Custom Keyboards

During Covid, I designed and built a custom keyboard using the Austin layout and open-source PCB. My design used stacked lasercut acrylic plates, making it significantly more affordable than CNC-machined alternatives. It turns out, more people were interested in this affordable design, and I ended up opening a small business selling the design.

I will share some impressions from the process below.

Assembling one of the first prototypes:

Lasercutting the acrylic:

My room turned into a little logistics center:

Adding copper plates and frosted acrylic to the design:

In total, I was able to serve over 50 customers across 3 continents! I’m really happy that I could share my design with so many people, and give them a unique keyboard that could be tailored to their needs.