¶ Vault 35
The Vault 35 is a 35% percent keyboard created and sold by Cain of MechVault.
¶ Overview
The hallmark of a Vault 35 is its 4u x 11u layout, small bezels, large blockers, and (usually) translucent case. The most popular variant of the Vault 35 is the HHKB layout. The first Vault 35 prototype that is similar to how it exists today was assembled sometime around September of 2021. In July of 2023, Cain posted a picture of his first functional prototype of a WKL Vault 35. This WKL Vault 35 was oddly enough in an aluminum case rather than the signature translucent cases that Vault 35s were nearly synonymous with.
¶ Variants
Both variants of the Vault 35 designed by Cain support mutiple bottom rows, but have the same top 3 rows. In contrast to more standard "40s" the Vault 35 uses a 1.75u enter, which is generally not included in 3-key 40s compatbility kits.
Cain, while likely not the progenitor of them, did popularize a bottom row layout known as "Cain Bars", which consists of a series of keycaps in size order of 1.25u, 1.75u, 1.75u, 1.25u. Cain bars are not exclusive to Vault35 keyboards
HHKB
A KLE of the HHKB PCB can be found here.
WKL
A KLE of the WKL PCB can be found here.
¶ Case Options
Asside from the cases that come with the Vault 35 kits, there are a few community-made cases:
¶ Availability
Vault 35 kits are listed on Cain's site, https://mechvault.net/, when available. Vault 35 kits or PCBs may also be found in the 40% Keyboard Discord server's buy-sell-trade forum or on Reddit's mechmarket.
A few 3rd party Vault 35 case-compatible PCBs exist.
One of the first non-Cain designed/produced Vault 35 case-compatible PCBs was the Ortho Vault 35 by galvy0.
Due to the popularity and crossover between 40% users and topre users, a 40% Keyboard Discord user named Calvin produced a Topre variant of the HHKB Vault 35 PCB and designated it as the "Travaulta".
Two other 40% users by the name of calvin-mcd and jlw_ took it upon theirselves to design and produce a series of Vault35 PCBs by the name of "Pip Bois". Layout options included HHKB Universal, HHKB Katana, WKL Katana, WKL Ortho soldered, WKL Ortho hotswap, and WKL Universal.