9 posts tagged “building”

Hello those who are following my attempts to make alternative, improved (that is Janko and jammer keyboard conversion) keys.
On Friday, I met with the local engineer for Hong-Kong Moulding, a firm that sells plastic parts in Vancouver via intermediaries in Hong-Kong and manufactures in said parts in Shi Jie Dongguang Guangdong.
Interesting experience, as I had to work, carefully, through an interpreter. Since this is a fair amount of money, and a mistake can mean that I'm eating "Kraft dinner" (an inexpensive Canadian macaroni and powdered cheese dish) for a while.
The bottom line is that by removing the "hook" on the key (the thing that juts down, hooking over a bumper on the base) and making it a glue on part, costs will come down 45% or so.

So I'm getting there, the cost has gone from ridiculous ($6,500 startup +  2.50/2 keys, limit of 2000 keys) to exorbitant ($6,400 + .40/2 keys, many, many keys possible) to just barely possible $under (?) $4,000 + $0.30/2 keys.

The next step? Stay tuned.

Ken.

In my quest to make it easy to own a better music keyboard than standard, things are looking up.

Here's a quote from Hong Kong Mould Manufacturing for the same product.

Basic cost to create the "mould" (English spelling" and set it up: 6,400 (for a steel, not aluminum mold)

Thereafter, each key pair costs $0.44, declining to $0.40, but there is no ceiling of a 2,000 pieces, I can create 20,000 or more. 10,000 key-pairs would cost 4,160, for pickup in Richmond BC.

Why is this better? Because at  under $20 for a set of 88 keys, there's a chance that I could actually recoup my investment.  A long chance, (I'd have to sell them for more than $20, sorry!), but a chance, none the less.

Secondly, this is with the ideal keys, which were designed to be created in pairs to reduce the ProtoMold cost. 
By simplifying the keys, I can reduce the mold creation cost.

Ken.

 

I once saw a $50 million (current prices) fur coat at the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York. it was being used as a rather dramatic painter's drip cloth, the point being that Du Pont's new paints were formulated to be drip-less, unlike older paints.
The $50 mil price tag was, of course, a bit of a gimmick. While that first one (a very nice coat by the way; it looked like finest mink) cost a bundle to make, the real value of the coat was in the learning how to make the coat, not in actual value of the first one.

Likewise, while I spent a wee bit over a thousand dollars on this pair of keys, the value of the keys is their potential children.
The keys aren't perfect - a number of small adjustments need to be made, then they need to be throughly checked out, and a plastics molding shop selected.

Then comes the big decision point

• what size order can I afford
• what size market is there?

I'm awaiting quotations with trepidation.
Ken.
Update: Kevin has pointed out the the keys actually cost $75 each to print, and that the key design cost $1000 & tax. (BTW, that $1k was well worth it - he saved my mucho grief) I still prefer to call them the thousand-dollar keys- it's much more dramatic

Hi, good people reading this blog.

How would I best collect info on who is willing to get what keyboard?

• Set up a voting system?
• Setup a modest refundable deposit ($10) system in Pay-Pal?

My intent was to create Jammer conversion keys.
The fact that they are also Janko conversion keys, albeit imperfect, changes things!
If there is a 'large" (even 20 buyers) market for Jankos , then I can run off many more keys, and the production costs halves, then the price I must charge halves, and the virtuous cycle kicks on.

Suggestions welcome. This is important, as If there is a decent market, I can have keys and kits out within a month!
If not, I have to go cheap and slow on production.

BTW, I don't intend to make a business of this, I just wanted to break the horrible "jammers/thummers/Jankos are unavailable because there is no market, there is no market because they are unavailable" Catch-22 problem.

Ken. 

May 1st has arrived and a commerical Thummer - or even an agreement announcement remains M.I.A.

Therefore I indeed be making a general purpose conversion kit so you, dear reader, may build your own jammer (the generic version of the long-awaited Thummer), Janko (if you swing that way), or triad (the cheap version of a C-Thru Axis).

Details to follow. This is not going to be all that easy.

