Guides / Materials
What a Keyboard Weight Really Adds to Your Build
September 21, 2026
Almost every board people describe as premium has a second metal inside it. The case is aluminium because aluminium is light, cheap and takes colour. Then a block of something three times denser is bolted in to give back the mass that aluminium gave away.
That block is where a surprising amount of your budget and your schedule goes.
Why not just make the case heavier
You could machine a thicker aluminium case, and it would still be light. Aluminium is around 2.7 g per cubic centimetre. Brass is around 8.5. Copper is 8.9. Stainless is around 8.0.
To add half a kilogram with aluminium you need to add a lot of volume, which means a taller board, more machining time and more stock. To add half a kilogram with brass you add a slab roughly 60 cubic centimetres in size, which fits inside the empty space your case already has.
The weight is not a luxury feature. It is the efficient way to make a metal keyboard feel like a metal keyboard.
Brass C360
The default, and usually the right answer. It is free machining, so a weight is a fast job: face it, pocket it, drill and tap the mounting holes, deburr, done. The cost sits almost entirely in the stock price rather than in the machine time.
Brass patinas. An internal weight nobody sees can be left raw and forgotten. An exterior weight will darken visibly over months, so you either clear coat it, PVD it, or you sell the patina as part of the product and say so plainly before anyone pays.
For the lead in C36000 and what RoHS and Prop 65 say about it, see lead in brass keyboard weights; masses by layout are in keyboard case weight by material.
Copper C110
Heavier, and spectacular when it is fresh. Copper is also soft and gummy, which means slower cutting, more attention to tool geometry and a surface that marks if anyone looks at it wrongly.
It also darkens fast, within weeks rather than months, and unevenly where fingers have touched it. Copper needs a clear coat and individual packing, and it still generates more customer questions than any other weight material.
Stainless 304 and 316
The choice when you want bare metal with no coating at all. A brushed or bead blasted stainless weight looks like exactly what it is, permanently, with no patina and no film to scratch through.
The price is machine time. Stainless work hardens under a dull tool, so cycle times are long and tooling consumption is high. Expect a stainless weight to cost several times a brass one of the same geometry, almost all of it in labour rather than material.
Aluminium weights
They exist, usually as a colour matched exterior piece rather than a mass element. If the point is the look rather than the heft, an aluminium weight anodised in a contrasting colour is far cheaper than brass and matches the case’s own finishing route, which keeps everything in one supplier.
The scheduling trap
Here is the thing that hurts group buys. The weight is a different material from the case, which means different stock, often a different machine setup, and frequently a different finishing vendor.
That makes it a parallel supply chain with its own dates. A PVD coated brass weight can easily involve three parties: the machine shop, the PVD house and the shop again for final inspection. Any one of them can slip, and your cases sit in a box waiting.
Two things help. First, order the weight at the same time as the case rather than after the case is approved, because it is not on the critical path unless you put it there. Second, ask your shop whether it handles the weight itself or subcontracts it, and if it subcontracts, ask who and how long.
Designing the weight itself
A few things a shop will thank you for.
Give it a real tolerance against its pocket. An exterior weight sitting in a case recess is a visible gap all the way round. Call out the fit you want. An internal weight can run loose and does not need the same attention.
Think about the fasteners. Tapped holes in brass are fine. Tapped holes in aluminium that take a steel screw repeatedly are less fine, so if the weight comes out often, ask about threaded inserts.
Decide whether it is cosmetic before you draw it. This single decision changes the price more than the material does. A cosmetic weight needs a blast, a finish, careful handling and a scrap allowance. A hidden weight needs none of that.
Leave finishing allowance. A weight that fits its pocket perfectly in raw machined condition will not fit after a coating goes on both surfaces. This is the same trap that catches case tolerances and it catches weights more often because people forget the weight gets coated too.
The short version
Brass inside aluminium, internal if you can live without seeing it, ordered at the same time as the case, with the finish decided before the drawing goes out. That covers the majority of good designs and almost none of the expensive surprises.
Frequently asked questions
How heavy should a keyboard weight be?
On a 65 percent board, a brass weight of 300 to 700 grams is the usual range, and full size designs go well past a kilogram. The number that matters is the finished board weight, so work backwards from that rather than picking a block thickness first.
Internal or external weight?
An internal weight is simpler and cheaper because it never has to be cosmetic. An exterior weight is a visible surface with its own finish, its own tolerance against the case pocket and its own scrap rate, so it costs considerably more than its size suggests.
Does the weight change the sound?
It adds mass and damping, which lowers resonance and makes the board sound denser. It does less than the plate and the mount do, but it is the cheapest way to move a board towards a deeper sound without redesigning anything.
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