Hi geekhack, I was recently on the hunt for a board that fit my very specific wants and after a fruitless search I decided to make my own and so, Bean was born.
Details layout: mx-hhkb, fixed split backspace, fixed split right shift, support for fixed/stepped caps lock plate/mounting: aluminium half plate, 4 point top mount typing angle: 6.9 degrees front height: 14.94mm typing height from bottom of case to the front of r4 keycaps materials: 6063 aluminium case and half plate, copper rear accent colours: black case, red plate, red pcb, raw copper accent pcb: custom 1.2mm pcb designed by Zephyraeon, horizontal flex cuts, usb-c, mx/alps support kit weight: approximately 800g (case + plate + pcb)
price: under 350usd (high estimate at a very low moq) sale type: tbc
Plate Design and Mounting
With forced split backspace and split right shift, the board has an almost completely symmetrical layout, allowing for 2 evenly spaced plate mounting points on the top and bottom to give an even typing feel across the board. The impact of this isn't as noticable due to most of the keys being unsupported with the half plate but it gives the mods a pleasant feel.
The other main consideration was the spacebar, a lot of material has been removed under the key as well as a large cutout coming from the bottom, making the switch relatively unsupported and avoiding a harsh bottom out.
Prototype Issues As expected, there were a couple of issues with the prototype.
1. plate screws hitting the inside of the bottom case - something I didn't account for in the initial design, redesign has already been done to accomodate, pending second prototype
2. rear case screw holes are too tight - the current hole size is too small for the socket head screws i'm intending on using so the diameter will be increased to at least accommodate for that, still considering whether or not to make them much larger for better screwdriver compatibility
3. usb port hole position - still need to confirm final port positioning with another round of PCB protos, currently a cable will plug in fine but the port isn't exactly centred
A second prototype will be on the way shortly.
Images
More Renders
Questions? Feel free ask any questions you have or leave any feedback that's on your mind.
I'm also reachable on Discord at Kingk22#2222, updates about this project will be posted in this thread and on my discord server.
