Inside the K-001: A Teardown with Tais & Lukas

The written companion to the K-001 Teardown video. ▶ Watch the full teardown here.

To mark the launch of the K-001, our first keyboard, Head of Product Tais and Design Engineer Lukas sat down and took a unit fully apart on camera. Not a marketing walkthrough, an actual teardown, screw by screw, covering the decisions that made it into the final product and a few that got left on the workbench. This is the written version. Grab a T6 bit and let's get into it.

Choosing your angle

The first choice a K-001 owner makes happens before a single key is pressed. Out of the box it sits flat at zero degrees. Add the four-degree riser for a low incline, or the seven-degree riser for a steeper reach. Preferences across everyone we tested were all over the map and held strongly, so the angle is yours to set rather than ours to assume.

Zero, four, and seven degrees. The wedges screw in and become part of the board.

How to mount the riser was the interesting part. We looked at magnets and at hook-and-latch systems, but reliable screws won. Most plastic mechanical keyboards use flip-out plastic feet near the back, and once you're actually typing on that angle they feel flimsy enough to snap off. Because the K-001's risers screw in, the angle becomes part of the keyboard: a permanent, solid seat that feels like it was always meant to sit that way. The risers are a solid block of aluminium with the same silicone underside as the base, so they share the exact same finish.

Two details worth knowing. The included screwdriver is interchangeable: it takes standard 4 mm-shank precision bits and has a magnetic tip, so it works as a real mini screwdriver for anything else on your desk.

One bit for (almost) everything

Every screw holding the keyboard together is T6 Torx, so a single bit gets you through the entire teardown with no tool swapping. The only exception is the riser screws, where you can use the included screwdriver and T10 bit, and the stabiliser screws, which are Phillips. More on those later.

Getting inside

With the bottom screws out, slide the rear out first, then lift the module clear of the top case. The structure is simple once it's open: the top shell is a frame that wraps the sides and top edge, while the bottom frame is the structural piece the module screws down to. The K-001 is tray mounted, with everything anchored to the base. The only real exception is the daughterboard that drives the LED array and the knob.

The top shell wraps the sides and top; the base is the structural piece the module screws into.

The knob, the encoder, and a light guide that started out black 

Take the knob off first and the daughterboard drops out, along with the light guide that carries illumination up to the small dots cut into the frame. That light guide is a two-component plastic part, and its opaque half was originally black. It swallowed too much light, so we switched it to a light grey, which gives a neutral colour cast and bounces far more light around inside the part. The result is a flush finish and an even glow.

The light guide carries the LEDs up to the dots in the frame, beside the dial, a no-button-press encoder built for a stable turn.

The encoder is where a lot of the development hours went. We went through 25 to 30 candidates looking for one with a stiff, positive click when rotating, real tactile feedback, a good sound, and minimal wobble. It also has no button press, and that's deliberate. A keyboard already has plenty of buttons, and dropping the push-switch makes the dial far more stable, with controlled movement instead of the loose wobble you get from click-to-press encoders.

The hardest part is the part you can't see

Getting the exact anodisation finish without a unit-to-unit variance meant controlling multiple parameters at once: roughness from the bead blasting process, the colour, and the gloss. Tweak any one and the whole finish falls apart. Then it all has to match across four parts (top case, bottom case, and both risers) and across every unit that ships.

Two colourways, Slate and Natural, sharing one blasted-and-anodised finish.

Keycaps: the stealth legend

Backlight off, the legends nearly disappear.

The keycaps are our own doubleshot PBT design, and we deliberately chose a material for the legends with extra translucency. When the backlight is off you can barely make out the letters, which gives a stealthy, blacked-out look. Funny enough, we were originally aiming for the opposite: a persistent grey, almost-white legend that stayed visible on or off. We found the reverse had this effect and stuck with it. The legends are also tiny and precise, which makes even lighting easy and keeps them out of the way while staying perfectly legible.

Another detail that does the quiet work on light bleed: At the base of each keycap there's a small black step; the inner plastic shell of the cap acts as a light guide curving light up to the legend, while the step blocks light from spilling straight down to the plate.

The switch: the Wallhack KS-TR

The K-001 ships with our own switch, the Wallhack KS-TR, a custom linear hall-effect switch made in collaboration with Gateron. Because it's hall effect, each press is read magnetically through a magnet in the stem rather than a metal contact. It has a closed bottom, and the materials are chosen for feel and sound: a polycarbonate top, a Nylon 66 base, and a two part POM stem.

It also carries its own unique light guide, inside a black shroud. Combined with the black underside of the keycap, that sends light into the legend instead of pooling around the caps. When we scoped competitor boards, several leaked more light under the keycaps than reached the legend, and we wanted the backlight to do its actual job.

The KS-TR comes in three spring weights, and you can mix and match them across the board to tune the feel key by key. Light is the fastest, lightest touch, built for quick actuation and repeated input. Medium, the weight that ships as standard, is slightly heavier for a firm balance of speed and control. Heavy is the most deliberate, trimming accidental presses with a substantial, precise keypress.

 Left to right: KS-TR Light, Medium, and Heavy. Mix and match to taste.

Why the LED is white, and only white

The LED is a single white emitter rather than an RGB package, for two reasons. First, restraint: we wanted the board to feel calm and focused. Second, colour accuracy. To make white on an RGB LED you drive red, green, and blue all at 100% and let them mix, but per-channel deviation means you rarely hit a true white and end up with a faint pink or green tint that varies unit to unit. A dedicated white emitter gives a clean, consistent white every time.

The PCB stack

The stack fastens to the bottom frame at six points and connects with two ribbon cables, which release gently by flipping up the little retention tab. Fully broken down, it is, top to bottom:

• The Wallhack Core Mk1 PCB, with PU foam on the underside.

• An anodised aluminium switch plate.

• A two-part silicone dampener between the two.

• The stabilisers, the one place the T6 rule breaks, so keep a small Phillips head handy.

The full stack, top to bottom: PCB, silicone dampener, and switch plate.

That's the K-001

From the risers you screw on before you ever type a key, down to the white LED and the foam under the PCB, every one of these calls started as a question. A fair few ended somewhere we didn't expect: a black light guide that had to go grey, a persistent legend that became a stealth one, thirty-odd encoders before the right one. If you got this far, you're exactly who we built it for.

▶ Watch the K-001 Teardown video with Tais & Lukas.