[IC] New choc keycap profile

[fkcaps]

Hello dear MK community,

Today we are teaming up to try to fill a void in the current offer on Choc keycaps. Here are the contestants:

• u/mburger89 owns a Planck light and designed/printed his own keycaps
• u/fk-caps is creating a custom dye sub service (read more here)
• u/adroom has created the Bamboo, a 40% low profile keyboard using its own keycaps profile (read more here)

We would like to check your interest around choc keycaps, as we are facing some important questions:

Profile options

u/mburger89 and u/adroom have both designed a keycap profile, called respectively MBK and TEA. We won't be able to actually produce them both (unless we meet MOQs but given the small size of the choc market right now, we highly doubt it).

So here are some renders of both profiles side-by-side:


Left to right: Cherry, DSA, TEA, MBK


TEA vs MBK


Side view: Cherry / DSA / TEA / MBK

Question #1: which one would you buy? (Please reply in the IC form)

Note: in those renders, the MBK has been rendered as rectangular. While this could be the case (depending on the outcome of question 2), it is more likely that we'll produce them as squares.

Square vs Rectangular

Planck Light has kinda set a standard among choc keycaps, with a rectangular shape.


Planck Light's rectangular keycaps

This may be problematic as MX and Choc footprints are slightly different but PCBs may implement both in a square space... Now if you put rectangular keycaps in a square space, that is not going to look nice.

Question #2: should we go with square or rectangular keycaps?

Sizes options (and mold costs!)

To keep mold costs down, we expect to produce only a few sizes (most choc keyboards are ortho anyway).

Question #3: what size(s) do you need?

If we do 1u only, this would drastically keep the molds cost down. Please state your opinion by filling the IC form.

Material

With no further ado, question #4: ABS or PBT?

This obviously has an impact on the mould costs too so choose wisely! We don't have exact numbers as we plan to go with PBT as it is considered as a higher quality material (which may be subjective for some people). Please let us know if you would prefer ABS in the IC form (note: double shots won't be possible, maybe next time!).

Custom dye sub

We are partnering with FKcaps which intends to provide a custom dye sub service. So if we go with PBT, everyone would be able to pick its own legends. We won't dive into details about what the FK team is doing, but you may find more details here.

Vendors (for blanks)

The custom dye sub service put aside, those vendors have shown interest in reselling the blanks:

• Gboards (Canada)
• MKUltra (US)
• MyKeyboard (EU)
• SplitKB.com (NL)
• Yushakobo (JP)
• DailyClack (AUS)

To be included in that list, DM me on Discord: kartsims#7467 or post a comment below

Thanks!

Thanks to all those who will participate in this, we are looking forward to seeing more low profile keyboards in this community!

IC form

[piit79]

Finally some nice choc caps! Can't wait.

TEA in PBT would be my choice.

Could you add a EU vendor, please? MyKeyboard or CandyKeys would be great.

[fkcaps]

Could you add a EU vendor, please?

Done!

[nathanchere]

Could you add a EU vendor, please?

Done!

Suggestion : OpticBoards or CandyKeys. MyKeyboard have been consistently extremely poor in handling orders and even basic answering emails in my experience. OpticBoarda and CandyKeys have both been consistently great by comparison.

[nguyenhimself]

Yeah, probably TEA in PBT too. I prefer the deep dish profile.
My comments are the same as when u/adroom first teased the TEA keycaps on Reddit:
- SYS or CODE or CMD key instead of WIN for us non-Windows folks.
- While I truly, seriously appreciate the number and symbol sublegends, please consider omitting the arrow key ones, as most 40% ortho people I know either put them in HJKL, a straight bottom right row, or reverse T but in the right most corner. I have never seen anyone does it like this:



>So if we go with PBT, everyone would be able to pick its own legends.
Exciting. Thanks for this IC and GB.

[rpiguy9907]

For the love of all that is holy please have different row heights and angles. At least rows 1, 2, 3.

[piit79]

Suggestion : OpticBoards or CandyKeys. MyKeyboard have been consistently extremely poor in handling orders and even basic answering emails in my experience. OpticBoarda and CandyKeys have both been consistently great by comparison.

I have to provide a contrasting reference - never had any problem with MyKeyboard. They have always answered my e-mails in a timely manner (within 24 hours).

[Kevadu]

Stabilizer support?  Or have we given up on using choc switches in anything but ortholinear boards?

Yes I know there's a lack of boards out there, but there's also a chicken and egg problem: Nobody wants to make a custom choc switch board if there aren't keycaps for it.  I can only speak for myself of course, but while I would love to build a custom choc board I have zero interest in ortholinear.  And if that's the only thing these caps will support then I have zero interest in them.

[atfltr]

These look sweet even as blanks! I like TEA from the top and MBK from the side ~ so no preference here.

[piit79]

Stabilizer support?  Or have we given up on using choc switches in anything but ortholinear boards?

I guess the problem is the large up front investment. Injection molds are expensive and for a standard set you need 6 different ones if I count correctly (1u, 1.25u, 1.75u, 2u, 2.25u, 2.75u). You would have to sell a lot of sets to get the price down to a reasonable amount. I think this would have to be a long term investment that would return only after a number of keycap srt runs...

[MdotMaxson]

Mbk all day

[1391401]

MBK 8 days of the week