Hallo and Guten Tag everyone,Wow, this is super cool. How well would this hold up over time compared to something else that people can do at home like dye sublimation?
as hinted on my "Arke" Keyboard thread, I have bin experimenting with adding text to blank keycaps for a while now.
And I finally after thinking about a possible way and trying different processes every now and than for about 3 month I found and easy way (if you have something like a laser-engraver).
The laser alone did not do the trick on blank PBT-Keycaps. But what did was adding a thin coat of printer toner and turning down the laser.
You find my complete guide in this video: Printing on KeyCaps (or any other plastic) (https://youtu.be/JR1BwcFyexQ)
(Attachment Link)
(of cause this works with color to [see video])
Gratings
Max
Have you tried to first trace the contour and then fill it in? I think this will get rid of the jagged edges.
sorry for spamming my own thread but am experimenting all day with this.Don't worry and continue. I like your cap printing experiments.
First a Tldnw: Put toner from a laser printer on the keycap and melt it with a laser where you want it to fuse with the cap.
I can't draw a final conclusion to how well this lasts over time since I did this for the first time about 3 days ago.
But I started making a full set for testing.
Here is a picture of what it looks like when you rub of the toner with some acetone (which will dissolve the toner).
There is no way you could get more wear then this, but how long it takes to get to this point by using them the normal way I can't say atm.
(Attachment Link)
another cool thing to try is powder coating paint, with this you have plenty of colors to choose from and I think it works kinda like toner, it is heat cured so maybe the laser could make a good job on printing the details, also its very fine powder too.
Just print a keycap with a black pattern (uniformly spaced stripes) and then cut it. You'll see how deep the colour goes.
Operating in an oxygen deprived setting could allow to reach higher temperatures and higher penetration without burning marks
In other news: I switched my process to a vector based in LaserWeb 4.0 and this gets rid of the jagged edges and gives a much cleaner result.
Nice job! I wonder how hard it would be to laser-etch the front face of the keycap instead of the top, since the front face will basically never get worn out.
Ok sorry that I dig this up again, but I think I owe you all an update on the long term durability of this printing method.
Following are some close up pictures of my daily driver board since my first post on this topic (89 days ago).
{..}
Nice job! I wonder how hard it would be to laser-etch the front face of the keycap instead of the top, since the front face will basically never get worn out.
You sir, are a freaking genius! I see myself printing some kind of perfect angelnd mx holder and etching keys on the side. I - need - a - laser - damnit!
yep great idea and exactly what i would do.
Hi,
I bought a dirty cheap laser engraver because of this post (inspirational video, tks)
Its a Neje DK-8-KZ
It came with a marker pen (those for whiteboard) and that pen seens to work like the toner. (I think its easier to use)
With black I used 6ms of burn time, took some time to figure out...
Then I bought some colored whiteboard markers...
Didn't worked with 6ms;
Red around 20ms, green 30ms, blue 60ms (numbers from first/second try, maybe there's room for improvement)
(The color esc key is a test subject, it received 5 "engravings" so there's some blue "pixels" to the left.)
(Sorry for the dirty keeb)
I center the key on the engraver, I have a image with one pixel dot in each corner, 148x148 px size so when you hit preview it will "show" the entire key for positioning...
I apply the marker and start engraving.
After its done (~ 5s), I rub the key with a cloth with alcohol.
Okay, quick mini-review:
The results are pretty decent-- little obvious pixelation and surprisingly good fine detail, but it would probably help dramatically if you prepared some hard cardboard/plastic/metal fittings to snap the cap into an exact predictable location on the print bed. Trying to eyeball it results in worse-than-Unicomp-level legend misalignment. The preview sort of helps, but not much, since it only traces the outer bound of the image.
The software is somewhat less than helpful for some use cases-- it tries to always draw around the center of the tray, and it crops whitespace from PNG images at least, so you'd likely have to do a lot of manual alignment if you want legends aligned in the corners of the caps. There is another package called ezGraver which might be worth considering, but I couldn't get it working immediately so I went with the known quantity for testing.
