Removing lasered legends

[Sygaldry]

Is there any way to do this short of taking sandpaper to the keycap?

[Puddsy]

Is there any way to do this short of taking sandpaper to the keycap?

Buying blanks?

There's not a good way to take legends off anything, especially lasered legends.

[swill]

Is there any way to do this short of taking sandpaper to the keycap?

Use a laser.    Oh the meta...

In all honesty, I am not sure how you would do it.  On my lasered caps the felt like it was slightly recessed into the key.  In that case you would need to fill it and then sand smooth.  You could potentially use something like nail polish to fill the lasered area and then lightly sand smooth.  Test one one cap you dont use first.    I am not sure how nail polish reacts on plastic.  That was just an idea because you get a little brush and it dries hard...

[JPG]

As far as I understand it, laser etched keycaps are clear keycaps dipped in paint and then laser etched to remove some paint to produce the legend. So the legend you see is not some paint you can remove because it's actually some paint that was removed by the laser process.


But as swill said, you could put some sort of nail polish or paint on it to cover the legend but the finish would probably not be very smooth unless you cover the whole key in a uniform layer.


I hope what I said is true cause I never had a laser etched keyset.

[Oobly]

Depends on the type of "lasered" legends: http://deskthority.net/wiki/Keycap_printing

But for most of them you're gonna have to sand away the top surface of the cap until you can't see the legend any more.

[swill]

Depends on the type of "lasered" legends: http://deskthority.net/wiki/Keycap_printing

But for most of them you're gonna have to sand away the top surface of the cap until you can't see the legend any more.

I would "try" to infill with the same color as the cap before sanding to potentially reduce the amount of sanding needed...

[Sygaldry]

Depends on the type of "lasered" legends: http://deskthority.net/wiki/Keycap_printing

But for most of them you're gonna have to sand away the top surface of the cap until you can't see the legend any more.

Just laser printed, not etched

[Findecanor]

If the keycap legend has been burned into the keycap, such as on Cherry's PBT keys, then it won't come off cleanly. You would have to use sandpaper, and then use a sandblaster to get the surface texture back on the now slightly smaller key.