This is "krill" a 3d printed, handwired 40% keyboard I designed using FreeCAD.
Bottom:
What do you do with the rotary?
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
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Mechanical Keyboards
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My main use is to mute/unmute the microphone on push - like a big panic button.
For rotation it is left/right, backspace/delete, volume down/up, brightness down/up depending on the current layer.
Left/right, backspace/delete sounds so interesting. Does it work well for you?
Well, to be honest: Before I had the knob on my keyboard, I had an O+P combo for Ctrl+Backspace to delete the last word. I still use that more frequently than the knob. For left/right I should probably try to use it more often.
Cool board!
Thanks!
🤩
This looks super cool but what is the usecase? Isn't it too limited?
Thanks! No, not at all. I have been using boards this small daily for almost 6 years now.
Basically all keys from a full-size keyboard are on my keymap, just not on the base layer. Most keys I can reach by pressing 2 keys, which is equal to typing an uppercase key.
For example on the split spacebars, the left bar does space when pressed shortly, and switches to a layer with numbers and symbols when pressed. The right bar would do enter / switch to navigation layer where there is arrows. Another key thing (no pun indended) is to use whats called home-row modifiers. That basically means gui, shift, alt and control are where your fingers rest (e.g. left hand A, S, D, F).
The main benefit over a full-size board for me is that I don't have to move my fingers more than one row up/down (and index fingers one row in ofc). I have also fun tinkering with layouts and like the small form factor. Getting used to the layout took around one or two weeks - I already had a bigger keyboard with QMK where I added the smaller keymap so I could switch while learning.
Damn that's cool. But I'm imagining putting this mental model on top of vim and window manager and tmux will really fry my brain! More power to you
Yes sure. One step at a time. Mastering vim, figuring out your wm and tmux are very useful skills as well.
I feel like you could put this keyboard on an armband, Pip-Boy style.
Wow, this looks fantastic!
So I understand the shell is 3D printed. But what about what's inside?
The plate (where the switches are mounted to) is printed as well. The wiring is done using 1mm copper wire by hand (hence handwired), switches go into 3d printed sockets. There is a nice!nano microcontroller inside mounted in the middle of the bottom.
Here is a picture of the wiring:
Nice