Road to building my own keyboard 11: Keycap Revengeance Complete.

This post is English version of “完全自作キーボードへの道11：本体に先駆けてオリジナルキーキャップ完成！“. Please be patient with my poor English!🙇

Last time I printed my original keycaps, but there was a few problems. Notably the Cherry MX joint part was too big. Its easily stuck when typing, that was a big issue…

So, I fixed model data according to the last print result. Especially I revamped the Cherry MX joint. This nylon 3d printed model was arrived so let me show you.

There was no complaints about keytop shapes, I just tuned a little. Big problem was text bevel at thin walls. It makes swells on counter side. I made bevels shallow, and I made walls thicker to fix swells.
Correction went fine. No problems at looks!

And, through last print result, I found that deep spherical top makes better finger touch. This time I tried to make deeper as I can on all keycaps. That makes some key higher, but I think it is better than the last one. Maybe it’s just a trick of the senses because it’s less then 1 mm change…

Retouching for naming on the back side is fine. No problems at all!

Cherry MX joint part, the main changing point. I remade it like a normal keycaps. I was worried about thin walls, but it’s so nylon! No problem!

Normal keycap’s joint has small rounded bevels at entrance of the joint, I tried to reproduce that. Unfortunately it’s too small to fully reproduce for nylon. But it’s better than nothing. This small bevel makes easy to insert switches shaft.

So, this new joint works very fine. No jamming anymore.
This joint part is reusable, I can make any keycaps as I want!😉

Of course, it was not a first try, actually I tried a lot… Thickness of vertical slot, horizontal slot, and length. I tried around 10 patterns with 0.1 mm difference. I wanted to try more but you know, it’s cost money…😭

Anyway using actual printed object and real switches is a certain way to search the proper size. There was a tiny difference by each switch makers. I think there was no difference numerically but Cherry MX is more loose than Gateron against same size joint…

Sooooo, my own original keycaps are complete ahead of my own keyboard INSS40. Yay!!✌️😄
These keycaps has no problems for general typing. I think I would sell these at Shapeways, DMM.make! (Japanese Shapeways like service)

2018/04/28 Add

Now these has been selling at Shapeways! Please check them out!