TSExt

A 3D-printed hand-wired split keyboard inspired from TS65

This is my attempt at designing an extended version of the TS65. The main motivation is that I wanted more keys and the ability to hand solder everything instead of making a PCB. The keyboard is powered by QMK.

Please note that this is a rough design that I made for personal use and most probably you will need to adjust a bit (adjust screw sizes, make holes for connectors etc).

Keyboard layout permalink

The changes I have made are:

• Added an extra row for F-keys
• An extra column for Home,End,PgUp and PgDown
• Redesigned the plate to allow for switch mounting
• Added some extra space on the top of the keyboard to house all the electronics
• Added an Fn key
• Added a rotary encoder on the left side

Some models are adaptation from this design on Thingiverse made by Adam Coddington.

How to build

Materials

1. About 300 grams of material
2. 30 hours of print time (on an Ender 3)
3. 11 M2x10 screws and 4x4x6 brass heat inserts
4. 2 Arduino Pro-micro
5. A USB2.0 breakout board or some other way to extend the micro usb port of the Arduino
6. 85 Cherry MX switches and keycaps
7. 85 diodes 1n4148 (or equivalent)
8. 7mm wider rotary encoder

Printing the case

Printing the case should be simple but takes some time. No need for supports. I recommend adding a brim and lowering the fan to prevent warping.

Top parts: I used 100% infill to reduce flex as much as possible

Bottom parts: anything above 50% should work ok. The print time is almost the same regardless of the infill.

Soldering

Follow the QMK guide for hand-wiring and soldering keyboards.

Wiring diagrams

Note that on the right side, pin B3 is connected to Insert->Backslash->Enter->Up->Down and NOT backspace.

The pin for serial communication between the left and right Arduinos is D3

The rotary encoder on the left half is connected to pins B2 and B6.

Flashing

There are two Arduinos in total, one for each side. Each arduino needs to be flashed with their own qmk firmware. To do this you will need a local installation of qmk-firmware.

To start flashing you keyboard, copy the TSExt folder from the firmware folder to qmk_firmware/keyboards. The directory structure should be

qmk_firmware
|
|-- keyboards
    |
    |-- TSExt

To flash the left Arduino

make ts_ext:avrdude-split-left 

and the right one

make ts_ext:avrdude-split-right