Easy methods to construct the most effective keyboard on the planet

The time period “endgame,” amongst keyboard fanatics, is kind of a working gag. Endgame is whenever you lastly dial in your excellent structure, case, options, switches, and keycaps, so you’ll be able to cease noodling round with elements and get on with no matter it’s you truly use the keyboard for — work, presumably. Then just a few months later you see one thing shiny and begin over.

Within the seek for endgame, most of us need to compromise someplace — often time or cash. Typically the factor you’re on the lookout for simply doesn’t exist.

However what if you happen to didn’t need to compromise? What if you happen to had the time, the endurance, the artistic imaginative and prescient, and the money to create your endgame keyboard from scratch? And I imply actually from scratch, from the cable to the switches and stabilizers.

That is the way you get the Seneca, the primary keyboard from Norbauer & Co. It has a plasma-oxide-finished milled aluminum chassis, a strong brass switchplate, customized capacitive switches, the most effective stabilizers on the planet (additionally customized), spherical-profile keycaps with appropriately retro-looking centered legends, zero backlighting, and a very flat typing angle.

It weighs seven kilos and prices $3,600.

You might need some questions, like: Why is it $3,600? Who would make a keyboard that’s that costly? And is it even any good?

I’ve spent the final couple of months typing on an early Seneca, and the reply to the final query is the simplest. Sure. It’s unbelievable. It’s actually the nicest keyboard you should buy. The construct high quality is astonishing, the Topre-style switches are higher than Topre’s, the stabilizers are higher than anybody’s, and the keyboard is gorgeous and a pleasure to kind on. The Seneca is a real technical accomplishment.

The reply to the primary two questions is Ryan Norbauer.

Ryan Norbauer is well-known within the keyboard group for his aftermarket housings, however the Seneca is his first ready-to-type board. To listen to him inform it, it’s the most recent logical step in a decadelong course of to construct his personal endgame keyboard, of which the enterprise — Norbauer & Co. — is an nearly unintentional byproduct.

Norbauer grew up in West Virginia within the Nineties, watching Star Trek: The Subsequent Era and absorbing each its retro-modern aesthetic and its imaginative and prescient of an egalitarian, post-scarcity world. It was additionally the start of the private computing period and the daybreak of the web. The pc represented an escape from the world as it’s, a window into the way forward for Star Trek, of Epcot, of the concept a extra related world can be a greater one.

The Seneca represents Norbauer’s try and make the very best pc keyboard, to his personal requirements and tastes, with out worrying about price — the type of keyboard that appears and looks like we bear in mind keyboards feeling, again once we thought computer systems have been a good suggestion.

“An enormous half for me of the attract of keyboards is the connection to my childhood nostalgia about being actually enthusiastic about computing,” Norbauer tells me by way of video chat. So the Seneca is massive, chunky, and has a regular tenkeyless structure, reasonably than one thing extra compact or unique, as a result of that’s what he’s at all times used, and what brings again that feeling. “I really feel like I can extra authentically make an optimum keyboard if the primary one I make is strictly the one which I would like.”

Norbauer has a behavior of wanting issues that don’t exist, then determining tips on how to construct them from scratch. About 20 years in the past, he received an thought for a courting web site. “I didn’t have any cash in any respect. I dropped out of a PhD program and I simply had this concept for a corporation I wished to start out and I couldn’t rent anybody to code it for me. So I’m like, ‘Okay, I suppose I simply need to discover ways to code.’”

He spent six months coding for 14 hours a day; this received him an internet site, a startup, and tendonitis. Fixing the tendonitis concerned adopting correct typing type (wrists straight, fingers hovering over the keyboard like a pianist’s). Trying to find a extra comfy keyboard finally despatched him down the trail of an obsession.

The courting web site led to 2 extra startups. Promoting all three startups in 2010 gave him the money and time to discover new pursuits: at first, studying some industrial design expertise so he might make Star Trek prop replicas. It additionally led him to Topre keyboards.

By 2014, he was utilizing a modified Topre Realforce 87u keyboard in an aftermarket aluminum housing. He was additionally designing a Star Trek-inspired keycap set. Like most aftermarket keycaps, it labored with Cherry MX-style mechanical switches; Topre boards have a special keycap mount. So he couldn’t use his Star Trek keycaps on his favourite keyboard.

However then Cooler Grasp got here out with the NovaTouch, which had Topre switches however labored with common keycaps. Norbauer received one, however its low-cost plastic housing didn’t really feel proper. He couldn’t discover anybody to make him an aluminum housing for it. “So I simply mentioned, ‘Fuck it, I’ll determine it out myself.’”

