[LAC-Tech]

I like your design choices.

Putting the micro-controllers at the far ends means the rest of the board can be lower, meaning less need for palm supports. Also I like you NOT having OLED screens - they're toys at best and one more thing to break at worse.

As for Ortho VS Staggered, ortho has the great advantage of things like WASD just being usable out of the box, and also flexibility with things like numpad layers. I've printed paper cut outs of things like the ferris sweep to see if pinky stagger would be comfortable for me, and the answer was negative. Probably very hand dependent.

Curious why aluminium and not steel? Steel is a heavier, and also has less of that pingy noise, though I have no idea about machining so perhaps it's a no go.

[sgraz]

I would not put OLEDs for the reasons you mentioned, but also because it would drain the battery in 1 day vs 1 week.

Steel is likely better and surely stronger, but manufacturers charge 2x more for steel alloy machining. At that price level, titanium also becomes an interesting option.