Tuning Botanica

Earlier this year, in March I posted on Geekhack and Discord about Botanica for the first time.
I outlined a desire to convey the warmth and serenity of nature into the aspects of a keyboard, and while the keyboard was largely an aesthetic success, the acoustic and tactile experience was lacking.

Botanica Prototype - March

The intent was to use a large brass or copper mid-piece to tighten case resonance like a low-pass filter. 

However, the reality was that I had underestimated the density of the material.

Instead of creating a controlled lower-pitched resonance with a variety of switches, the board forced the user to only use long poles to achieve a respectable volume and its dense construction would eliminate any resonance in the assembly even with the loudest and most obnoxious long-pole switches available today.

The external surfaces of Botanica blend curves, layers and colour together to bring the elegance of flora to your desk, but I needed it to be congruent in all of its aspects.

I spent the next two months recalibrating what a board could sound like.

Keebholic Anonymous September 2026

Weeks spent testing over 100 unique builds of others in ktechs and local community meetups, sending the prototype to peers in the community for discussions, things that formed the basis of what the board was to them and how it would achieve its goals for them.

Today, the board has turned away from the original dense mid-piece.
The assembly today looks like this:

Top: 6063 Aluminium
Middle: 6063 Aluminium
Bottom: 316L Stainless Steel

Opting for a dense bottom case enclosing an aluminium top-on-aluminium mid-case assembly with increased internal space.

Swapping the intended purpose of the mid and bottom cases allowed the board to breathe but maintain the low-pass effect I was looking for. 

Additionally, further acoustic optimisations were done to further combat the overly muted sound.

However, this change was not done at little cost.

Machining a large piece of stainless steel into a hollow frame was not efficient time or tooling-wise, and the weight that acted as a proxy for quality had been traded for a meaningful sound difference.

Cost and weight however, are not representative qualities of my convictions for Botanica,
And selling you a compromised version of its intentions defeats the purpose of it existing.