tag · material

#aluminum

7 articles tagged #aluminum.

Every #aluminum piece

Top-down line silhouette of a TKL keyboard case rendered in a 2px warm-grey stroke on a transparent 1200x750 canvas, with a coral splash marking three stacked mount-point brackets along the case's lower edge and a thin warm-bronze highlight along the top-right corner.

The Blaine V2: SE puts three mount systems in one kit and asks the buyer to pick

CannonKeys's F12 TKL follow-up ships with top mount, single-sided gasket, and o-ring hardware in the same box, plus a carbon-fiber bottom plate and a POM underside element it calls Volcano. The mount menu is the story.

thockJul 10, 20267 min read

Exploded cross-section of a keyboard case showing a brass weight plate seated in the case bottom beneath the PCB, with a callout comparing its mass to the empty aluminum cavity it replaces

Ideas

The brass weight mod: what added mass actually buys you

Bolting a half-pound of brass into the bottom of a case is one of the more expensive mods in the hobby for how little it visibly does. It changes how a board sounds and sits on a desk — just not in the ways the marketing copy implies.

thockJul 6, 20268 min read

Guides

Choosing your first custom keyboard kit: a buyer's guide

Most first custom keyboards aren't built from loose parts and aren't bought finished — they're a barebones kit, a case-plate-PCB bundle that leaves the rest of the decision to the buyer. Here's how to make that decision without guessing.

thockJun 27, 20268 min read

Cross-section diagram of a keyboard case showing different material layers

Guides

Keyboard case materials, compared: aluminium, polycarbonate, and ABS

The case is the largest resonant body in a keyboard. Aluminium, polycarbonate, and ABS each change the sound, feel, and weight profile in fundamentally different ways — here is what each material actually does.

thockMay 27, 202611 min read

Near-monochrome top-down line silhouette of a 75% keyboard case with a single warm-bronze accent dot at the bottom right standing in for the new R2 accent-weight finish.

News

Mode Sonnet R2 opened at CannonKeys

Mode's second round of its 75% Sonnet board ran at CannonKeys from 2026-06-01 through 2026-07-15 after a vendor-side timeline shift. See the in-article update for the dates and accent-weight color options; the closed entry is archived at /group-buys/past.

thockMay 6, 20265 min read

Guides

Mounting styles, compared: gasket, top-mount, tray, and integrated plate

A builder who has lubed switches and tuned stabilizers and chosen a keycap profile and still cannot place why their next board feels different from their last one is usually meeting the mount style. The plate's relationship to the case is the half of the typing feel that nobody discusses on a sound test.

thockApr 25, 202613 min read

Top-down line silhouette of an Alice-layout keyboard rendered in a 2px warm-grey stroke on a transparent 1200x750 canvas, with coral splashes standing in for friction-fit cat ears at the upper corners and a coral nose between them, and a thin warm-bronze highlight tracing the case edge.

News

The Nyawice puts a leaf-spring F1 mount under a friction-fit-cat-ears Alice

An Alice-layout board with a leaf-spring F1 mount, a 9-degree typing angle, and four colorways of friction-fit silicone cat ears ran at CannonKeys through 2026-05-17. The mount type is the editorial story; the cat ears are the conversation.

thockApr 17, 20266 min read

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