3D Printing and Building a Dactyl Light-Cycle Keyboard

Around a year ago during the Fall of 2020, I was a high school senior applying for college. In typing all the essays for the various schools to which I was applying, I was introduced to a certain mechanical keyboard called the Kinesis Advantage. My mom had been using it and saying good things about it for years, like how it was super comfortable to type on and supposedly more ergonomic than your generic rectangular keyboard. Instead of long rows of keys that spanned the length of the keyboard, the layout was two key-wells, one for each hand. The keys were arranged in a grid pattern unlike regular keyboards which had staggered rows of keys. Basically it looked like this:

Learning to type on this keyboard was definitely difficult at the beginning. Because I was so used to the staggered layout of my MacBook Pro's keyboard, I often found myself hitting the wrong keys and needing to look down at the keys quite frequently. However, I will say that pressing the actual keys was super satisfying. The Kinesis Advantage was my first experience with a mechanical keyboard. These mechanical keyboards use mechanical switches under each key to create a satisfying sound or tactile feel when pressed. After getting used to the keyboard, I decided that I enjoyed typing on this unique keyboard. Everything was perfect, but I felt that it was too bulky for its basic functionalities. This inspired me to create my own Dactyl Light-Cycle keyboard, which I would then be able to bring to college to use as well.

The Kinesis was equipped with Cherry MX Brown switches, which were the switches I decided to use on my project.