Custom Keyboard

I came across a great website that is for the DIY Simulator enthusiast. www.rogerdodger.net There you can find some great ideas, and one idea that grabbed my attention was the Custom keyboards for the simulator.
I decided to make this Custom Keyboard. You can purchase the plans directly from the site above; I must say it was the best $10.00 I have spent towards this project.
Looking at the plans it showed you where to put the new keyboard patches and also what buttons to black out as they are unused. I took one step further, I removed all the buttons that were not in use, punched out an aluminium cover for the keyboard then created the buttons as in the plans
Acer Keyboard with the keys removed	Aluminium cover plate
Rear view of plate showing screw stand offs	Aluminium cover plate attached
Side view Aluminium cover plate attached	re assemble Custom Sim Keyboard

As you can see by the pictures above, I added screws to the
facia of the plate, this was for 2 reasons..

1)     
 1) For a more realistic look of a control panel

2)     2) 
To act as stand offs when attaching the top to the Keyboard.

The aluminium top plate was glued to the keyboard using a hot glue gun. Instead of using poster board for the buttons I used 3mm Balsa, the reason for this is that the aluminium plate was 3mm thick and I wanted to keep the buttons as flush as possible to the plate.

I am not quite happy with the Balsa and printed buttons.... I have decided to punch the buttons caps out of 3mm Aluminium and spray paint them, the Templates from Rogerdodger are brilliant I am just useless at cutting the bloody things straight