Mechanical Keyboard Economics

I can remember a long time a go while browsing for videos on YouTube, there were a lot of tutorials on how to assemble mechanical keyboard. I said assemble because I'm pretty sure they didn't use PCB to wire everything. Instead, they built a frame that holds key switches and then solder the wires to each key switch.

It was nice to watch that, but i never tried it myself, because of the prices they threw at me through the video. At the time they paid $1 to $2 per switch. That's greatly overpriced. But not only key switches are overpriced.

If you want a keyboard PCB, and you want to buy it from some well known seller. The prices are from 30€ and up to 50€, maybe even more. I think the market is madly overpriced, especially for non-electronic people that just want to assemble their own keyboard. Today my keyboard PCB arrived from PCB manufacturer.

It costs about 3€ per piece, and i requested 5 PCBs, so its 15€. 5 PCBs is a minimal amount, if i request 10, or 25, or 50, or 100, the price goes down. I'm pretty sure if 50 pieces is ordered, the cost would fall below 1.5€. The same goes for the components. If everything is ordered in bulk, the price cant go over 8€, maybe even 7€.

For the end a little life hack for saving money. Since those PCBs are crazy overpriced, there is a great place where one can get them under 20€. Tindie.com is a small marketplace where people sell DIY electronics that they made or designed. And keyboard PCBs can go for 10€ there.

And as for key switches, there is AliExpress, and i bought two kinds, one silent and one silent but a bit louder that other. And both for about 0.2€ a piece. That's all i got to say.

Thanks for reading