I Filled a Keyboard With AEROGEL... (So You DON'T Have To)

I put Arrow gel on my keyboard so you don't have to yes that era gel like the NASA stuff I'll explain I'll explain howdy hey I'm hippiotech and you're probably wondering why and how expensive was it well for good sounds and dear God now I'm known for filling keyboards with weird things I've done it with sand I've done it with pillow foam I've done it with Play-Doh a little while ago I asked you what video idea you wanted to see and you guys voted on this one if you want to vote on future videos then you better hit subscribe because I post them to my community tab anyways this Story begins with a 20 jar yeah that little jar was twenty dollars and a lot of vacuuming I'll explain what airgel is later but essentially it's a cool little NASA material that's apparently amazing at the sound dampening or something but of course because I need to fill a keyboard I'll be filling the Freebird 75 and to pay for all of the Aero gel that I had to buy for this video I managed to get a sponsor keeps for all basically they sent out these keyboards for me to check out and uh I'm filling them with Aero gel don't tell them they didn't tell me anything I need to say about the keyboards and generally my deal with keyboard sponsorships is they send me the product they send me money that's it so I'll have all three of the Freebird keyboards from keep swirl linked down below if you'd like to check them out then go check them out speaking of checking out look at that little gummy ring we'll get into that soon but before we get into the gummy ring and the arrow gel we've got to get into this PCB it's got a little Flex cut and it's hot swap so that's very nice now the Freebird 75 is 180 and is what I call a shorter group buy meaning they're fulfilling within a couple months I would still prefer an in-stock keyboard any day of the week but it's the step in the right direction speaking of the right direction those were stabilizers that were included with the board however I did Lube them myself so that is one less thing you have to buy for 180 bucks the board also includes foam which we will be putting to the test later in the video against the Aero gel to see if airgel or included foam is better I sure hope the included foam is better uh otherwise that might justify spending hundreds of dollars on airgel anyways the keyboard is wrapped in this nice little tissue paper makes me kind of feel like it's my birthday or Christmas or something like that and I got the E White version of the Freebird 75. it also comes in Navy black and objectively the best color lilac but you know we got the white version with an aluminum or aluminum plate I'll get into this more later but uh don't get the aluminum plate get get one of like the Palm or the fr4 or something just don't get aluminum I'll explain anyways your retinas might be burning because of how bright my camera is right now I'm sorry I I should have made that okay there we go you're probably wondering why they call it the Freebird tkl um I don't know but here's what appears to be a goose on the keyboard engraved it's quite nice it's a very nice Goose now this keyboard is also made out of 6063 aluminum or aluminum fight down in the comments which is better and I'd say the overall build quality is pretty good it's a little bit better than something like the kikron q1 and a lot better than something really cheap plastic granted I would hope so if you're paying a hundred and eighty dollars for it also I'm just gonna install this daughter board really fast be Boop there we go I should mention they also sent out the Freebird tkl and Freebird 60. those are both keyboards that I would consider to be a little bit better than the Freebird 75 but I can't get into that right now I had like a day to make this video now that you're familiar with the Freebird Let's uh build it let's let's build the freeburn and get it ready for the arrow gel of course now because this is a hot swap build there's really not that much to it but I'll guide you through the process in case you're building one at home for the switches I'm going to be using some lubed pink Robins also from keeps frow they sent me a care package if you can't tell so most of the stuff will be from them granted these are a factory Lube linear switch which you could get at basically any other vendor but they're pretty good um also we're getting to the Aero gel soon don't worry stop these are manufactured by alfion and I honestly don't know if I've tried any alfion switches before but these did really really impress me like you'll see in the sound tests well you'll see in one of the sound tests that these turned out to be a pretty well-rounded linear switch I definitely prefer a really light spring so these felt a little bit heavy to me but that's my personal preference and wait what's going on here why can't I seem to get it in oh let's go oh no oh no oh oh no so the plate actually arrived bent um this is technically a prototype so I'm going to give them a pass here but that was definitely what we call in the business a bummer yeah yeah because I'm a rock climber um I'm really strong and I managed to fix it by by bending it about equal amounts in the opposite direction but it works now so I guess that's now in order to put the rest of the switches on I'm gonna perform what we call Magic so if you like that magic please leave a like and subscription right now otherwise my Mana is running low and I'm fading rapidly oh God please help now at this point in the build I had a decision to make do I do the gummy o-ring or the top Burger man now you probably have no idea what that means and I'll get into that soon but gummy o-ring or top Burger I do like hamburger cheeseburger but oh the gummy o-ring is really tempting basically all you do is you just fold it around the keyboard like this and then beep boop up it's a gummy o-ring maybe I'm either dumb or it just wasn't that impressive to Me Maybe I'm dumb I could be dumb but I wasn't that stoked with the gummy o-ring so I decided to go with the burger top mount so they give you a bunch of really small O-rings and this is the way I decided to do it I decided to put one o-ring over each of these little screw holes where the plate meets contact with the top of the PCB and then I save the rest of the O-rings for later which we'll talk about in a second if you're new to keyboards basically what this is doing is trying to reduce some of the contact with metal on metal but as I mentioned before with the aluminum or aluminum plate there's just so much metal noise that's gonna happen in this keyboard that I really highly recommend you don't go with the aluminum plate I also put little O-rings on all of the screw holes where the case meets case because I wanted to reduce case on case vibrations as well I don't know if this was intended or not because I didn't have a build guide I was really just winging it but that's what I did so if you're following along at home and you want your keyboard to sound like this then there you go there's the hippiotech patented way of building