He designed a housing and discovered sufficient machining to make a prototype on a WWII-era milling machine. As soon as he was happy with the design, he discovered a producer and launched a small group purchase on a keyboard discussion board and requested if every other Topre diehards wished one, to cowl the prices of constructing one for himself.

He figured it was a one-time factor. “It was by no means meant to be a enterprise, however folks simply saved asking me to make increasingly more, and the factor type of snowballed by itself.” He did just a few extra rounds of the case finally dubbed the Norbatouch, in just a few new colours, together with a beige to go together with his now formally licensed Star Trek keycaps. Then, as a result of folks saved asking, he began making housings for different Topre keyboards.

There was the Norbaforce, for Realforce tenkeyless keyboards, and the Heavy-6 and Heavy-9, for the Leopold FC660C and FC980C, respectively. And in 2020, there was the Heavy Grail, his hottest housing, for the Blissful Hacking Keyboard.

Every was an opportunity to refine his aesthetic and his manufacturing functionality, and to experiment with totally different supplies (metal, titanium, milled polycarbonate, copper) and finishes (sprucing, bead-blasting, anodizing, powdercoating, cerakote, electroplating, even verdigris).

However they’re nonetheless solely housings, not the keyboards themselves; to finish them, you continue to need to shuck a $200-plus keyboard from its plastic shell and stick it into the Norbauer housing. Making housings for different corporations’ keyboards put him on the mercy of their provide chains and design selections. The Novatouch was discontinued a number of months earlier than his first batch of casings was prepared; provide of Leopold’s keyboards was unpredictable even earlier than the corporate stopped making them.

He additionally wished extra management over the opposite elements of the board, and he wished one thing to supply individuals who just like the Norbauer aesthetic however aren’t up for getting a keyboard, cracking it open, voiding the guarantee, and transplanting the heart into a brand new case.

Once I first emailed Norbauer in late 2018, he was already speaking about constructing a ready-to-type keyboard — one thing folks might choose up and revel in straight away. “I didn’t know precisely what that may seem like, and I actually didn’t understand how onerous it will be to get to that time. If I did, I most likely by no means would have undertaken it.”

He made a prototype utilizing off-the-shelf elements — commonplace MX-compatible switches and stabilizers — then scrapped it. There are already dozens of corporations making customized keyboards.

As a substitute, he determined to create the factor he’s wished all alongside: a keyboard with a heavy steel chassis and his personal retrofuturistic aesthetic, with the snappy tactile suggestions of a Topre-like capacitive dome swap and compatibility with the broad world of aftermarket keycaps.

He employed {an electrical} engineering agency to design the PCB, which he figured can be the toughest half, since Topre swap clones are fairly simple to come back by. That took a few yr, on and off. “After which I noticed, ‘Shit, I suppose I’ve to make all the opposite stuff that goes with it.’ And that took about 5 years.”

Someplace alongside the road, the mission become a deliberate train in making the most effective keyboard he probably can, no matter price. “It was a type of issues the place my ambitions simply type of spiraled uncontrolled.”

For instance: Topre switches really feel nice to kind on, however they are usually wobbly on the high — comprehensible for one thing sitting on high of a rubber dome — and keycaps typically find yourself barely crooked. He wished a barely deeper typing sound, and he wished correct compatibility with MX-style keycaps. It’s not sufficient to swap the slider for one with the plus-sign -shaped MX stem, like different corporations do; you even have to revamp the housings, or the keycaps simply find yourself slamming into them.

He figured he might do higher. His first prototypes sounded nice, however they have been simply as wobbly as Topre. His second design had tighter tolerances, so it wobbled much less, however it sounded worse. He added extra materials to get a deeper sound. Every revision required one other (costly) spherical of injection-molded tooling as he looked for the most effective mixture of really feel and sound.

By the fourth revision — those within the Seneca — the switches don’t look very like Topre. He redesigned the housings to keep away from interference with MX-style keycaps, and added a 3rd alignment leg to the sliders; they don’t rotate as simply within the housings, so the keycaps aren’t crooked. They’ve the excessive tactile bump and easy downstroke of Topre switches, with a deeper sound. There’s a silicone ring for upstroke damping, and a gasket the place they press in opposition to the underside of the brass switchplate.

Whereas he was engaged on the switches, he tackled the stabilizer downside. Stabilizers are the mechanisms that hook up with lengthy keys, just like the house bar, shift, enter, and backspace, and ensure the entire key strikes downward on the identical fee no matter the place it’s pressed. They work, however they sound horrible, until you discover some method to cease the wire from rattling within the housing, the slider from slamming into the PCB, and the varied plastic elements from rubbing collectively. Normally this entails some mixture of lubes, greases, and bodily damping. Tuning the stabilizers is probably the most time-consuming and tough a part of most keyboard builds.

