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#qwertykeys

3 articles tagged #qwertykeys.

Every #qwertykeys piece

Top-down line drawing of a rectangular PCB outline with a row of circular switch-mounting holes along its upper edge, drawn in 2px warm-grey stroke on a warm-paper background. Beside one switch position, two thin curved slots are routed through the board material, framing a narrow tongue of PCB between them. That tongue and the gap between the slot ends are picked out in a single muted-terracotta splash. A small warm-bronze dot sits in the upper-right margin.

PCB flex cuts, explained: a flex budget milled straight into the board

No plate change, no gasket, no case redesign — just a slot routed through the fiberglass near a switch hole. Flex cuts are the cheapest lever a designer has for adding give to a board that otherwise has none, and the cheapness is exactly why they show up where they do.

thockSep 15, 202610 min read

Centered vendor hub — a plum-filled keyboard-shaped node with an inner diamond mark — in the upper-mid canvas, with five arrows fanning out beneath it to a low arc of five product-variant board silhouettes (each a small rounded-rect keyboard outline with faint key-dot rows and tiny config-tag lines beneath); a single plum sparkline rises left-to-right along the bottom of the canvas, peaking at the right edge with a focal dot.

Trends

When customs became vendor-first

From 2018 through 2022 the typical custom shipped through one host vendor and a fan of regional proxies; by 2026 the baseline custom is a configurator on a vendor's own storefront. Boards moved. Keycap group buys mostly didn't.

thockMay 4, 20266 min read

Trends

How 75 percent became the default custom layout

Two years ago a custom-board recommendation defaulted to 65% with a polite note about 75% as the next step up. The KBD75 v3's staying power as a default recommendation, the QK75, and a crowded mid-tier have flipped that order. 75% is now the layout customs reach for first.

thockApr 24, 20265 min read

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