The ALL-METAL Keyboard

two years ago we brought you the world's ugliest keyboard then a year later we built our own keyboard from scratch how could we up our keyboard gain any further by building the most expensive keyboard we possibly could completely out of metal mod Mike's new lineup features the mod Mike USB the new mod Mike uni a complete revamp of their original three and a half mil Mike and the mod Mike Wireless check them out at the links in the video description [Music] what we're doing today is quite similar to our last keyboard build except for one key difference as far as we can tell no one has ever built an all-metal keyboard so where do you even begin with something like that all metal parts of course starting with a base to build upon and that's where our pals at Dixie met come in they sent over one of the first prototypes of their new Bauer keyboard chassis with a custom battle stressed seracote paint job this thing is CNC machined from 60 63 aluminum so it's like freaking heavy it sports a 65% layout and is absolutely sex tastic other than one small omission the windows key what gives anyway in Dixie's words the windows keys their worst enemy and while I personally don't agree I'm certainly willing to give this thing a shot now they're mostly known for their gorgeous key cap sets and accessories so we're gonna see how their first foray into keyboard design holds up and with a retail price of 460 US dollars I sincerely hope that it is absolutely amazing crazy enough though this is not even the most expensive part of this build it's about time we address these this right here is a full set of completely custom billet brass key caps made by Salvin each of these key caps starts as a solid chunk of brass that gets machined abrasive blasted and finally Sarah coated to prevent oxidation this is truly peak keyboard bling here guys the only way that you could take it a step further is to make them out of freaking gold or something literally days of machine time was needed to make 66 of these caps and they're not just gold like in color but in mass as well these things are freaking heavy your run-of-the-mill space forward my spacebar go it's gonna weigh about eight this one forty grams so the sheer mass of these caps was actually a major consideration in our decision-making process when we were trying to figure out what keys which is to use we tested switches from Cherry Gadar on and chi-wah extensively and finally decided on here we go these gather on blacks here they're higher actuation force helps to balance out our heavy caps and their linear travel is silky smooth but not smooth enough I mean this is supposed to be an exercise in overkill is it not ladies and gentlemen so we and of course I mean Colin went ahead and purchased two different lubricants from apex keyboards and painstakingly opened up and lead every single switch and stabilizer to make them even smoother and more quiet if you guys want to see some more switch testing by the way definitely get subscribed because we have a completely blind switch test video coming up that you won't want to miss for now though check this out here's a nun lubed one here's the lube one okay they don't sound that different whatever the point is it feel smoother so with the addition of where'd they go is these cherry screwin stabilizers the gang's all here so all that's left is to assemble the board let's fire up the soldering iron and get to work shall we not a bad soldering job actually that's pretty yeah it's pretty consistent now that we've got it open you can see the type C port on the inside of the Bower case here so now all that's left is final assembly so we're gonna put our mid plate on to the base and I believe the screws are right here then we're gonna put the top plate over and put on all of our hefty cute cats okay so let's get this so all screwed together now yeah oh you're gonna do it pop this fan here look pretty then actually I'm gonna take this opportunity to show you guys all the pretty options that we have for accent keys like the Escape key so Salvin actually made up a few different ones for us there's a Dixie key cap things are heavy there's an LT t1 look how good this looks what's the printing process he's using on this is a silkscreen or while they're laser etched oh yeah so they're sarah coded yeah a color made for us and incredible how much is each key cap each key caps like yeah 50 ish dollars you weren't kidding when you said that yeah the kit wasn't the most expensive part of this really isn't it's like like 2 grand ish worth of keys I have to start with the LTTE key yeah so here's something to bear in mind guys the actuation force of these keys is 50 grams and for most of them we don't expect that to be a huge problem like your typical your escape your W your ASD all that good important stuff space bar we're a little worried about I mentioned this before but this is a 40 gram key meaning that this could end up being like basically a hair-trigger like 10 grand 10 grand for us can I try this out before we finish it all I gotta try this all right so if I'm like in my waz nothing you barely have to touch it does Oh take that watch watch this you guys should be able to tell it can barely lift itself back up like the response force is so little about poor spacebar has he ever made spacebar before oh I'm sure he has but I there just has to be a little more forethought I think we can probably find some Springs to chuck in the stabilizers or we spring the switch I don't know at this point but we're just we're just gonna make it happen you know we're gonna dress the other ones though yeah the other ones great that's got a nice sound to it okay let's uh slam these keys on alright I mean given that they're not labeled it doesn't really matter what order they go on bear in mind is that there are actually different heights so getting them at least in the right row is very very important because the keyboard itself is angled a bit but a lot of the angling that gives you that comfortable typing posture it comes actually from the heights of the keys themselves the tolerances on these things are it's actually because of how we fixtures in it so if you look inside the key you'll see there's threads and then it gets slotted or I don't know if it's loaded before the hand but that's gets screwed down to a fixture and held and that's how a machines it right yeah so these are they grab on to the stems like yeah there's a little bit of a separation so