Hi all, I recently got into the world of ergo mech by borrowing a friend's old Iris v2, and I really love how powerful and customizable things can be with QMK firmware.

Recently, my old n52te has started to show signs of age after a dozen or so years of abuse. If you're not familiar, they look like this:

There's definitely stuff that could be improved on--just being able to build your own firmware for it would be amazing. Having one or two more thumb buttons for layers would be sweet as well.

The community of ergo mech keyboard builders are doing some super cool things with 3d printed builds and all kinds of neat stuff. Since I've just been dipping my toes in, my question is: does anyone know of any good replacements for my n52te? Is this something anyone has tried tinkering around with?

Thanks!

So, I figured y'all would be the best people to ask. I make fairly traditional row-staggered hand-wires, but I like them to be stabilizer-free, due to my home tooling limitations and a realization that they work fine. They also avoid one of the biggest pet peeves across the various niches of keyboard people. What is the easiest and cheapest way to come by a handful of convex keycaps at 1.75u and under, to use as spacebars? I can make a lot of different combinations work, so "mix kits" in Cherry or MDA or XDA seem the most likely to be useful, but I'm not sure.

With the sole exception of the Enter key (which at 1.75u will need to be labeled CapsLock or Control for most keycap sets), most keys can be sourced by being a little careful with which sets you get, even in sculpted profiles. Numpads require a bit of care too, as many don't have the two to occupy a "split plus", but they'll usually have something usable for that, as well as a shrunken Enter.

I can find blank keycaps easy enough, and they work pretty well for XDA, but other profiles can get a little uncomfortable on the thumb, and only some benefit from being turned around.

We're a mechanical keyboard shop that's specialize in aluminum case for ergomech.

The Sofle v2 with aluminum case is one of my proudest builds and here is the link so you can have a look and if you are interested, you can snatch one for yourself: https://ergomech.store/shop/sofle-v2-enclose-case-16

If you like some blinking, then here is the Sofle RGB for you: https://ergomech.store/shop/sofle-rgb-enclose-case-13

If you like it small, then we got you covered with the Corne: https://ergomech.store/shop/corne-cherry-aluminum-version-early-bird-419

Those are the most popular open source keyboard designs that we've seen, but how about something that only we have?

Sofle Hybrid: https://ergomech.store/shop/sofle-hybrid-aluminum-version-exclusive-403

Neodox: https://ergomech.store/shop/neodewtco-neodox-enclosed-case-version-exclusive-52

As you can see, we got you covered from the smallest to the largest boards.

Oh one last things, we in Vietnam is celebrating Labor Day on the first of May, and to share this with you guys, we're having 15% discount when you use this code: LABORDAY