“The unique plan was to make use of hand-lubed MX stabilizers as a result of it’s such a regular factor, proper? However I believed it simply can be fascinating to see if there was some method to remedy this downside with out requiring all of it to be based mostly on lubrication to dissipate the sound.”

Norbauer wished the Seneca to be the most effective keyboard on the planet, so he had no alternative. He needed to make the most effective stabilizers on the planet.

Growing the Seneca’s stabilizers took a number of years, a bunch of false begins, and, in his phrases, a “private money bazooka.” His first try, totally on his personal, resulted in what he thought-about a “90 % answer” — higher than something in the marketplace, with out lube. However 90 % there’s 10 % not there. He began over.

He labored with a agency that focuses on kinematics to develop a completely new stabilizer mechanism. Really, they got here up with two new stabilizer mechanisms. The primary is a compliant-beam design that’s considerably higher than current stabilizers in addition to his first prototype. It’s a lot much less vulnerable to rattle or tick. It’s as near excellent as you may get with out completely rethinking how stabilizers work. The second design is a sophisticated collection of pin-joint hinges with 5 occasions as many elements as a regular stabilizer. It’s hideously costly to supply and each time consuming and fiddly to assemble, however it’s higher.

The Seneca makes use of the second design.

That is illustrative of Norbauer’s basic strategy, which is that fixing technical issues is rather more fascinating than making an attempt to attenuate manufacturing prices. On the Seneca, that’s taken to a deliberate excessive. “Our aim is simply to make this good, and that’s all that issues. And so every time there was a department, I used to be like, ‘Let’s go together with the rightest method to do it and rattling the prices.’ And that has been the philosophy of this board.”

The Seneca’s case is milled from strong aluminum, with an MAO plasma-oxide end; he needed to arrange an organization in China with a view to supply it. There’s a heat grey choice known as travertine, which has a matte, barely speckled stonelike look, and a lighter grey known as oxide, which seems to be a bit like concrete. They’re each easy to the contact. (There’s additionally a matte black model, which I haven’t seen in individual, and a virtually $8,000 titanium choice, which ditto.)

The switchplate is milled from strong brass, for the acoustic properties, after which chrome-plated for aesthetics. Aluminum would have been cheaper, lighter, and simpler to mill, however brass absorbs sound higher, so brass it’s. The PCB comprises a galvanic isolation chip to mitigate the extremely unlikely occasion {that a} rogue energy provide sends a blast of electrical energy from the pc’s USB port into the keyboard. The cable has an obscenely costly Lemo connector on the keyboard aspect. Lemo connectors are safer than USB and Norbauer thinks they’re cool, and funky is healthier, and it’s his keyboard.

The keycaps are the least customized a part of the board. Not that he wouldn’t have designed a brand new keycap profile for the Seneca, you perceive. He seemed into it, however within the meantime MTNU got here out. MTNU’s spherical high surfaces and centered legends have precisely the aesthetic Norbauer was on the lookout for, and it’s extra comfy to kind on than different retro-looking keycap profiles like SA or MT3. All he needed to do was choose the colours.

Every Seneca is assembled by hand in Norbauer’s storage in Los Angeles, at a fee of 1 or two per day, by both Norbauer or Taeha Kim — aka Taeha Varieties, keyboard influencer and bespoke keyboard builder turned Norbauer & Co. worker/investor.

The stabilizers alone take Taeha an hour or two per keyboard, together with a step the place he takes a tiny reamer to every set to make the pin holes massive sufficient for the (precision-ground) pins to slot in, these tolerances being tighter than will be managed with injection molding alone.

(I’m referring to Norbauer by his final title and Taeha by his first as a result of that’s how they’re every recognized within the keyboard group.)

“Typically, if it’s not reamed fairly sufficient, you’ll get a bit little bit of sluggishness within the match between these elements. And the friction throughout the entire system is cumulative. So when you have a bit little bit of sluggishness in just a few locations, you don’t know till you’ve put the entire thing collectively that the stabilizer itself is a bit bit sluggish,” says Norbauer. When that occurs, they need to disassemble the keyboard, repair the stabilizer, and begin over.

The cumulative impact of all these decisions is a keyboard that has each extremely excessive upfront prices and excessive per-unit prices. Really, it sounds so costly I ask Norbauer if he’s creating wealth on the Seneca, even at $3,600 a pop.

The response is a right away “Not but! Oh God.”