these are cherry Row 2 so 0 1 2 3 4 q5 like I'm not even the biggest keyboard nerd by any stretch is Luke here today we should do it we should show him I mean it we'd have to clean it after we could just put it in the oven keeping the dishwasher the oven yeah like when they sterilize things in the oven oh I see sterilization nope there's a word for to be into that no I mean he doesn't want kids so I mean that that's more your thing II got him it's starting to come together this gets me excited now one thing that's interesting is again probably because of those serrations they're actually kind of hard to push on I thought we might have screwed this one up and put the wrong row on but no you just really got to get it to them to put them on and I mean for the record the keys do work there's another c4 and I need one more c3 am i out no I got it boom how much does this thing weigh like you could kill a man with this okay - you want to give it away really not I'll give it away I was gonna say I thought we had to send a key Kavinoky caps are going back I mean literally way it okay hold on we have to guess first do we need to like write it down yeah yeah yeah you got you got a sharpie all right okay what do you say 30 100 grams 30 100 rounds I said two kilos okay all right so that one's just shy of a kilo yep but that's a full 104 key and this is what its plastic well this one's got a metal plate here that's thin it's then basically a veneer and then this is what a 65-foot oh my goodness I'm way off I think oh you know what I'm still understanding about it oh we both went over way over it's got to be just the density hmm cuz it feels like picking it up like hold these two and tell me that doesn't feel like three times the no it's the density it feels harder it's like your rigid right like this I mean this is okay but like this is like hmm have you tried typing oh no this is the first time just assemble this ah okay cool do you want like a typing test yeah sure hit me hit me with that and time okay right off the bat what do you think I'm not a huge fan of the textured home row is actually having kind of a hard time finding my way back to it so I would definitely do a different style of home row the space bar actually didn't bother me as much as I thought um I did find the slightly rougher texture of the keys was a little harder to glide across I might do like more slightly more rounded corners actually huh yeah yeah I'm nice like fill it around the edge I have never liked a linear key switch keyboard this much it took like three hours typing on a cloud I really like the switches I spent a lot of time trying to decide what switches I wanted to run and the blacks were not only suggested in the testing with those key switch testers it did you put o rings on it or is it just a self no as as part of the nature switch properly lubricated like the sound its clack II but not annoying little yeah yeah it's still better than blues oh oh wait it well yeah it's not it's not obnoxious and I thought cues would be really cold but they've warmed up oh yeah no it's surprisingly not because the thing too is that like the heat sensation and the very tips of your fingers where you've got calluses mmm it's not as much I think if I put the inside of my wrist it's cold yeah but if I put my fingertips on it it's fine no big deal not that I'm saying not that I'm trying to convince you guys to run out and buy one of these all-metal Edition keyboards so the total bill for this would be somewhere in the neighborhood of around 2,500 to 3,000 US dollars yeah around there probably customer 2,500 this is it guys this is Pete keyboard I'm glad to have experienced it but I understand why I have to send the parts back because I think no man is truly worthy to own such a keyboard as this one we are not worthy but we are worthy of this segue to our sponsor thanks to ring for sponsoring today's video ring is on a mission to make neighborhoods safer and you can create custom affordable security for your home with their smart home cameras and doorbells using a ring doorbell is great because it keeps the delivery driver around for a few seconds after the first knock and the ring Welcome kit includes their video doorbell too and chime Pro the video doorbell too has a motion sensing camera with adjustable sensitivity 1080p HD resolution with 160 degrees of vision two-way audio and it's battery or 8 to 24 volt AC doorbell wiring powered and the chime pro not only lets you know when someone pushes your doorbell with a loud ring it extends your Wi-Fi signal which is useful to make sure that you've got a stronger connection to all your ring devices also you get fewer Wi-Fi dead zones so get some peace of mind with the ring Welcome kit it's compatible with iOS Android Mac and Windows so guys check it out ring.com /l tt we're gonna have that linked below also down below we're gonna have a link to one of our other fun keyboard videos why don't we do the DIY keyboard one yeah that down there guys go check that out and as always subscribe if you want to see more great content here at lies tech tips she gave you some nails so we can like pound them into two by fours oh I don't think Dixie would like that No

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 3,152,659

Rating: 4.9078226 out of 5

Keywords: mechanical, keyboard, mech, switch, cherry, cherry mx, gateron, kalih, /r/mk, brass, cnc, aluminum, billet, machined, chassis, switches, lubed, tribosys, krytox, mechanical keyboard, black, red, mx red, mx brown, mx black

Id: DevM3bbGtoA

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DaOver]

Just as I thought. Five different posts about the same LTT video 😂

[u/RoboCaesar]

Good to see some non-cherry switches getting some exposure sometimes for the sake of variety.

[u/_damnfinecoffee_]

Pretty hype for these big names getting involved in customs.

[u/japanitrat]

Congrats to all the vendors in the video! This is huge!

[u/TruthfulEB]

LinusSexTips be flexin on all of us

[u/PM_ME_A_SHOWER_BEER]

I'd like to request a

Windows keys are for boomers

flair pls

[u/OzTechAu]

Congratulations to Salvun and Dixie. The real kings here. I don't have their tags but if i could i would tag 😊

[u/buhbang]

they actually took the time to lube all their switches.

When I saw those switch testers, it just sounded like they were gonna slap scratchy switch on the keyboard and call it a day. but this was a nice video introduction to keebs

[u/iCrafterChips]

I need the ltt cap