This DIY kit turned my favorite mechanical keyboard into my favorite electrocapacitive keyboard

For my money, you simply cannot get a amended electrocapacitive keyboard than the Bauer Lite pinch a DynaCap kit.

[Editor’s note: Huh?]

You tin get a nicer EC keyboard, without having to build it yourself, by simply spending $3,600 connected a Norbauer Seneca. Or you tin get a Happy Hacking Keyboard aliases a Realforce for southbound of $300, besides without having to build it yourself, pinch genuine Topre switches, Bluetooth if you want it, and decent — but not awesome — remapping capability.

Or, for astir $250, a group of keycaps, and a mates of hours of assembly, you tin creation a Bauer Lite successful any of a zillion colour combinations and usage DynaCap parts to move it into a afloat remappable EC keyboard that feels for illustration Topre while still being compatible pinch the immense world of aftermarket keycaps. Doesn’t that sound nice?

DynaCap is simply a strategy of third-party, Topre-compatible parts from Clever Keebs that make it (relatively) easy and (relatively) inexpensive to create caller electrocapacitive keyboards, person an existing mechanical keyboard to EC, aliases modify a Topre committee to usage modular keycaps. The afloat DynaCap stack consists of sliders, housings, stabilizers, domes, springs, silencing rings, and sheet gaskets (required only if you’re converting a Topre board). All you request is simply a compatible PCB and move sheet to move immoderate mechanical keyboard into an electrocapacitive 1 that useful pinch MX keycaps.

Stop maine if you’ve heard this portion before. Topre keyboards norm because their electrocapacitive switches springiness them an unmatched, top-heavy tactile bump that you can’t get anyplace else. Unfortunately, location are only a fistful of existent Topre keyboards still successful production, successful only 4 layouts: full-size, TKL, a caller nonstandard 75 percent board, and the Happy Hacking Keyboard. And isolated from for a mates of okayish Realforce gaming keyboards, they’re not compatible pinch the MX equine style utilized by beautiful overmuch each keycap group ever. This is simply a large problem for a mini number of people, and immoderate of them person tried to hole it.

It’s not arsenic elemental arsenic conscionable swapping the sliders from Topre to MX. MX-compatible keycaps are designed to fresh complete Cherry-MX-style housings; if you usage MX sliders connected Topre housings, immoderate keycap profiles connected immoderate rows will bang into the housings connected the measurement down. Both Ryan Norbauer and Clever besides redesigned their move housings to accommodate. Norbauer’s are radically different to the constituent wherever they’re incompatible pinch Topre switchplates, but that’s moot because you tin only get them connected a Norbauer board. See supra re: $3,600.

DynaCap parts, connected the different hand, are disposable à la carte and are intercompatible pinch Topre parts. DynaCap sliders fresh into Topre housings and vice versa; DynaCap domes and springs activity pinch Topre boards and vice versa. If you conscionable want to make a Topre committee activity pinch MX keycaps, you only request the sliders, silencing rings (optional), lodging gaskets, and housings (unless you’re converting a committee pinch an integrated switchplate).

But the existent magic comes from having the afloat stack. Paired pinch a PCB and switchplate, you tin usage DynaCap to move a keyboard designed for MX switches into 1 that’s very overmuch for illustration a Topre board, and moreover amended successful immoderate ways. DynaCap is moving pinch keyboard vendors to waste DynaPaks — kits that see each the parts needed to person your keyboard — and respective upcoming keyboard group buys see DynaCap options.

The DynaCap strategy is designed by Clever Keebs, and manufactured and sold done Omnitype, and 1 of the first DynaPaks disposable is for Omnitype’s Bauer Lite keyboard. This is incredibly convenient for me. I ain a Bauer Lite. I emotion the Bauer Lite. It’s a 65 percent keyboard kit pinch a ton of different translucent colour combinations and a layout that combines the champion features of the Happy Hacking Keyboard and my beloved and now-discontinued Leopold FC660C: divided backspace and arrow keys. And now, pinch DynaCap, it tin besides consciousness for illustration those 2 Topre keyboards.

If you don’t already person a Bauer Lite, you tin configure 1 pinch a DynaCap sheet and PCB successful the design lab for $135.99 and up, depending connected different options, past adhd the $121.50 60/65% DynaCap bundle for the remainder of the parts (be judge to prime the 7u stabilizer ligament option). If you already person a Bauer Lite, you tin get a full conversion kit pinch sheet and PCB for conscionable nether $200, which is what I did.

Converting my Bauer Lite to DynaCap wasn’t complicated, though it was a spot tedious. I unscrewed the 4 screws astatine the bottommost of the housing, removed the apical housing, disconnected the JST cable, and the full plate, PCB, switch, and keycap sandwich came retired successful 1 piece.

Then it was a elemental matter of snapping the move housings into the DynaCap plate, adding silencing rings to each slider, lubing the slider rails connected each lodging pinch 1 type of lubricant, utilizing a thicker lubricant connected the stabilizer ligament housings and clips, dropping the sliders into the housings, laying the domes connected the sliders, putting the springs successful a container pinch a fewer drops of lipid and shaking it up (you tin skip this portion if you get the gold-coated springs), decanting the hopeless tangle of springs from the container into a container and shaking that until capable springs detached from the mass, laying the springs into the undersides of the domes 1 by one, cautiously placing the PCB complete the full assembly, and securing it pinch respective twelve screws to guarantee moreover pressure. Then I put the full point upside-down into the apical housing, reattached the daughterboard cable, attached the bottommost housing, and replaced those 4 screws. After that, each I had to do was instal immoderate keycaps, link the keyboard to a computer, unfastened Via, calibrate each move by bottoming it out, use my preferred cardinal map, and tweak the RGB underlighting (obviously).

Nothing to it.

If you haven’t built a keyboard before, you mightiness inquire yourself: Why fuss pinch each that? Great question. It’s much effort than I put into my mechanical keyboard builds; there, I beautiful overmuch conscionable lube the stabilizers and telephone it a day. But it’s not much much effort. Lubing electrocapacitive move sliders is easier than cracking unfastened mechanical switches.

But here’s why: I person been utilizing mechanical keyboards since 2009, and I’ve had a Topre electrocapacitive keyboard since 2017. I’ve spent a batch of that clip trying to find switches that would make my mechanical boards consciousness much for illustration Topre; I bought a third-party controller for my Topre committee to make it remappable for illustration a mechanical board.

DynaCap isn’t Topre. The medium-weight DynaCap domes successful my Bauer Lite consciousness conscionable a touch lighter than the 45g Topre domes successful a caller HHKB reappraisal unit, and substantially lighter than the eight-year-old domes successful my Leopold board. I don’t person that $3,600 Seneca reappraisal portion anymore, truthful I can’t comparison that. But I don’t request DynaCap to beryllium Topre; I person a Topre committee for that.

Photography by Nathan Edwards / The Verge isolated from wherever noted.