You want them to be carving out molds and pouring in plastic for keycaps, then stamping our brass springs to insert into keyboard bodies they 3D printed?

I guess the point I'm making is that 'scratch' is a pretty subjective line. I felt that the article qualified. When someone makes a cake from scratch I am ok if they use pre-milled flour and store bought eggs. I would be a bit annoyed if they started with a mix and called it "scratch."

I agree with your perspective here and also think this qualifies as "from scratch." Would it still be "from scratch" if they bought all the components they used in this write-up as one kit?

A really good question. There used to be a company called Frostline you could buy a down jacket kit from, you did all the sewing and stuffing of down but the pieces were pre-cut and all materials were supplied.

I think in the 'things' space there is the notion of 'kit built' versus 'scratch built'.

It gets even a bit murkier when you think about wood working. Over the years I've built a number of things where the "plans" were in a magazine or an article and bought all of the wood, cut it to size, and assembled it "from scratch." but I didn't actually design it.

What I like about the keyboard article is that he designs the enclosure, provides his own wiring, and keyboard scanning software/firmware. So for me that qualifies as "scratch."

I don't think of this article as a 'from scratch', given that there's recognisable prefab parts in it, but at the same time, that doesn't diminish its worth.

Perhaps put another way: prefab keys can only be keys; cakemix can only become cake; sheet aluminium could become anything; milled flour could become anything. 'From scratch' is making something from generic materials, to me.

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."

- Carl Sagan

You don't have to invent it, you just need to make your own :)

> I'm reminded of an old Disney cartoon (maybe WWII era ?) where goofy invents artificial rubber. The catch is that it requires rubber tires as an input.

Probably WW2 era, because that's how the Nazi German synthetic rubber ("Buna") worked: It needed small quantities of natural rubber to produce (a lot more) synthetic rubber, with predictable results once the trade routes for that were blockaded.

> Probably WW2 era

I know. That's why I typed "WWII" (II = 2)

Yes it was agreeing, just upgrading your 'maybe' to a 'probably' with concrete example of background.

No confusion on the II/2.

I think they were just confirming since you seemed uncertain

Creating custom keycaps is a project on its own, and could easily take as much time and effort as the keyboard itself!

Some resources on making your own custom keys from resin:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/key_modifi...

If you're looking for a story of someone attempting to completely build something from scratch, try thomas thwaites "the toaster project" - http://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/

There are many projects where people have built their own keyboards.

Do you know of any where the people built their own switches?

I've seen a fair number of folks in the mechanical keyboard community (admittedly rather small already) that customize their switches. For example, a common mod for mechanical switches is to replace the springs in the switch housing, which affects how much force is required to depress the switch. Others replace the stem, which is the colored part of the switch, changing its feel (tactile vs linear, smooth vs course).

Given that, would you consider someone building their own switch as someone who's created a custom switch from these components? e.g. I've read of folks putting Zealios stems in Gateron housings with 80g+ springs to create their ideal switch type.

Yeah, have seen a lot of people mod their switches, but not seen someone create them from scratch - think customising them and blending components steps it up a notch, but isn't any more "from scratch" (although, in my opinion, getting the switches bought in is as "from scratch" as is logical).

As far as I know, most keyboard manufacturers don't manufacture their own switches, yet it's fairly uncontroversial to describe them as "keyboard manufacturers."

I've built small keypads with aluminium foil and sheets of plastic; extremely silent but not very tactile.

I was interested in how key events are generated and how the driver in the computer was made (if not the generic driver). But that was handled by a premade mini computer and OSS software.

You know it's not going to be totally "from scratch." It's just the idea of how much did he build.

I mean if you wanted to be super hardcore, you could 3D print your own switches, your own key caps (or carve them out of wood), but what happens when you get to the controller? We don't have 3d printers for PCBs yet .. well none that are affordable for home use .. or that don't release tons of deadly toxins. :-P

Ironically, the PCB would probably take less effort than doing all of the switches and key caps yourself.

A simple matrix keyboard (downside: will misdetect certain keyboard combinations) requires a quite small set of io pins (if you insist on fully individual switches it'll complicate matters a bit, but not that much) that you could make a controller for with any number of simple old parts that are big enough that etching your own PCB for them at home is fairly straightforward.

For that matter good old 8-bit era parts like 8526/6526 CIA's (IO) and a 6510/8510 CPU are big enough and resilient enough (and still easy to get hold of) that you can build a controller on a breadboard, or even mount them on cardboard you punch holes in (... yes, been there, done that), and you can drive a serial port off them (in fact, the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 keyboards at the very least used a SOC version of the 6502 with onboard PROM and RAM for their keyboard controller)

Of course, going the "next step down" and building it all from transistors starts getting a bit more hairy.

For that "next step down" dig up Don Lancaster's "TV Typewriter Cookbook" for the 1976 version of this (and to understand "shift" and "control" at a more visceral level :-)

Making the keys is probably one of least interesting parts.

Oh I don't know, forging the drill parts to extract the oil, fractionating, making the polymer, carving a blank to make moulds from, producing the alginate to make the master moulds, ... seems pretty interesting.

How do you learn where to assay for oil in the first place?

I still think building the transistors needed from scratch would be more interesting. You could argue that burying dinosaurs to make the oil is pretty cool.

The phrase "from scratch" can't possibly have clear definition ("If you wish to make apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe"). However, in this case I agree with you.

If you used a keyboard to make a keyboard, that is definitely not "from scratch".