There seemed to be an odd bug with some images-- the ": ;" design would send the engraver into a tizzy, driliing to far right and making horrible noises. It seems like it has problems with images less than maybe 10 pixels wide, as tweaking the image to be a bit wider seemed to print fine.
I'd probably want to redo about 20% of the keys on this boaard given a chance, so I might buy another set (thank goodness KPRepublic is stocking them... as an Alps enthusiast options are depressingly few and far between.)
I tried it on both the PBT blanks and some old Alpine Winter ABS blanks from Signature Plastics. At the 6ms setting with the marker pen, both picked up quite readable legends, but the ABS caps emitted a burning aroma.
Honestly, the wear factor was *abysmal*. Some of the caps were basically unreadable after ~6 months of fairly heavy use. While more-used caps seemed to be more subject to fading, there wasn't an obvious pattern-- some groups of keys seemed to survive better. I'm wondering if there was more pigment in some of the ink seared to the caps, or if the 6ms burn setting was too low. I eventually wore out the marking pen that came with the engraver and switched to office-supply-shop dry-erase markers.
I'm thinking of doing some more experimentation-- if it's possible to actually blacken the plastic and not just tack the ink on top of it. The problem is that I don't have a great way to test the caps other than pounding on them for several months. Wish there was some more proven science here-- "use this ink, these settings"... we know real firms (Cherry and Matias) use laser-etched caps, but they're probably not doing it with a $50 engraver and a marker to prep it.
Ok sorry that I dig this up again, but I think I owe you all an update on the long term durability of this printing method.
Following are some close up pictures of my daily driver board since my first post on this topic (89 days ago).
Some more information:
I touch type (qwertz) so my fingers always rest on the home row.
I guess I type 70% English and 30% German (just for reference on the key use).
The switches underneath are Kailh Box White, I tend to slightly bottom out and am right handed.
While making the keyset I changed some settings and since its a manual process of coating the caps there is a slide variation right from the start.
As you can see the home row is pretty warn down, especially the D-key. The C-key also looks pretty bad.
Other pretty commonly used keys like R are less worn. Also the right side of the board is in better shape than the left one.
Overall I think the printing process is good but not awesome. Making a full keyboard was also more of an extreme test.
This process should only be used for decorative special keys and not for your main chars.
Also I depends strongly on finding the right settings to get really durable results.
DISCLAIMER
This Keyboard was in daily use in my dusty workshop/office. I did not clean it before taking these pictures. You have been warned ;)
Hi,
I bought a dirty cheap laser engraver because of this post (inspirational video, tks)
Its a Neje DK-8-KZ
It came with a marker pen (those for whiteboard) and that pen seens to work like the toner. (I think its easier to use)
With black I used 6ms of burn time, took some time to figure out...Show Image(https://i.imgur.com/vyRDUIE.jpg)Show Image(https://i.imgur.com/AOP6gS3.jpg)Show Image(https://i.imgur.com/0TRWJBk.jpg)
Then I bought some colored whiteboard markers...
Didn't worked with 6ms;
Red around 20ms, green 30ms, blue 60ms (numbers from first/second try, maybe there's room for improvement)Show Image(https://i.imgur.com/ZZbqbg3.jpg)
(The color esc key is a test subject, it received 5 "engravings" so there's some blue "pixels" to the left.)
(Sorry for the dirty keeb)
I center the key on the engraver, I have a image with one pixel dot in each corner, 148x148 px size so when you hit preview it will "show" the entire key for positioning...
I apply the marker and start engraving.
After its done (~ 5s), I rub the key with a cloth with alcohol.
Do you think there is some sort of clear sealant we could put over the cap? One that would resist wear and have a decent feel for typing?This was exactly my thought also. Has anyone tried a quick finishing spray with some clear acrylic, to seal in the printed legends?