geekhack Community > Ergonomics

Ergonomic keycap caps or jackets?

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symphonic1985:
Hey everyone,

I just bought a g80-3000 with blues - yay! I've been thinking of cool things that I can do with it. The MX keycaps have a nice y-axis ergonomic tilt to them, but not a lateral one.  In particular I'd like (QWERTY) t,y,g,h,b keys to slope towards the finger that is meant to hit them. Does a product exist that you put on existing keycaps to make them more ergonomic/slanted?  I suppose not, but if anyone knows, they're a member here!

Assuming not, what do the think the best way to achieve it is? I was thinking that you could put some molding material and resculpt the top. Or take caps from some other board and make a + hole for MX plungers at an angle on the bottom. Or, mutilate some other keycaps to add them as a hat. I'm not concerned about changing the angle of impact - I doubt that we hit the switches squarely most of the time.

The other thing I wanted to ask, is if cloth keycap jackets exist. Or perhaps something for just the top surface. I imagine that it'd feel really nice to type on cotton. I'm tempted to glue things right now......

sixty:


...don't think it worked out that well.

Findecanor:
Logitech Wave is like that. It is a rubber dome keyboard and I doubt that the key caps could be transplanted. I would like to try it, just to feel for myself it there is any improvement in feel.

The Kinesis Advantage uses standard key caps but the switches themselves are mounted in a plate with a special shape to make it curved.

symphonic1985:
I'm sorry for the late reply - I was bed ridden with a terrible head ache and feeling sorry for myself.

I have to say, that patent is making me wonder if I'm too far down the road to insanity already... but... I do only want to change a couple of keys at first. :D


Today I briefly tried moving the 5.6 keycaps to t,y and t,y to g,h to see how the extra elevation would feel. I suppose a sideways tilt would make a much bigger difference though. Cherry MX keys really should be ripe for subtle ergonomic modification. I'm slightly surprised that sets of MX keycaps with per key rather than per row slant haven't been made yet.

@sixty - I guess you've tried keyboards such as the kinesis and wave. Did you feel like the slanting helped at all?
I

elef:

--- Quote from: Findecanor;269163 ---Logitech Wave is like that. It is a rubber dome keyboard and I doubt that the key caps could be transplanted. I would like to try it, just to feel for myself it there is any improvement in feel.


--- End quote ---


Indeed. The wave is my ultimate favourite keyboard in terms of physical layout, but I can't live with a rubber dome keyboard after trying a mechanical... I took apart my Wave, it's essentially a flat plank with keys of variable height fixed into it. In fact, with a bit of hacking, you may be able to mate it with a mech. keyboard, essentially mounting the top half of the Wave's  case on top of the other keyboard, having the Wave's keys pressing down on the other board's keycaps or keystems.
Of course you could also remove the wave's keycaps and somehow hack them onto the keystems or keycaps of a mechanical keyboard one by one. That would be more labour intensive than the first approach, I think.
If you want pics of the thing, I can take it apart and snap a few.

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