We are currently searching for buyer candidates who appreciate the role the company has played in the evolution of computer keyboards over the past 50 years, and who are also committed to preserving and continuing the legacy tied to that history.
I better buy a keyset in case the buyer doesn’t preserve their legacy. 🥲
A very interesting read, and really cool looking! I’d really like to try the keycaps in v. 0.3!
I’m curious about this point:
With square keys, each key has eight neighbours, but the diagonal neighbours are about 1.4 times further away than orthogonal ones and therefore harder to reach for the same finger.
Say I arrange square keys in columns with a 0.5u offset. Then each key also only has six neighbors. I wonder how that compares distance-wide to hexagonal keys.
Edit: the Klacker BS does this, but offsets the rows instead.
That’s a cool find. I had not heard of the Klacker BS. The exact spacing and hand angle will be slightly different but pretty close. Column-staggered hexagonal keys give you 18.6mm between columns and 21.5 between rows with a 30° angle. 0.5u row-staggered MX keys with 19mm spacing give you about 17mm between columns and 21.2mm between rows at 26.6°. Also the resulting column-stagger is not exactly 0.5u but about 0.45u.
Klacker BS doesn’t eliminate the top inner index finger key. Moving that to the pinkies like Mantis does, would bring the hands 1u closer together.
Thanks for doing the math! I’m not quite sure I follow: why is the lengths different for row and columns on the Mantis? Are you calculating to the press point of your sculpted keycaps?
I was not considering the press point. I was using the center of each key.
In a column staggered layout I’m calling the distance between the centers of adjacent keys in the same column the row spacing. The column spacing is the distance of imaginary lines drawn along adjacent columns (through the key centres). I measure the shortest possible distance, which is at a right angle to those lines.
In a row staggered point of view it’s the other way around.
The different spacing comes from the hexagonal key shape. If you think of it as row staggered, the keys have 21.5mm horizontal (column) spacing and 18.6mm vertical (row) spacing. Rotate your point of view by 30° and this flips to a column staggered layout. Now the columns are spaced 18.6mm and rows are 21.5mm apart.
Square keys don’t have the same hexagonal symmetry. When you look at it as row staggered, it’s normal MX spacing, 19x19mm. When you look at it as column staggered, you need to do some trigonometry. The column angle is atan(0.5) = 26.6°. the column spacing is 19mm × cos(26.6°). The row spacing is from Pythagoras sqrt(19^2 + (19/2)^2).
I opened this bracing for a condescending tech bro, and that couldn't be further from what the interview was actually like! As a Developer Advocate and documentarian, I especially appreciated this bit:
Finally, because I’m creating keyboards that are going to be built by multiple people with different backgrounds in DIY, I need to make sure the process goes smoothly. This means that during the design process, the 3d and electronic parts have to be made in a way where it’s expected there will be mistakes. It can and will happen that the screw inserts are not installed properly, the components are installed in reverse, there are shorts and cut traces and burnt plastic. People will make mistakes, and I need to work on making those mistakes less likely to happen, but also make sure that the keyboard is easy to fix.
This is so important, yet so infrequently prioritized. 👏
I may be in the minority here, but I’d love to see more of the keyboard images featured in the header, also appear throughout the article. I think keyboards are cool because they’re fun examples of design, and objects that can fuse function and form- so I love the pretty keyboard pictures!
I ordered two of these to try out an ortholinear layout. I know I'll lose two keys to shift layers but the main purpose is to replace my heavily modified nostromo n52. I made a nice palm rest already but still waiting on most likely a raspberry pico for the joystick and space key. I think a similar project called GOTS did the same but I couldn't justify the price. I've hardwired an iris half before but didn't like it so I reused the pro micro for a different project.
Edit: Here is my nostromo n52 with cherry mx clone switches, a chopped up usb hub and a pro micro. I forget but it has like 14 extra buttons. I had to repair it once and do not want to dive into my spaghetti wiring to fix it again lol. The second image is a WIP prototype of the joystick keyboard attachment. I was unsatisfied with it after the first stain so I made it smaller and sanded it again. I tried to copy the n52 palm rest. Not sure why it's flagged as nsfw lol
That Hammer & Buger.Work keycap set looks nice. I mostly use the US-International keymap so it works actually fit my usage perfectly on QWERTY boards. I use colemak-dh on my ergo board, with QMK key overwrites to put ÆØÅ where i want them, so it wouldn't make a lot of sense on that board.
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