Lordy, I hope so. It is with great regret that my work has provided me with a MacBook Pro. I have come to realize that the keyboard is really, really great. And typing on my Framework has become somewhat joyless.
I wish it weren’t so. I fervently do. But I am here scrounging around looking for relief from someone, anyone. Seeing this fills me with hope! I’ll have my eyes peeled on this.
I’m delighted this project is still going. But I cannot help feeling that instead of designing, engineering, testing to millions of cycles, putting into manufacture, distributing and then dealing with any after-sales issue (many of which will be customer caused) it would not have been much simpler to have just made the chassis a smidge deeper to accommodate off-the-peg Cherry ULP! 
Edit: added smiley because some apparently need it spelled out to them I’m purposefully being irreverent!
The chassis is already made. We’re years past that point. So you’re just hassling them over a mistake you perceive they made? Targeting a certain thinness. A little extra thickness can sometimes be enough for a big reviewer to decide to call something a bulky brick vs acceptable.
@David_Eastham i feel like this conversation has already been thoroughly played out, but just in the interest of trying to button it up one final time:
yes, they could have made the chassis a little deeper. they could have done a LOT of things, that SOMEONE would have found more desirable in some respect. but when you’re making a product, you have to make decisions. determine what features you need, versus what features you don’t need. analyze the tradeoffs between one option and its competing options. settle on the breakpoints of what best serves the design you are attempting to make into reality.
they made a different choice than you on this point. they made different choices than i would on several points. that does not make the choices they made incorrect, or ill reasoned, or ill intentioned, it just makes the choices they made different. belaboring it endlessly definitely isn’t going to make history change, and it’s probably not going to convince them to re-engineer it for what is very clearly an exceedingly niche case.
please, i beg of you, find a way to focus on a viable way forward for your needs.
Much as I like needling the zealots on this forum I think the announcement of these switches does deserve an expanded and more earnest response, so here goes.
No, I’m responding to recent developments on the forum, if anything a little late to the post back in July. I would love to think that they produced a photo of a prototype key-switch just to shut me up, but I have not really been active here for a little while. Looking up thread, my last post mentioning discrete key switches is back in July of last year.
Paint me skeptical, but I cannot get so excited about a picture of a black rectangle purporting to be this switch. Whilst it gives an idea of how it might look in practice many of us will still have questions. Hopefully those in the know can enlighten me:
You ask the first better than I could: will it work? Is the object in the photo functional?
@Tony_Grosinger asks the next question: is it going to be practical for the amateur to build their own keyboards - the whole point of the exercise after all?
As for deeper cases, the responses from @MJ1 and @eso have dug their heels in on the issue. These responses risk painted us into a corner where the discrete key-switches must to be made to work if custom keyboard formats can happen. Since the alternative apparently requires a loss of face from the firm and more strident members of the user community.
Good news here: I am quietly optimistic about the new MNT Reform model (the Next) which has just been announced. That boasts a proper mechanical keyboard by default, so loads of depth for customisation, from a firm whose concept of open source hardware is on a whole other level.
As for the weariness I detect in your posts, that is a reflection of how long it has taken to this point. I actually felt similar weariness - some might say strangely - at the picture of this supposed key-switch. Part of me would have been happier if the whole thing had been quietly put to bed and we could - as you suggest - move on rather than try to get our hopes up again.
Hello hello. Pardon me, but does anyone know if there are KiCad or Eagle footprints for this? I’ve been trying to design a full-size split keyboard but I always get stuck on the PBC Design 
It seems to still be in the prototype stage.
That I can understand, but what key switch is it based on? Cause on can assume it’s PG1316, looking at the pins, but I rather ask to be sure.
Edit: Reference; https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/1cfg3vr/mikefive_a_kailh_pg1316_keyboard/
Sorry, I must have missed notification of your reply. Very late response, but it wouldn’t likely be a Kailh PG1316 switch. The FWL16 has 3.7mm of height available
Kailh PG1316 is over that even without the keycap or PCB.
I don’t think there is any off-the-shelf keyswitch module that is thin enough. Cherry MX ULP is 3.5mm, but it needs to be connected to a PCB underneath it. And then room for a keycap. cherrymx.de/en/cherry-mx/mx-ultra-low-profile/mx-ulp-click.html
I would think Framework is working on a custom module, perhaps based off of components of keyswitch mechanism used in their current FWL16 keyboards.
It’s nice that these framework one key modules were officially announced at their 2025 Launch Event, so (fingers crossed) they’ll be available later this year. I’m looking forward to it!
Link to Linus showing the ortholinear keyboard prototype that uses these:
There are still a lot of unanswered questions that will only be resolved when they hit the market. Will they be easy for the amateur to build with is probably my main question.