First I have to extract a black and a white key from my jammer ...

Ken.

Hi fellow keyboard improvement keeners,

Since the Thummer is M.I.A. I'm now making generic keyboard modification key caps made. You can then build your own generic keyboard, and set it to either be Janko (chromatone) style, jammer (thummer a.k.a. Wicki/Hayden) or a C-Thru unit, albeit it will only have 4 active key-rows and 2 duplicate key-rows. If you select the Janko layout effectively 6 rows will be active rows - you'll have a full keyboard. It won't be as good as a Thummer, but it will be a step on the way.

You can make the unit look like this one: 

it will probably be about 4 cm longer and 2 cm lower in height, and have better action and feel, The changes will be reversible (just put the old keys back on), so that you can restore your standard keyboard. I've also got provisional agreement from M-Audio for them to sell us their warranty returns.

The keys will allow us to create flexible generic keyboards of 4 rows (with 2 optional dummy rows) high by n rows wide - up to 88 (using 2 m-audio es88s) , 66, 69 or 49 etc, and you can put on the key-cap of your choice.

Price? I'm guessing that creating the molds and creating a couple of dozen kits will be within my budget and what I'm willing to gamble away. I'll sell them to cover costs - $200?

One thing for you to do - I'd dearly like to have a reduced-size keyboard (ideally a Usb-powered controller like the m-audios) to work with - see my jammer improvement notes. If you could find one, it would be great.
Also dearly hoped for is switches that could be used to sense velocity, that is, they would trigger twice when depressing then we could build 6-row pianoforte-plus keyboards of the perfect dimensions.

Sincerely,
Ken @ MusicScienceGuy.vox.com

BTW color is turning out to be very useful - I see a note on the score and the position gives it a color, and the color gives me my fingering).

Herein are some points on how well the current design works and what I would change.

Key size and spacing,
The keys are larger / spaced out more than optimum – about 26-27 mm – bigger than the piano

Oddly, I think the larger keys makes it harder to find the keys; because the fingers tend to drift a bit around on the too-wide, flat key surface as you are playing them, until one finds oneself a fair bit off-center. Either the keys should be shaped like C-Thru’s keys, or smaller or both.

A 12-15% reduction to slightly less than the width of a piano key would be good – the lower limit would be the spacing of a computer keyboard’s keys, to 19 mm  or 25% less. This would allow one's hand to span over an octave width, and put more keys into easy reach, particularly of the little finger.

I suggest 21-22 mm spacing would be about right when we start making our own units from scratch.

Also see the work on "reduced-keyboard" done at a college in the US.

Key length and angling.
The original keys were angled towards the center by 10 degrees, to reduce the pinching motion of keys coming together at the center. In conjunction with rounding the key-caps, this worked.

 
Weighting
The keys, because they are missing the weight on the end pulling it down have a shorter key, are a little harder to depress than a piano, but still quite workable, as the keys are uniform in touch and position.

Note that I drilled the white key’s spring-hole down so that the spring pull matches the black key’s (they were not the same; the black keys were set significantly lighter than the longer white keys), using my drill press set to an exact depth, and, crucially, a clamp to hold it in exactly the right place (it wanted to wander out of the hole); this was quite successful. I am much temped to drill the spring-holes down a bit more to lighten the touch, against this is the time required. 

Interestingly the firmer keys are harder to play quickly, which is not what one would expect - you'd expect them to snap back quicker, right? What seems to be more important is that it takes the fingers significantly longer to switch on, then off when pressing hard than when pressing softly. At a guess, softening the keys to near computer-keyboard levels may be best.

It was noted in the Shortcuts to faster learning post, that if the keys are made more pc-keyboard-like in feel, then a new player might be able to use their extensive experience with typing on a computer keyboard to save many valuable hours.  I would suggest the keys should have an upward force a bit lighter than the tip of a piano.

See http://www.stanwoodpiano.com/PolarRuleInstructions.pdf and http://theorem.ca/~my2iu/workshop/piano/piano.html  - they suggest about 7-9  grams.

