The Making of My $850 Custom Mechanical Keyboard!

[Music] hey guys my name is homaginio and welcome back to another custom keyboard build as you can probably tell today's build is going to be extremely special and i'm really excited to take you guys through the whole building process big thank you to mode for sending most of the parts for today's video and of course big thank you to all of you for watching these videos i really appreciate all the support and i hope you guys will enjoy today's video so let's get started so first up we have the keyboard this is the mode 80. it's a relatively new tkl keyboard that was first released during 2020. the mode 80 comes in this absolutely beautiful packaging i love the minimal black and red color scheme along with the magnetic flap that keeps the box closed it's a really nice touch and is a great example of how to make the unboxing experience just a little nicer so inside the box you'll be greeted with a nice message along with a very classy keyboard case the keyboard case itself is extremely high quality it has a smooth matte black finish on the outside with some cheeky branding on the zippers it also comes with a handle on the top if you're planning on bringing this around with you so the inside of the bag is made of this soft velvety material which is perfect for keeping the keyboard safe the overall design closely resembles the kvd fans bag design except that it also has some velcro straps to hold the keyboard in place and is also completely black instead of grey so overall i really like this keyboard case i think the build quality is really good and i'm really glad that it came with the mode 80. in addition to the case the mode 80 and the other components are wrapped in paper which helps to minimize any scratches and damage so this mode 80 is fully customized to match the modern dodge color scheme and also has my logo on the bottom it has a gorgeous teal and dark gray star code finish and is one of the most beautiful keyboards i have ever seen but you know i might be a little bit biased because it does have my logo on it so you can decide for yourself but from the overall shape and design to the gorgeous colors and superb machining it's just beautiful the overall chassis is really well machined and is extremely smooth to the touch the edges of the board are also nicely rounded off and the bezels are thin on the sides and are slightly thicker on the top and bottom to help balance it out it has a very minimal and functional design which i really like so next up we have our switches mode has actually sent over some duroc linear switches with a teal stem to go with the overall theme of today's build these have 62 gram bottom off springs so it's gonna be a little bit lighter than i'm used to but it should provide for a very smooth typing experience they've also sent some c3 stabilizers which i've never used before but from what i've heard they should be really smooth and they've also sent over some tltx switch films to use with the switches and finally the keycaps we're gonna be using gmk modern dodge this is my favorite keycap set of all time and i've actually purchased a few more kits from the second run from 2020 but they have yet to arrive so i had to go to the aftermarket for today's video alright so let's get started with the first part of today's build the switches i'm going to be using crytox 205 g0 which is a fairly thick lube but is my preference for linears there are thinner lubes like 204 g0 or 203 g0 which you can also use but i usually only use those for tactile switches so i'm going to start by disassembling all of them and putting them into their respective places i use two main bowls for the top housing and spring and my space cable's loop station for the stem and bottom housing if there are any extra switches i like to open them up and use two extra bowls for any spare springs and bottom housings this process can take quite a bit of time but i always find that having my components laid out nicely helps to make things more efficient and organized [Music] and once everything is in place i like to start off by looping the stems i like to get a small amount of lube on my brush and brush one side of the stem rail making sure to get the entire surface coated and then i repeat on the other side after that i lube the entire back side of the stem and then the front side now because this is a linear switch i like to lube the legs as well to give an overall smoother experience if there is any visible lube i like to clean my brush and just even it out until i see a nice even shine on the surface after that i like to lube the stem pole and the bottom of the stem with any lube remaining on my brush once i'm done with the stem i like to place it back down onto the loop station but rotating it 90 degrees so i can keep track of how many switches i've lubed so far next up we have the bottom housing i get a small amount of lube on my brush and start brushing the sides of the housing i usually do two to three strokes just to make sure that the lube is evenly spread out on the surface and lastly i like to very lightly lube the bottom of the housing and the leaf and this is just to make sure that the switch travels smoothly when it bottoms out so once i finish lubing all the bottom housings and