Aspiring engineer James Stanley recently 3D printed his own mechanical keyboard from scratch. While it's not the world's first 3D printed keyboard, nor is it likely to rank among the best mechanical keyboards of 2020, one must admit that there is undeniable ingenuity to appreciate here. After three iterations and two months of hard work from the initial design, Stanley has finally perfected the Jessboard.

In an exclusive interview with PC Gamer, Stanley admitted to being fascinated by "designing something functional." Apparently, it's not just keyboards. Over the past year, he has also designed a very lockdown-friendly chess board. The chessboard moves pieces by itself and can even be connected to lichess.org to play against an online opponent.

Despite admitting that the Jessboard is "genuinely the worst keyboard" he has ever used, there is a certain charm to its name. So kudos to him for his taste. But more amazingly, everything here was designed, printed, glued, and wired by Stanley himself (aside from the spring design, which he borrowed from Riskable).

Stanley, who is a melon to Matthew Lillard (at least I think so), said that completing the build was "more frustrating than I expected. In hindsight, he would have paid more attention to tightening up the weak feel of the board itself, as well as making room for wiring, and would not have left the back side bare.

Stanley based his layout on a standard 60% ISO keyboard, but the difference with his design is that he removed the right Windows key and correspondingly reduced the size of the adjacent keys, replacing it with his signature "jes" and smiley face keys ( The only difference is that he replaced them with "wholesome" keys. These can be mapped to switch layers on the QMK (basically FN keys); the keyswitches themselves, printed in PETG, a plastic commonly used in 3D printing, use a plate spring mechanism and were "pressed over 350k times in all cases" during the testing phase. Stanley admits that although he initially considered making a PCB and soldering the switches, "I'm a little uncomfortable making my own switches"

and that "I'm not sure I'd want to do it myself"

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For those considering designing their own 3D printed switches, James recommends working first "on the feel of the switch first. Once you have that, you can focus on optimizing reliability. After all the hard work, he humbly declared, 'Unfortunately it's not a very good keyboard, but you can't win them all. This kind of constructive criticism and optimistic attitude is something we appreciate from aspiring engineers.

The cost of the entire project equates to just under $40. This does not include prototyping costs, test equipment, or tools. If you are interested in printing your own, please see his blog post.

Finally, for all of you aspiring technical designers and engineers, Stanley quotes Ira Glass and offers some heartfelt advice. If you're shying away from the quality of your own work, remember. Everyone has a phase where what they are making is not up to par, but the most important thing is to 'do a lot of work' and 'fight through' that nagging feeling that what you are doing is not good enough. If you don't give up, one day you will.

Makers of the world, we commend you. Keep doing what you are doing.