Well, I found out that I ordered the wrong LED’s. The types needed for mechanical switches are 1.8mm (round) or 2x3x4mm (square). I ordered 5mm (round) LED’s and there is a good chance they won’t end up fitting under the key caps. I looked at returning them, but the cost of shipping them back was about the same price as ordering them, (the difference being a savings of $.29 or so). At least a pack of 100 LED’s isn’t super expensive.

I just ordered my switches from switchTop for $0.25 each. I’m super excited! I’m at the point now where I’m waiting for the Iris cases/plates to be in stock and then all I’ll have left to buy is the key caps, which I kind of need for a functional keyboard. This brings my out of pocket up to $58.29. (I bought a couple extra switches for my co-worker who wanted to swap out some of his browns for blues.)

Now I just need to get a soldering iron and practice a bit prior to starting the task ahead. I’ll get some process pointers from my co-worker before I begin, just so I streamline it. There is a part of me that wants to wait till I buy my case and get it sent before I start soldering so I can take ‘before’ pictures with all the packages together, but I doubt my excitement will allow that. Plus it would be kind of neat to have this done before Christmas so I can show it to you, but I don’t want to rush it. I do plan on taking progress pictures, but I’ve said that in the past and usually forget to do it.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 15th, 2017 at 8:51 am and is filed under Journal Entries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.