Shape of the key-caps
The “spindle” profile for the key caps worked well. With a pure hexagon, the side corners can catch the finger (it’s a bit sharp) and also make the gap a bit small. Grinding off 1 mm gave a 12% gap increase, and stopped my fingers from getting jabbed. Also see my post on key shapes.

The top and bottom point can be left on; it fills in the hole nicely.
The high-quality, thick double-sided tape (3M brand) works well. I’d planned on using this only as a temporary measure, but will delay this indefinitely. The keys do move a bit on the tape, but can be gently pushed back.

On the C-thru Axis key board the keys have beveled edges and a finger-tip dimple in the center – this may help in centering and is an idea that should be tried. http://www.keyboardmag.com/pop-up.aspx?content_id=27426&section_code=5

Streamlining the process
The most labor-intensive part was in making the keys and key-caps.

Modifying the keys and making the keycaps was a royal pain. We need to automate the process.

I have decided to investgate what it would take to have plastic keys made.

Further notes from a conversation with Paul P:

[Paul]What concerned me is that the midi switches are laid out according to the 7-5 key size - which might make it impossible to get the wanted spacing between the keys (?) maybe that's not correct, maybe you would know if that's a problem that could be worked out.

[Response] Key size is an issue: because I could not shrink the rig the keys were mounted on, the keys are larger than Ideal.  Oddly, this makes, I think, it harder to find the keys; because the fingers tend to drift a bit around on the too-wide, flat key surface as you are playing them, until one finds oneself a fair bit off-center. Either the keys should be shaped like C-Thru’s keys, or smaller or both.

It made me think of a way to build a 6-6..(or other)...it would take 3 keyboards that are cut and each keyboard would be 2 levels (chromatic layout) making 6 levels like the original janko.

If I get what you mean, one could take 3 M-Audio keyboards and stack them, possibly angle them too.
Yes. This would be doable.

your vox page is very informative and educational.....and has been helpful for me to consider a building project of my own.

 Thank you!

"is there a software that makes it possible to connect your PC keyboard to MIDI" … I thought it would be easier to build some thing of that nature to your own design and specs - especially for other then 12 note tunings.

It’s easy if you have max/msp (which costs $500) as I do. What I don’t have is the time to program it. I’ll send to you my little max program if you like. You can use max/msp for free for 30 days.

 Is the thumbar on your zipex keyboard for tremolo and modulation?

Yes, as a proof of concept. Although I didn’t use it much – I was focusing more on getting the right notes.  

On the music notation project you asked me check out your notation - honestly I was confused....I read standard notation for piano and percussion - and guitar tablature, other then playing by ear.

It would make sense as soon as you tried to play the Thummer/jammer and had to figure out what line to play what note. After a month or so you don’t need to mark up the score, as it becomes habit.

I came up with a variation of standard notation for the 6-6 keyboard - that I would like to get to work on..........that wasn't my original interest in alternate keyboards.

My basic goal is still to teach myself music so I can sing better. Already I sight-read much better, and can play my show chorus’ tunes in the original key. That I may be able to actually play the thing well in a year of so is gravy.

The wearable ZipEx is a 4-row musical jammer keyboard I built because (1) one can't buy a Thummer yet and (2) it happens to be surprisingly easy to build from a "regular" keyboard. Jammers have several advantages over a traditional keyboard.

This design is also a living illustration that one can make a virtue out of necessity; when forced to make do (e.g. can only make 4 rows), then the "making do" forces interesting innovation (e.g. use tricks to make the thing have 8 rows - take that Thummer!), and with the dementia that comes of gadget-building obsession.

This unit has 4 rows of 15-20 keys, arranged thus, when playing in "laptop" mode:

And in "guitar" mode:

The black keys at the side are pitch and octave-shifting function keys, used to make it pretend to have more rows and keys. In effect one can have a 96-key keyboard that pretends, if you want it to, be two keyboards, one for each hand.

So there you have it, the music geek's newest fashion accessory: 

I've actually had multiple people stop me and say: "what the hell is that?" - no finer accolade can a geek get.