Spray-painted keys

[vhaarr]

This is the result of my cry for help posted mid-November this year at http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=Island:7711.

Finally the project is nearing completion, with my brothers getting their hands on the keyboards on Christmas eve

I wrote a post in the thread linked about about how things turned out so far, but I figured it would probably get more exposure if I write it up as a completed project article, so here goes!

The project
I bought 2 keyboards for my 2 younger brothers for christmas, and my dad is a professional car painter. I put them together and we've made some custom colored keyboards for them both.

A full (so far) set of images of the project can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vhaarr/sets/72157622921208869/

Process
Update: More detailed process explained at http://geekhack.org/showpost.php?p=144691&postcount=7
First we cleaned all the keys with alcohol and let them dry out.

Then we applied one layer of paint primer with a spray gun. This was supposed to eat into the plastic slightly so that the paint would later stick to it.

While this was drying we mixed up the colors we were going to use (dark green, light green, dark blue and light blue). All the colors were mixed by my dad after I helped select a few (pictures of the color selectors in the flickr set). All colors were professional-level quality http://www.glasurit.com/ products made for painting cars.

When the paint sticker was dry (5 minutes), we sprayed one base color (the dark one) on a whole set of keys and let that dry (10 minutes), then we sprayed another coat of dark on all the keys (you could see that after one coating the edges of the top of the keys were still black through the paint, sadly I did not take a picture of this). Before the 2nd coating of dark color had been allowed to set, we went around the table at an angle and sprayed with the light color to create a gradient effect.

After the paint had dried (15 minutes at 80 degrees celsius), we removed the keys from the spraying room and let them dry in normal household temperature for another few hours.

If we had not done this last step of drying AND pressed down hard on the keys (which had to be done, to attach them to the keyboards), we would've left imprints on them. Even with plastic gloves, they would've gotten noticable markings.

After letting them dry up for a few hours we removed them from the tape holding them in place on the tables and inserted them on the keyboards.



Questions?
If you have any questions about the project, I will be happy to answer anything.

If you are interested in doing a project such as this for yourself, the local car painting shop will be more than qualified to do all aspects of the work. It really does take less than 1 hour to do _everything_ in a proper shop if you don't count the time it takes to dry (during which, obviously, you don't have to do anything except sit and wait).

Thanks for the help I got in the other thread before I started the project!

After christmas we are going to paint a few more sets of keys I think, so that my brothers can experiment a bit with different color combinations and so forth. I might post pictures of that as well if anyone requests it.

[vhaarr]

80 degrees It was inside a room like

There's one inside shot in my photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vhaarr/4203737037/in/set-72157622921208869/

While painting, the room temperature I *think* was hovering around 30 degrees celsius. Then we went out, turned a knob or two and set a 10min timer. This timer counted down from 10 minutes and when it was over the temperature sensor read 78 degrees celsius, and it had been steadily climbing the whole 10 minutes from 20 to 78 degrees.

As you'll remember, we had to dry them in room temperature for a few hours after that as well.

My father, as you already know, is a very experienced painter (so I don't think he does things 'scientifically', he just knows these things after 40 years in the business), and I'm not sure about the exact conditions.

We just got home and he went straight to bed. In the morning I will ask him for detailed information about the primer, lacquer, temperatures, and so forth. As already stated, all the lacquer was from Glasurit.

[keyb_gr]

Good thing the keys aren't from ABS... (Melting point = 85°C)

[vhaarr]

Haha, that's excellent.

Well, as I clarified in my latest post they were not exposed to 78 degrees celsius for a long time, the thermometer climbed steadily from 20/30 towards 78 when the drying period was over and we opened the doors. That's the impression I have from memory, at least. My dad will give me further details in the morning.

I can assure you the keys have not been deformed at all, and they were still 100% hard when we went in to check on them after the drying was done.

[vhaarr]

Had a little talk with my dad and he has provided me with precise instructions on what we did, in steps. This is what he would tell you we did, or how it should be done. Since he has so many years in the business, we took a few shortcuts and this can be seen if you compare the below notes to my original post.

First, make sure you're working in normal room temperature, 18-20 degrees celsius.

1. De-grease the keys, apply the degreaser with a cloth and wipe it off with a clean one to get rid of fat from fingers and other particles that can show through the paint later.
2. Prime the keys with a Glasurit 934-10 primer, apply one floating coat.
3. Let dry for 15 minutes in room temperature with normal air flow, not sealed.
4. Mix some Glasurit High Solid 2K S22 paint with Glasurit Hardener 929-51 (fast) and some thinner (TH); 10% thinner in the mix.
5. Apply 2 light coats on the keys, wait 5-10min between coats. If you have proper spray equipment, the second coating can be done with larger spray particles, giving the keys a "rough"/coarse coating.
6. Let dry for EITHER;
 * 20 minutes at 60 degrees celsius
 * 8 hours at room temperature (18-20 degrees celsius)

If you dry for 20min@60, let the keys cool down to room temperature after drying before touching.

[didjamatic]

Hey, you can wax your keyboard!  Those look great.

[vhaarr]

So, some people have asked for an update on the keyboards - how they are holding up to regular use after 1.5 years.

Let me tell you; they look as new. Both keyboards are in daily use, mostly for gaming/net surfing, and none of the painted keys have any visible signs of wear that I could see at a glance. I was just home at my parents place and took a quick glance at the keyboards; I have not studied them carefully.

What I'll do next time I am home is take a new picture and then you guys can see for yourself :-)

[Tastybyte]

Wow thats great to hear that it still feels like new after all this time. I'd like to try this, but I'm always afraid of messing up with the spray paint.

[vhaarr]

Here's some really bad photos taken with a cellphone just to give you guys an idea of the wear level.
I got a friend of mine to take the photos since I live so far away from my brothers.

The photos show the level of wear on the regular Filco keys as opposed to the spray-painted ones, which don't show any sign of wear at all.
Now, of course, the problem is that this is the wrong keyboard really. What we should have is photos of the keyboard that has the painted function/numeric keys, since they would get more use probably.

But you can see on the arrow keys, which are used heavily as well I think, that there is no wear.

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[Input Nirvana]

Thanks for responding to the questions.

I'm really glad to see they look good after 18 months. Maybe there is a way of painting that will hold up reasonably well. The Happy Hacker is doing a 10 commemorative paint job on their keys.