stems i move on to the springs so some people prefer to hand lube each individual spring but i do not have the patience to do that so i resort to bag lubing for bag lubing i like to use crytox 105 g0 this is an oil and not a grease like 205 g0 so it's a lot less viscous and it does a better job of evenly coating all of the springs i add a pretty generous amount of 105 g0 just to make sure that all the springs do get coated evenly i also add a little bit of air into the bag close it tight and then shake i like to shake for around a minute or more as i really want to make sure that all of my springs get coated evenly and once all of that is done i place all the springs into the bottom housings [Music] and now i can start reassembling all of the switches i start off by adding a very minimal amount of lube on the sides of the top housing a lot of people actually don't lube top housings and that's completely fine i just like to make sure that my switches feel smooth from top to bottom and it's purely from preference and lastly i attached my tx switch film to the top housing now if you're not familiar with filming a switch filming a switch basically makes the overall housing tighter to produce a better sounding switch and to reduce overall switch wobble some switches sound a lot better with films and some sound a little bit better or just different but in general filming a switch is something i highly recommend lubed and film switches are miles ahead from stock switches and if done right will provide an amazing typing experience alright next up we have probably the most important part of any build the stabilizers no matter how good your switches sound or how good your case is if your stabilizers aren't modded properly your entire keyboard falls apart so i'm going to be spending a lot of time making sure that my stabilizers sound as good as possible the first thing i like to do with my stabilizers is the holy mod and i just want to quickly thank ted from my discord server for introducing it to me so the holy mod requires band-aids tweezers scissors and some patience the main objective is to add a layer of band-aid inside the stabilizer stem to reduce any wire rattle so to do this i started by cutting a really thin piece of band-aid that's just large enough to fit into the stabilizer stem then i peel off the protective layer slide it into the stem with my tweezer and i firmly press down on the side with one hole first you want to make sure that any and all excess of the band-aid is on the side of the stem with two holes not one hole if there's any excess on the side with one hole the stem will not travel down smoothly and the band-aid can actually peel off which is not good so when the band-aid is secure i like to cut off a chunk of the band-aid on the side with two holes but still leave some excess so that it can go into the hole above then i use my tweezer to gently guide the excess into the hole above and press down so that it sticks securing the band-aid into place after that i just press around the entire length of the bandaid just to make sure that it sticks nicely the holy mod can be a little bit difficult if you haven't done it before but it is probably one of the best mods i can recommend for your stabilizers it's not that hard to do but you just gotta be patient and really take your time so with all the stabilizer stems fully modded we can now begin lubing i like to apply a decent amount of lube onto my stabilizer housings not too much but to the point where the sides are evenly coated and i can see a minimal amount of white on the sides then i apply a thinner amount of lube onto the stabilizer stem and slot it in and lastly i apply a pretty generous amount of lube onto the stabilizer wires and slot them in carefully unfortunately the c3 stabilizers had some issues with rattle especially in the space bar so i spent a few hours re-lubing redoing the holy mod wire balancing and everything i could really think of it sounded a little bit better but the space bar still didn't have that clean sound and feel i was looking for so i ended up trying out some zeal stabilizers that zeal actually sent over and they worked a lot better for me i'm not really sure if the stabilizers themselves were the problem maybe i just messed up with the c3 stabilizers but the zeal stabs do sound and feel a lot better in my opinion i did have to do some wire balancing which i'm not the best at but i think the end result was very worth it alright so let's get started with the case the first thing i like to do is attach the rubber feet onto the bottom of the case just to prevent any scratches or damage mode has actually been kind enough to send out quite a few pcbs and plates they've sent out two solder pcbs two hot swap pcbs two aluminium plates one f4 plate and one polycarbonate plate i'm gonna try out different configurations to see which one i like the most but i'm going to start off with the aluminium plate first mainly because it matches with my case from my experience aluminium plates have a very balanced sound signature plates like brass sound a little too high pitch for me and the typing experience is a little bit stiffer than what i personally like i'm also going to be using a hot swap pcb hotspot pcbs in my opinion are just way better than soldered