I know some see me as a pessimist but the very slow rate of progress with these is concerning. A cynic might say they announced them at the event as a sop to the “maker community” who have been the strongest advocates of framework.
Judging by the pictures on the store (Framework | One Key Module), that seems to be castellated edge pads. Which is already a good news for hand soldering.
There seems to be some metal tabs in each corner, which would also facilitate positioning. (Edit: on a second look, it could also just be tabs for panelisation)
There are no picture of the side, but my guess is that it would probably need a very thin PCB stack-up though.
(Also, can we start speculating widely about the number of pads that may indicate it embeds an addressable LED 
)
Those silver metal tabs are for mounting. If you missed it, here is Nrp saying how they’re designed to be mounted.
The mounting design does not seem to have changed from the first prototype he showed.
And this would be the general idea of what a plate which they’d mount to should look like
Image:
One of the prototype pictures he showed was from an angle and allows you to get an idea of the height.
i was really hoping the final module would have a smaller footprint. one of my long-term hopes is to get an 18mm pitch keyboard on the fw16, but the available low profile switches aren’t going to fit in the clearance available without a chassis modification.
which i’m not opposed to doing, but i kinda don’t wanna be the canary in that coalmine, and nobody else appears to be attempting it. ah well.
as an aside, i notice the entry in the marketplace suggests there should be documentation in the github repository, but it provides no link, and i can’t find any mention of the one key module in the repositories that made sense to me to check.
I don’t think it’s up yet. But the default repository sort order is Last Pushed, so I think it should land near the top when it appears. github.com/orgs/FrameworkComputer/repositories. I did look through the names of all of their repositories after they announced.
Do you happen to know the exact measurement of the FWL16 keycaps?
Or maybe some here with a set of calipliers and a FWL16 would be nice enough to check. Since the marketplace picture is dead straight on, we could measure where those mounting pins land using the keycap size. Are you looking to get the traditional keyboard layout?
grabbing some calipers (nice digital ifixit thing)
[time passes]
single keycap width (measured both f and g): ~15.6mm
width from left of one keycap to right of next keycap (from f to g): ~34.3mm
gap using previous measurements: 34.3mm - 31.2mm = 3.1
gap between keycaps measured directly: ~3.6
key pitch as derived from above: ~18.7mm (without direct measured gap), ~19.2mm (with direct measured gap).
key pitch directly measured: ~19.some (this is the least accurate because i can’t brace the brackets against anything).
it is almost certainly a key pitch of 19.05mm, and i’m probably just making a lot of errors. having a good tool doesn’t mean anything if you’re bad at using it. 
well, with the proportion of the board vs the the keycap as eyeballed, it suggests it is at least plausible to get a narrower spacing than the standard 19.05mm with these modules. i’m not in a position to do the measurement from the photos.
yeah, i basically want a standard keyboard layout, just smaller. for reasons that elude me, most of the work that goes into making smaller pitch keyboards in the hobbyist market is ALSO making minimalist keyboards. the only reliable way i know of to order normal 18mm pitch keyboards of any quality is to import them from japan, which has all kinds of issues with it.
Hmm, I think you might be able to get a bit better than the standard 19.05 mm pitch. I’m seeing a 3.01 mm gap between keycaps left/right, horizontally, and a 2.89mm vertical gap. Would give an 18.61 mm pitch horizontally and 18.49 mm pitch vertically (rows 2-3). And the edges of the mounting plate under each one-key-module sticks out a wee little bit on all sides, which the mounting pins bump against. If the finial shipping modules trim that so that it does not extend beyond the pcb then it’ll be a little closer. Or if someone takes a file to the edges. 
Maybe bringing it to 18.5 pitch all around.
I do believe they placed the mounting pins and key-switch pads so that they can be placed as tight as possible vertically when in the standard keyboard arrangement. I’m guessing the side pads might be VCC, Data in/out, Gnd for addressable WS2812 compatible RGB LEDs. With data in on one side, out on the other, they can be connected as a strip. If one hasn’t heard of it, laptop keyboards can usually have legends laser etched, and then the backlight will shine through.
I would like some keys on the thin side slots from the keyboard. Just “Home, Page UP, Page Down, End”. I use those keys a lot, and its a pain having to need two hands every time I wish to press them on the FW16.
The keyboard runs QMK. If you have a numpad, you can just bind it to be those.
I also recompiled the firmware, so backlight toggle is now Esc+ Backspace (or Esc+equal), rather than numlock and enter/+.
The only nitpick I have is the numpad dont have a numlock indicator. But there are other ways around it, like breathing, or backlight strength.
