First time here, first time attempting to build something like this, first time getting pcbs done, it all seemed OK until I got an email this morning from jlcpcb.

"As shown below, we find the holes are the same size with the pads.

If we drill the holes, there will be no pads left. So do you need to modify the Gerber file and enlarge the pads?"

How should I proceed? Is this normal?

The gerber files only contain the right hand side of the keyboard. Are there gerber files available for the left hand side?

For that matter it looks like the KiCad .pcb file only has the right hand side as well. Am I missing something? Or maybe I am supposed to mirror it somehow and then generate left hand side gerbers?

I have a feeling this is a dumb question and people are going to laugh when they read it.

See:
https://github.com/ErgoDox-EZ/docs/blob/master/SCH-P2260B-(ErgoDox%20EZ%20V4)(Right).pdf
https://github.com/ErgoDox-EZ/docs/blob/master/SCH-P2261B-(ErgoDox%20EZ%20V4)(Left).pdf
&&
https://github.com/ErgoDox-EZ/docs/blob/master/SCH-P2285B-(ErgoDox%20EZ%20V4)(LED)(%20Left).pdf
https://github.com/ErgoDox-EZ/docs/blob/master/SCH-P2286B-(ErgoDox%20EZ%20V4)(LED)(%20Right).pdf

maybe im missing something (maybe its the same design for both hands) i have read thru https://www.ergodox.io/ and looked around and cant seem to find the schematics for the left hand ,
in all the files (i opened them using kicad) i only see board design files(.kicad_pcb) for right hand.
what am i missing ?

I'm just trying to figure out the LED holes and if I can and should try to use them.
I could probably get someone at work to help me view the gerber files. But I was hoping you could just add some PDFs.

Thanks,

s

Most people who build a keyboard are also interested in trying different switches, and sometimes mixing switches on a board. Kailh pcb sockets seem to be a popular way to achieve this, used by the input club and ergdox ez. Are their any plans to produce a socket compatible PCB design?

How can I have the left hand PCB? I can just see the right hand one only.

The left-hand dwg files for the normal acrylic case won't open using AutoCAD or dwg true view. I also can't convert them to svg's.

New viewers are having issue on verifying if it is the legit stuff. So please make a detailed documentation with pictures of the thing built by you all. if you guys can add instructions too, it would become 10x nicer.

The right hand appears to be 10 times biger than the left one (side going for 2000mm...)

Is it normal?

When I try to open the board in pcbnew, I get the following error:

Error
Error loading board.
KiCad was unable to open this file, as it was created with a more recent version than the one you are running. To open it, you'll need to upgrade KiCad to a more recent version.

Date of KiCad version required (or newer): 08/15/2016

Full error text:
PARSE_ERROR: Expecting 'clearance, trace_width, via_dia, via_drill, uvia_dia, uvia_drill, or add_net' in input/source
‘[directory where I cloned the repo]/ErgoDOX pcb/ErgoDOX.kicad_pcb'
line 185
offset 6
from dsnlexer.cpp : Expecting() : line 369

Except I do have a new enough version of KiCad to meet that requirement, 4.0.7 (the latest stable release) from 8/28/2017. Is there a weirdly specific older build I need to dig up in order to open this? KiCad doesn’t seem to keep an archive of older versions, nor did they actually have a release on 8/15/2016 as far as I can tell.