cantor VS kyria

There are a few things that are close: * The Cantor/Piantor: more aggressive stagger and slightly changed thumb cluster. * The Swept Corne: essentially a big sweep. * The Hillside 46/48: This comes in many forms which are very similar to what you are looking for. Essentially an extra aggressive stagger (and perhaps splayed) Corne with a bigger thumb cluster.

Depending on how comfortable you are ordering PCBs yourself, the Cantor (https://github.com/diepala/cantor ) or the Cheapino (https://github.com/tompi/cheapino ) might be a good starting point for getting into split keyboards, both are diodeless, so you only need to solder the switches and use relatively cheap microcontrollers

The Corne caught my eye first, but I ended up starting with a Cantor, which has more stagger, like OP's keyboard. It didn't work for me. The Corne works better for me.

cantor

Cantor by DiePala, Choc, diodeless, cheap “Black pill” mcu, requires two. Caseless/plateless. Pcb is reversible, but you’ll need trrs cable and Jack.

I have 2 hand-wired keyboards with cherry style switches, and I decided to build a Cantor (diodeless, Corne-like with more pinky stagger) to try a PCB build and the Kailh choc v1 switches for a first time.

several of the low-profile / Choc boards (ex. Cantor) go the plateless and caseless route with nothing more than rubber bumpers on the bottom of the PCB

Cantor – low profile

Kyria – thumb keys can be 2×1u or 1×2u

some variant of home row mods (or just more thumb keys)

Kyria – more pinky stagger

in a translucent dark grey acrylic case, cut with the files that are available on GitHub!

The official case files (no kerf for laserboost) are in git, but also keep in mind they are not ideal with hotswap boards since they have cutouts for stabs and encoders which prevent clipping on many switches. You can use those in any case if you want to see the exact price for your combo. In production, better use a file that doesn't have those cutouts (such version of the official file is circulating in splitkb discord, you'll probably get it if you ask for it there or make a search) - unless you use 2u buttons and want stabs of course. In my experience encoders can be mounted without extra cutouts and look better that way.

These kyria cases should not be being sold as it breaks the terms of their license: https://github.com/splitkb/kyria/blob/master/LICENSE

There exist plate and case files on the Kyria GitHub Repo, but by inspection they appear to be compatible with only MX switches and stabilizers.

I see that SplitKB has case files for 3D printing and laser cutting in acrylic. Would it be possible to use those files with a service like SendCutSend or Ponoko to have them cut the layers out of aluminum instead?