anodizing equipment is out of the question. there isn't going to be a gigantic boiling tank of sulfuric acid in my apartment, period. besides, custom color anodizing is _IMPOSSIBLE_. booting an anodizing tub which is like 20 gallons of stainless steel full of sulfuric acid, putting enough dye in to penetrate a single case, hanging the case, then going away for a while, then coming back, cleaning out the ENTIRE TANK FULL OF BOILING SULFURIC ACID FOR ONE KEYBOARD is completely ridiculous. the fact that mimic actually did this (note that his price included a freaking round trip planet ticket) makes it even more hilarious, and impossible.
you can "anodize" polymers and other weird stuff but what really happens is that you etch the polymer in one stage (a boiling 20+ gallon tub of some kind of acidic etchant), charge and plate it with a friendly metal in the next (two choices: two alloys exist for this, one is chrome and the other has more zinc in it). THEN, you might be able to get a tiny bit of dye onto the plating but you're probably best giving up there. it's a technology that was developed in the 40s-ish i want to say? the edsyn guys have a company that does it for the silverstat, but they literally run one batch a year of like a thousand pieces and that's it. one-off anodizing is basically something that people just hang up on you when you mention because it's such a pain in the ass.
ironically, you can powdercoat those chromed polymers, because they conduct really well after the metallization process. most conductive polymers are a lot tougher to powder. that said, you can metallize them the old fashioned way, with the metallized rustoleum primer (although i imagine it's non-ferrous; there has to be one of those things that's conductive..). the thing with polymers though is that they just come in different colors. you're much much better off just making your polymer thing in the color you want.
anyway, for metal, powdercoating is the most flexible permanent-ish painting process and the only one other than large batch clear anodize or one color anodize that's within reach for us. the only thing more accessible is the exact same room temp wet acrylic paints that photoelectric uses for plastics, and just like plastics, you have to do a lot of really good prep-work (you still need the blasting cabinet for example) to get good results. imo, if you're going to go through that much trouble, you might as well powder it. you have a wider variety of texture, reflectivity, and color, for the most part.
anyway, the reason i was leaning toward coloring processes is that we love to be creative with color here. what's the difference between every keycap set? basically color schemes. there are shape and material differences, but the primary driver in differentiation is color. see: unicorn vomit, clicklack skulls, lz and hammer's alu cases, etc. that said, notice that people had to sit down and design the stuff to color in all cases. my goal is to serve the community, and i'd like that not to mean "let me try to guess what the community will use" , but a bit fat active conversation with everyone with arguments and keyboard baby mama drama (thank mrs hashbaz for that one by the way), all of it. let's go! what do you want? just because i smack you down with "no, that will cost 100,000$, doesn't mean you can't try again or shoot another toward the moon.
hell, shooting the moon is what this place is for. have you seen matt3o's qfr top cover project yet? if not, GO GO GO. SO AWESOME YES
