In search of typing utopia, one designer went to a special length to have the perfect keyboard under their fingers. After five years of hard work and project expenses well into the six-digit area, the ultimate key stabilizer was created. 

If you're a fan of mechanical keyboards, in terms of how you feel they sound, the huge space bar, shift key, and other long buttons between the numerous of models on offer sound not very similar, because they are shaking when pressed.

Some problems can be alleviated by carefully lubricating and tweaking the stabilization mechanism, but it's not well designed in the first place

Well, that's the opinion of designer Ryan Norbowler, owner of the eponymous boutique keyboard company. Instead of simply accepting how long the keys would work, we worked on fixing the various flaws we saw in the design of other stabilizers.

You can see what a typical stabilizer arrangement looks like in the image below. To ensure that things like the space bar move up and down evenly, wherever you press, the switch under the bar is connected via a short rod. This bar rattles various parts of the switch, creating unpleasant sounds, and even the entire design itself is quite noisy.

Norbauer described how they tackle the problem in their journal, and it's a long and very detailed description of it all. If the length of this project record was proportional to the effort put into the stabilizer, it was really a very difficult task.

Suffice it to say that they endured multiple problems, but by being "stubbornly, unreasonably persistent" in the project and "recklessly training a personal cash bazooka," they managed to create a perfect, patented stabilizer.

The solution to all this is heroically complex: there are at least 21 separate parts, each of which contains 10 in the switch housing. It takes about 1 minute to assemble only one of those houses.30

It's too long for general manufacturing, but also very long for a small boutique keyboard manufacturer, and it's true that the design of all the models that Norbauer sells

But again, if there's one thing I've learned about fans of mechanical keyboards, they're going to have a lot of work and gaming experience. This means that we are willing to invest a huge amount of time, effort and money in having the best platform for our customers. And if that means waiting even longer or paying even more to get the ultimate applause, that's exactly what they do.