Author Topic: recommended dye for getting PBT caps as close to solid black as possible?  (Read 1351 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline jacobolus

  • Thread Starter
  • Posts: 3670
  • Location: San Francisco, CA
I have some old Apple Extended Keyboard II keycaps which I want to use in kind of funky experimental layouts, where the existing legends won’t correspond at all to the logical key functions, so I want to make them blank black if I can.

Can anyone recommend a dye to use to get PBT as uniform black as possible? Or a few possible options to test would be fine: I’m happy to do some experimenting, though I probably won’t get around to actually doing this for a few weeks at earliest.

Offline strict

  • TKL Zealot
  • Posts: 1921
  • Location: PA
I think people have been using iDye Poly lately with good results

Realforce EK45 (Silenced)  |  Realforce 87UW (45g)  |  Realforce 87UWS (Variable)
Filco MJ2 TKL (Cherry Clears)  |  Phantom 87 (78g Gateron Clears)  |  Phantom 86 (67g Zealios)


Offline fohat.digs

  • * Elevated Elder
  • Posts: 6538
  • Location: 35°55'N, 83°53'W
  • weird funny old guy
I always go back to this:

https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=35444.msg658453#msg658453

RIT dye worked perfectly for me with black, and I was able to re-use a bottle of dye-water a couple of times (just took a little longer). But I think that I had an old pack and they changed the formula a couple of years ago.
"However, my view has changed in recent days. Trump’s behavior is so bizarre, so unhinged, and so counter to his short-term interests that the most likely explanation for his actions is that Trump either believes or knows that he is mentioned in the Epstein files in ways that are even more damaging than the blowback he is getting for not releasing the files."
- Greg Pfieffer 2025-07-21