Janko keyboard progress

Me playing the Janko keyboard now when I've made keycaps. Much easier to play now and a lot of fun. I'm gonna make a cabinet to it as well. Hope you like it. If I had CNC mill and stuff I'd be happy to make a few of these. Now I have to do everything the slow way. Took forever to even get this far. Project description here http://www.carmi.se/misterstarshine/Projects/8

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Janko
• Piano
• Chromatic
• Hexagonal
• Uniform
• Musical
• Keyboard

[brilliantcorners]

Great work! I have been promoting this type of keyboard for 20 years now and it is great to see it finally catching on. How long will it take for manufacturers to pull their fingers out? Have you thought of making a design for sale on Shapeways?

[misterstarshine]

@brilliantcorners I need good machines in order to make a useful product. It would be neat with all the features of today's keyboards out there but with Janko layout instead.

[goldenhelix]

could you please tell me where you sourced the switches and the caps? i built a custom b-system chromatic midi keyboard and used sanwa arcade buttons, but they require too much actuation pressure to play very quickly. i'd like to do it again probably with the materials you used.

[misterstarshine]

@goldenhelix The switches are Cherry MX1A series with linear movement. Check out the Cherry Corp. homepage.

They were bought from DigiKey and the keycaps were specially ordered from DataCal. The hexagon tops are punched from a plastic sheet and glued onto the keycaps. One disadvantage with pc keyboard keyswitches is that the keys tend to be somewhat sloppy. Hope this information helps.

[misterstarshine]

@geoffreyefloyd I made the puncher from a modified spark plug. Had to remove the ceramic part and fix it in my lathe. Round keys work well too.

[geoffreyefloyd]

@misterstarshine Amazing job! So you're saying that the handspan is about 1 1/2 octaves or like...18 semitones? Where did you get a hexagonal "puncher" for the keys? I've been unable to find hexagonal cookie cutters or anything like that. What kind of keycaps are under the hexagonal keys? Some ones that you found online that go with cherrys? Also, the edges of the keys look beveled so I'm wondering how that came about with a puncher...I'd really love to have some of those keys.

[Zylstra555]

That is quite impressive. How are the keys organized? I like how you included slightly different heights for each row, I've been looking at just a few similar keyboard designs on Youtube to yours and others seem to not take that into consideration. Also very clean looking.

[raymangold22]

@misterstarshine You should have got cherry blues.

[serdasteclas]

Great job! I just found your site, and I'm very impressed with this project, I'm considering to build one myself, thanks for sharing this

[ericoschmitt]

im about to build a janko PVC pipe organ.. i have all the ideas ready on my mind, and i have tested the pipes and the lever system i intend to use.

the only problem is i dont have the money for buying all the material!

even making most parts of pvc, and some wood, it still costs :/ maybe i build a 2 octaves prototype with high notes only (smaller pipes)