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The Expletive Keyboard

I built a keyboard that contains only the letters you really need.

A month or two ago, I was browsing Instagram and saw the post in the screenshot. It was what appeared to be a photoshopped keyboard that only contained the letters necessary to tell someone off. I thought it was funny and decided to build a real, functional version. This is the result!

It does, indeed, work. Plug it into a computer’s USB port and it will show up like any other keyboard. Other than the important letters, there is also a space key, a backspace key, and an enter key. The enter is actually a “+” meant for the numpad, which I used because I design the case with the wrong measurement for a normal enter key (2u instead of 2.25u).

A note on key caps:

The key caps for this project are tricky. Most key caps are shaped depending on the row each key sits in. So your “Y” key is shaped differently than your “K” key. This is a problem, since the keys won’t be in normal locations here. For this reason, you need uniform key caps. Both XDA and DSA profile key caps are uniform. Furthermore, because this keyboard required two “U” keys and key cap sets only come with one, I found a set where the numpad asterisk was the same color as the alphanumeric keys.

Also keep in mind that key switches are either PCB-mount or plate-mount. You need plate-mount switches for this project. The same goes for the stabilizers.”

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