Dactyl Manuform
For a while, I had been wanting to build my own keyboard from scratch. I wanted to have fun building it, so I tried to find a cool and unique design. I finally settled on the Dactyl Manuform. This keyboard is an ergonomic split keyboard design. It is fully open source. Its odd shape and layout made it look like something that would be fun to make. I spent a lot of time researching and I settled on the 5x6 layout with Kailh Box Black key switches. One of my friends 3D printed the body of the keyboard for me out of a carbon fiber nylon filament. The process of building the keyboard was slow. It required each key switch be wired and soldered individually. Planning out the wire paths and soldering took me about 20 hours. The last thing that I needed to do was to put the keycaps on. Once those were on, I was able to flash the microcontrollers with the QMK mechanical keyboard firmware. This firmware leaves a lot of room for customization. I got lucky and everything worked on the first try. The only problem with the keyboard is that I’m really bad at typing on it. It’s going to take me a lot of practice to be able to type quickly on this keyboard.
