Custom angled keyboard riser

AI status: Entirely human written. AI converted HEICs to JPG and did MDX formatting. Photos exactly as shot with no edits.

I’m having wrist pain lately, but not carpal tunnel. Tenosynovitis is an aggravation of the tendon sheaths on the topmost side of the wrist.1

Anything that angles my hand upward is problematic. The angle that I need to have my keyboard at, therefore, is completely at odds with most keyboard lifters, which are in the back and not the front. I need to print something that angles the keyboard correctly.

The keyboard held at a comfortable forward-tilted angle

I measured the angle that feels comfortable on the keyboard and found it’s about 26mm of lift from the frontmost to the backmost edge.

The measured keyboard profile used as the starting point for the lifter
The keyboard profile rotated to the target angle
The dimensioned sketch for the keyboard lifter

Quickly modeling the keyboard at the correct angle so that I can model the stand underneath it.

The extruded 3D model of the keyboard lifter

Extruding a 4mm slice so I can do a test print in a few minutes.

The first 3D-printed lifter fitted beneath the keyboard

The test print went well. I want to lower it by about five millimeters across the board, but otherwise good.

The finished pair of white 3D-printed keyboard lifters

Here’s the final piece(s). Total print time for both was about 3 hours. I’ve been using it for the evening and it’s an improvement.

The finished keyboard resting on the pair of white 3D-printed lifters

3D printing fucks.

Footnotes

  1. BTW here is a fantastic guide for identifying and categorizing wrist pain, wherein a specialist describes how to tell which pain you have and then links to a dedicated video for each. ↩