How are keycaps made?

[Mugen]

I've seen some who are hand made but what other methods are there? are they done using a 3d printer or a different kind of machinery?

[Lu_e]

Injection molding?

idk if keycaps can be done like this but its interesting anyway;

[dorkvader]

3-D printing is really just a method for rapid prototyping: you can make arbitrary shapes quickly and cheaply, but there are much faster and cheaper options for large runs. (Also, I prefer SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) to 3D printing, but I digress.) Injection moulding is probably the most prevalent. After the blank key is moulded, it's either moulded again (for doubleshots: It stands for double shot injection moulding) or a printed pad is affixed to the top (the keycap is usually clearcoated). This is by far the most common for cheaper keyboards. Other methods for finishing the legends is to etch or engrave them with a laser, or use "dye sublimation" on PBT (Dyesub does not work on ABS, as far as I know).

DIY keycaps are primarily made from either moulding (Like injection moulding, but on a much smaller scale), or by building up layers of another material (for colour or shape) and finishing it off with a protective clear coat.

[Calade]

Would be interesting to know the costs of actually starting a keycap production line. Does anyone know how much an injection moulding machine costs? And one would probably have to make all the moulds by themselves too? The beast in that video looks like something in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but there are probably much smaller solutions as well.

[alaricljs]

There are hobby sized injection molding machines that could probably handle ~4 1x caps that cost a few thousand dollars.  But that's single injection.  Most people are thinking of at least dual injection (double shot) and I've never heard of a small machine that does that.

[oluf]

Signature Plastics has some info about "insert molding" here, http://keycapsdirect.com/faq.php
...And they list the equipment they use here, http://keycapsdirect.com/facility.php

[dorkvader]

Would be interesting to know the costs of actually starting a keycap production line. Does anyone know how much an injection moulding machine costs? And one would probably have to make all the moulds by themselves too? The beast in that video looks like something in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, but there are probably much smaller solutions as well.

I remember Dad bought one for ~$55,000 when he founded a company once, but I imagine if you could find one used, or get one of those smaller ~$5k ones, it wight be worthwhile. Remember: Moulds can be pretty expensive, too.

SP has a lot of nice machines, but you could probably get started with a decent workable setup with no more than 100-200k invested, depending on how long you want to look out for good deals.