pcbs even though i own a soldering iron and i've made a few solder builds before being able to just plug in a switch and taken out whenever you need is such an amazing feature and i absolutely love it some people do find soldering a really fun part of making a keyboard and i can totally understand but personally it feels kind of unnecessary unless you're making a build with a non-standard layout so the keyboard also comes with two pieces of foam we have a layer of poron that sits below the pcb and above the bottom housing and an optional piece of foam that sits in between the pcb and plate i decided not to include the layer of foam between the pcb and plate as it makes it sound slightly muted and i'm aiming for a more crisp and clear sound signature the next thing i have to do is screw on the usb port to the case and plug in the ribbon cable to the usb port and pcb which is a little bit annoying but isn't too hard to do and finally we can put the top housing on slide the bottom housing into the top housing and screw the case back together this keyboard uses a pretty unique mounting style it's a design that mode calls a stack mount basically the top and bottom housing fit together with an interlocking front lip that slides into the top housing and secures together via three main screws on the back which eliminates the need for any screws on the top both the plate and the pcb then sit on a gasket stack which is squeezed together when the three screws are installed so the main advantage you get from this is an even typing experience as there are no screws directly mounted onto the pcb and or plate my only concern is that the compression comes from only three screws so the entire board basically depends on these three screws not stripping or breaking so far i haven't encountered any issues with the screws with the mounting style itself and it's actually pretty convenient for when i want to dismantle it to make any changes and of course i can now put on my new gmk modern dodge keycaps and this is honestly a dream come true i've always wanted to own this keycap set and i don't think there was any better way to finally get this set than with a fully custom matching keyboard to go along with it [Music] subscribe to homogeneous [Music] i really like how this configuration sounds it has a nice high-pitched sound signature to it and it also sounds really clean while i'm usually a person who enjoys thock or a deeper sound signature i actually really like the high pitched sound that this configuration produces typing experience is also great and it feels really smooth the spring weight of the switches was something i initially thought would be a huge issue for me but i actually really like how light the switches feel i also wanted to try out some other configurations so i tried out some holy pandas on a polycarbonate plate i was mainly aiming for a more flexible typing experience and hopefully a deeper sound signature with the polycarbonate plate now one problem i encountered when working with the holy pandas was a lack of stability on the parts of the plate without any support the holy pandas have a three pin configuration meaning that the switches that didn't secure into a plate fully would wobble in place creating a very unsatisfying sound so i could have used a solder pcb to increase the stability of the holy pandas but i really didn't feel like soldering so instead i took all of the wobbly holy pandas and replaced the bottom housing with teleo housings they ended up being just as smooth and actually had a very similar sound due to the fact that both of the bottom housings are made of nylon this is my first time ever really using frankenstein switches but overall i think it actually turned out pretty great do all right so i could spend all day trying out different switches and plates but i'm gonna stop myself here before this video becomes 30 minutes long i also just want to say that i'm really happy with how much i've learned along the way and i'm glad that i can show it off with this keyboard so yeah the custom mode 80 is definitely going to be my daily driver for a very long time until now the keyboard maybe comes around and is better than the mode 80. we'll see there are a lot of keyboards coming out and i can't wait to see what comes next once again big thank you to mode for sending over the custom keyboard and thank you for supporting my channel and i also want to give a quick shout out to g cables for sending out this dope modern dolce colored coiled cable it looks absolutely sick and it goes really nicely with my keyboard so thank you i hope you guys enjoyed today's video and i'll see you guys in the next one peace and here is a bonus sound test you

Channel: Hamaji Neo

Views: 609,460

Rating: 4.9474235 out of 5

Keywords: Hamaji Neo, Custom Keyboard, Hamaji Neo Custom Keyboard, Custom Keyboard Build, Budget Custom Keyboard, Hotswap Custom Keyboard, Mode Eighty, Mode Eighty Custom Keyboard, The Making of My Custom Keyboard, Custom Keyboard Tutorial, Holee Mod, Holee Mod Tutorial, Keyboard stabilizer tutorial, Stabilizer tutorial, Holee mod stabiliser, durock linears, premium custom keyboard, mode eighty review, custom keyboard review

Id: KwRwG_Keh_U

Length: 15min 36sec (936 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021