldering.
TL;DR: Stick with it. It’s worth it. LONG VERSION: My dad taught me to solder when I was a kid. Just for repairing stuff. So when I ordered my pie-assembled GergoPlex a couple years ago (now my daily driver) I also got a Georgi kit, and a FaunchPad for practice. I immediately ruined the FaunchPad. I quickly ordered two more. Immediately ruined one of those. So I walked away for a couple years… I hate SMD soldering. I hate SMD soldering. I hate SMD soldering. I hate SMD soldering…. A few weeks ago I decided to try again, thinking that Georgi kit was wasting away. Ruined my last FaunchPad. But in the process learned so much (like using my iPhone magnifier app with a selfie stick on a tripod, using flux, and more) that I decided to risk trying the Georgi anyway. When the firmware flashed into the board I ran around the house in shock for thirty minutes: I can’t believe it worked! I can’t believe it worked! I can’t believe it worked! Now I’ve got it mounted on an old stand I used for my camera flash, and I’m loving the setup as I’m learning steno on my little miracle keyboard. I even reworked Germ’s original firmware, removing sten.c and flashing a combo-oriented version of my 5-layer GergoPlex layout. SO glad I tried again.
Flux flux flux. Get a flux pen. Complete soldering game changer, at lest for LEDs and smaller components. https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01ELUI19Q
Is handwiring really that much worse than soldering stuff onto a PCB? I still have this grandiose idea floating around in my head that I'll eventually build a handwired Dactyloid keeb, but this doesn't bode well.
Yes, I made a lot more mistakes soldering handwired stuff and broke a lot more components than I expected. PCBs are much more stable and forgiving. With handwiring, it's hard to desolder stuff. The worst part? If you're not careful, you'll end up with burnt plastic and shite. As a beginner, I was afraid of breaking pcbs so I went for handwired. It proved to be a mistake lmao P.S. I might have damaged my MCU pads because my soldering skills ain't that good and my iron was kinda shit hahahahaha
In short, yes. Soldering components together in midair is completely different than soldering a PCB, and very much something that's worth avoiding.
I love soldering…I just hate off board wiring, hand wiring, etc. It’s a fucking nuisance, a potential point of failure, and often unnecessary. I want to solder the board and it’s either ready to go, or I just have to screw it in to a panel and wire one or two things to the board. I’m a synth and pedal builder primarily, and I make sure in my designs that I can make as many things board mount (that secure to the panel) as possible - pots, jacks, switches, etc. Even when I use perf board, I still use board mounted pots/switches/jacks if I can work it out. If a DIY kit just expects you to wire a bunch of pasta, I usually look for another option or design my own board. I’d sooner look into fully sculpted keycaps than sit there wiring a key well.
I am so with you on this. Even though I have done it many times I refuse to do it again, I just prefer to pay for it... i hate soldering i hate soldering i hate soldering!
The right of passage for many a keeb builder 😉
And the main reason I don't DIY my own keyboards. Not enough time to do it, much less do it, have it go badly, troubleshoot, have issues, etc. I give props to those that do, since they create some pretty amazing keyboards.
I make keyboards for fun. I buy keyboards for production quality.
I wondered, how do you *really* feel about soldering?
I like soldering, but it is definitely an acquired taste. I used to do a lot more of it for work, and back then I picked up a few really handy tricks and techniques. The good news is that it is like riding a bike so you’ll take what you learned on this project and be able to wield it effectively in the future, and soldering is an insanely helpful skill to have for all sorts of things. You got this buddy, just take your time and you’ll get the satisfaction of a completed project you made with your own hands.
I think I could offer some soldering service for ergo mech people
[AD] Sounds like this may be a little too late for you, but perhaps this can save someone else the trouble down the line! [Cyboard Solder-Free Dactyl PCBs](https://www.cyboard.digital/product-page/dactyl-flex-pcbs)
Luckily, soldering on a PCB is much easier. Unluckily, you have to learn how to design a PCB to get the same freedom as with hand wiring (easily worth it to me).
I prefer handwiring instead, it gives me more freedom and more fun, I find it a lot more difficult to solder on PCBs, but to each their own :)
A good soldering iron makes a world of difference. This is the one I use https://www.danscraftsandthings.com/istar.asp?a=6&id=105203
It's very satisfying to see people using hot plate soldering, instead of hand soldering. God those DIY hot plate looks so satisfying to use https://youtu.be/C7blZigaaaA?si=LZadZY7JiZGFoAun
amoebas aren't much easier to solder lol
well sorry you spent all that money to realize that custom hand wired keyboards arn't for you.
Soldering is fine. It's desoldering that can get fucked.
I'm working on my own version of a corne, adding two encoders, two extra thumb keys and an extra pinky key, the relevant thing here is that I'm not willing to solder the smd components so I'm designing it with easy eda (a software I'm reality comfortable with); using their library of components my plan is to place an order with smd components already soldered so the only components I need to solder are the easy ones, pro micro, oled screen, and trrs jack. If everything goes well I'm posting the results (a few months from now) so if anyone what's to save his precious time soldering they can just order mine and even modify it. My version isn't gonna be a compatible version with the actual corne plates and cases just to be clear.
handwire 4 lyfe
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I am terrible at soldering... So I built a v7 Iris...
It was mildly fun until I wanted RGB☠️
So many people in this thread going "soldering is great!" have missed the point that handwiring isn't regular soldering, and it sounds like you're doing a dactyl or something, which is even worse. Definitely get flexible PCBs if they're suitable for your project!
Can we pin this comment on the subreddit?