“I imply, undoubtedly once I promote this primary batch, and doubtless the second batch, and nicely into the third or fourth, I’d not have recouped my R&D prices on it. And it’s an fascinating query. So, I’m dangerous at enterprise.”

For more often than not he was making aftermarket housings, he says, the enterprise wasn’t significantly worthwhile. “My aim has at all times been principally to interrupt even whereas additionally doing actually cool R&D stuff. I’m not personally shedding a ton of cash. However the Heavy Grail, for instance, was a very fashionable providing. Folks actually liked it and it bought far more than I ever thought it will. And that helped bootstrap and fund the Seneca, however one hundred pc of what would have been revenue went into that.”

At the same time as he was transitioning Norbauer & Co. from an organization that sells housings to at least one that sells keyboards, he saved working into the truth that he doesn’t like most elements of working a enterprise. This isn’t an enormous downside whenever you’re promoting just a few dozen DIY housings at a time to Topre fanatics as a self-funding passion. In the event you’re making an attempt to construct a enterprise that sells absolutely customized luxurious keyboards, it’d change into an issue.

Final yr, when the Seneca was largely developed and he was staring down a mountain of logistical duties, he bought just below half the corporate to the funding agency Tiny, run by an outdated acquaintance. The association leaves Norbauer with a majority stake and whole artistic management — he’s nonetheless the CEO — and lets him give attention to creating keyboards whereas different folks deal with the “creating wealth” a part of it.

Different folks, on this case, is Caleb Bernabe, Norbauer & Co.’s government in residence. In a 12,000-word weblog publish saying the sale, Norbauer writes, “He acts basically as our COO, however his job description is principally doing all of the issues that I hate — a skillset at which he inexplicably however admirably excels.”

The Seneca gained’t make you a greater author — or a sooner one, to my chagrin (ask me what number of deadlines I blew penning this piece). I, personally, can’t justify spending $3,600 on a keyboard; I don’t know too many individuals who might. However after spending a pair months with the Seneca, I can see why somebody would.

It is a keyboard nerd’s luxurious keyboard. That Norbauer spent half a decade and a whole lot of 1000’s of {dollars} creating it’s wild; that he truly pulled it off is even wilder. The switches and stabilizers alone are an incredible achievement, and proper now the Seneca is the one place they reside.

Norbauer has spent a decade constructing credibility within the keyboard group and amassing a loyal (and well-heeled) fan base. He could make a $3,600 keyboard and be fairly certain that sufficient folks will purchase it that he could make it make sense.

Not that he needs to promote a lot of keyboards. In actual fact, not promoting lots of keyboards is a part of the plan. He bought 50 of them final summer time, sight unseen, in a personal preorder for a gaggle of earlier purchasers — paying beta testers, basically. Proper now he’s promoting one other 150 or so “First Version” keyboards, to be delivered in late summer time. Then he’ll most likely do one other batch. And one other one after that. However he’s not going to promote one million.

“I take into consideration my long-term imaginative and prescient for what we’re doing as being type of like Leica, the digicam firm. They do loopy issues that simply wouldn’t exist in any other case, like their monochrome digicam. I feel it’s a really technically fascinating factor. There’s clearly a tiny viewers for it. And so with a view to make it in any cheap approach, it’s a must to cost a ton for it, as a result of how many individuals on Earth are going to purchase it? However I’m happier that that exists on the planet.”

As wild as it will be to reinvent the stabilizer and the swap simply to make just a few hundred seven-pound keyboards for wealthy coders, Norbauer plans to make different keyboards, now that he has the “full stack” of switches, stabilizers, and firmware and isn’t constrained by the handful of layouts obtainable in Topre keyboards.

“The Seneca is supposed to be this very dense sound-absorbing keyboard, a extra deep thocky type of factor that’s a everlasting set up in your desk. And so the subsequent factor is to go as far to the opposite finish of the spectrum on these issues as doable.”

It’s going to most likely be a 60-key HHKB-layout keyboard. It might need Bluetooth. And he’s considering of doing it in both milled polycarbonate or solid carbon fiber, if he can pull that off. “The sound signature will probably be radically totally different. The burden will probably be radically totally different. And we’ll optimize for the alternative of every part we optimize for on the Seneca.”

There are such a lot of extra fascinating issues for Norbauer to deal with. He’s having the firmware rewritten to make it open-source and add {hardware} remapping. There’s the subsequent keyboard to design. New supplies to experiment with. And there’s that different stabilizer design, the easier one — just a few corporations have approached him about getting it into manufacturing, however it wants a bit extra R&D first.

Simply don’t ask for a timeline. It’ll be achieved when it’s achieved.