this keyboard maybe unless it was the way you're supposed to build it and that's the way you're supposed to build it patented method of building the keyboard also now that I'm looking at the keyboard actually built this keyboard does look surprisingly good ignoring the seams from the O-rings which is my doing by the way I do think this board has a pretty premium look it looks like a board that you might pick up for maybe 250 300 bucks and it's only 180. so that's a big bing bong plant good a vote or whatever speaking of upvote I want your eyes to explode so I've picked out a set of entirely white keycaps not entirely white there's text on them by the way I wanted to give the keyboard like an aero gel Vibe but then I also didn't want to use clear keycaps because on the thumbnail someone might not see that it's a keyboard is that like two is that too YouTube meta okay anyways these are the KFA black on white keycaps and uh honestly they were pretty decent they're only 33 bucks not bad if you're looking for a budget set of keycaps that isn't clones they're probably my favorite part of this whole build they're just dice up PBT they're relatively thick I didn't see any real issues with them and they sounded kind of nice speaking of sounding kind of nice though that is something that this board does not do without any foam but that can be said about most keyboards to be fair but in a way honestly it makes it a really good canvas for this experiment where I'm going to be putting Aero gel in it because then I get to compare bad to potentially good to potentially gooder and speaking of good here are some very good boys on this little desk mat it's a good Beach Boys desk mat uh there you go link down below I should really just become Linus Tech tips at this point with all these Segways but you know I'm I'm captain Segway look at me go okay but now that the keyboard's built I'm gonna start by showing you what it sounds like with absolutely no foam so this is the experience that you won't even get building it because you're going to build it with the included foam right you're you're going to build it with the included foam right please please okay so that ain't too great it's incredibly Hollow and you hear a lot of metal pinging sounds granted if you use any plate aside from aluminum there's going to be a lot less of that but let's just go ahead and install the included foam that we're supposed to install anyways I say supposed to but you know I did it I I didn't do it some of the Ping in this board is just from it being a two-piece style build like the Freebird 60 which you're seeing on your screen right now is a tray Mount which when built out of Cheaper aluminum I feel like a tray Mount will sound better than a two-piece Mount that's out of cheap aluminum but you know take take this with what you will okay now in the background I've gone ahead and installed the foam inside of the keyboard so I'm going to give you a little bit of a test of what it sounded like before foam and then I'm going to let you listen to what it sounded like after film and then let me know what you think Down Below in the comments so to me that's already a massive Improvement but I think we can do better remember Aero gel this this video is about Aero gel remember at least two of you are going to leave a mean comment about how it took nine minutes to get to the air gel but okay look it took me nine minutes to put on these gloves so you know who's laughing now who's this so aerogel is considered the world's lightest solid and you can watch a veritasium video on it if you're actually more interested but it's got some amazing properties like it's 99.98 air by volume which is really cool and uh I'm pouring it in my keyboard now originally I plan to buy five or six of these containers at like a hundred dollars total but uh yeah it it sounds like glass kinda so after testing what it actually sounds like in a keyboard I was sorely disappointed like I felt like I just had to write this whole entire video idea off but then I saw something when I was looking on Amazon hold on I've got it I've got it right here it's what we call a box no it's sorry it's what's in the box yes it's what's in the box now airgel on its own is kind of a novelty but Aero gel mixed into things is actually kind of ingenious so I found something called aerogel installation padding which to me just sounds the best like they literally say look a sound dampening or whatever it said there on that little paper now generally this is used in areas that have really extreme like temperature differentials or something like that and uh oh it leaves a very weird residue on my hands I'm gonna put back I'm gonna put the gloves back on but uh yeah this has a weird powdery residue to it and it's kind of odd that my best way of describing it is it's like a felt that's like got little particles in it but it cuts very easy so I can just cut it to shape in my little keyboard and then we're going to be good to go well I should say it cut really easy from the side but to cut the middle allowed to get the cord through was actually really hard that's why I had to cut my camera now I know I know this isn't the Aero gel crystals in my keyboard but essentially it is it really is it's it's broken up in this little like fibery fabric type thing so it's full of airgel which gives it that unique Arrow gel type properties while also being a dampening material don't believe me I'll compare it to the Foams that come with the board in a second now would I recommend doing this no cutting this was quite miserable I had airgel particles all over my desk I spent way too long vacuuming but did it work oh it worked so essentially don't try this at home but I mean if you were to it would kind of it would kind of work you know but I think overall this made the Freebird 75 a pretty compelling keyboard for only 180 dollars so I mean if that's the takeaway then I guess Aero gel is kind of neat but hey if this video gets 10 000 likes I'll drop the couple hundred dollars and I'll fill a keyboard with the actual Crystal Arrow gel I'll post as a short so get subscribed for that it'll it'll just sound really terrible though so I probably shouldn't do it to like a sponsor's keyboard because then they get really mad at me but hey if you want to see that hit subscribe anyways if you stayed till the end here's an extra howdy hey I'm leaving you with a sound test of no foam with foam and then airgel so leave a comment of which one you like the most down below bye bye

Channel: Hipyo Tech

Views: 624,880

Keywords: keyboard, mechanical keyboard, mechanical, switch, switch review, novel keys, keys, gateron, kalih, sound test, switch sound test, keyboard sound test, keyboard asmr, asmr, typing asmr, mech keyboard, aesthetic, wholesome, reddit, id80, panda, alpacas, krytox 205, krytox, type, test, keyboard mod, keyboard asmr mod, TKL keyboard, red, 65%, 60%, RGB 65%, taehatypes, :3ildcat, 3ildcat, tech, MKBHD, Linus tech tips, Taeha Types, Tech Review, Banggood Review

Id: 4hef7wdDhu4

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 12 2022