Rit dye and keys

[Oqsy]

Sounds perfect rip, thanks.  I finally get a package from Aunty Rippy!

PM sent.

[winitlife]

o man... This site http://itwinkle.stores.yahoo.net/ you guys r talkin about is gr8... now its http://www.itwinkle.com though.. actually i had forgotten their name and i m glad to find it again... they sure r the cheapest in the market.. one time i had bought HP speakers from them... their prices r for real!!! but they have changed their look so drastically...

[itlnstln]

You know what else is the cheapest in the market?  Your mom, *****.


You can find cheap pearl necklaces there, too.

[winitlife]

this is nuts!
http://itwinkle.stores.yahoo.net/golerkeyspan1.html
in this country the UK version cant be had for less than £120 thats UKP!!!
The only difference is the printing on some keys.

o man... This site http://itwinkle.stores.yahoo.net/ you guys r talkin about is gr8... now its http://www.itwinkle.com though.. actually i had forgotten their name and i m glad to find it again... they sure r the cheapest in the market.. one time i had bought HP speakers from them... their prices r for real!!! but they have changed their look so drastically...

[Oqsy]

Ok, ripster's replacement Esc key cap has arrived, so the dissection photos are on the way (have to recharge the camera to transfer them).

My impressions, however...
What I thought was a very thorough dye job is still VERY thin once viewed from a cross-section.  I have kerataconus so it's hard for me to judge precisely how deep the dye permeates into the key caps, but it's somewhere around the width of a human hair or thinner.  

Some details:  The key cap is from a 1999 42H1292 assembled in Scotland.  The dye job was done months ago roughly following the directions in this thread.  The key cap was originally dark gray, not the typical off-white (it didn't match my other red keys because of this, so I was fine with cutting it open as an experiment for RIT dye permeation into Model M key caps).

As I said above, photos on the way.  Thanks to Ripster for the donated replacement Esc!

[Oqsy]

My gut feeling is no, not as deep as dye sub used in legend printing, but I'll let the photos do the talking.  They're coming, I promise!

[Oqsy]

I'll just use one of the few you included in the envelope.

Thanks again.

[ricercar]

Measure your pubic hair before putting it in the pic(pluck the hair first please).  Average is about 25-50 microns.

Long or wide? Which wide? (Male pubic hairs are oval in cross section. Female are round. <- It's one of the only things I remember from reading Terminal Man.)

[Oqsy]

what typeface is that on your new avatar, ricer?

[ricercar]

what typeface is that on your new avatar, ricer?

Typeface = Calligraph421 BT, (Truetype,  by Bitstream)
Font = 96 pt with hinting and anti aliasing


(Spanish key caps are going to teach me to touch type faster than blanks! Critical punctuation is rearranged.)

[itlnstln]

Ouch.  That sucks. At least it's sort of Geekhack-like.

[itlnstln]

That's sort of a nice marble effect.  If they all come out kinda pretty, it might not be all that bad.

[Oqsy]

Sorry, my wife has commandeered the camera to copy vacation pics and send them to family and friends.  I may never see it again!

Nah, I'll find it right now and start copying the pics.

[Oqsy]

TWAIN sucks, for the record.

T-Wayne also sucks.

>

[Oqsy]

Ok, here's one huge one for starters.

[Oqsy]

[JohnWayne]You said it, Buster. [/JohnWayne]

[sealcouch]

Did anyone try the liquid rit dye? I couldn't find the scarlet red in powder. =[

[Oqsy]

Liquid works just as well.  They're really the same thing, the liquid is just pre-dissolved to an extent.  It's still VERY concentrated, so don't go overboard until you're sure about the results you're getting with the amount you've added.  It's easy to dye keys darker, but once they're black (too much scarlet red can get you pretty close to black), you can't go back

[sealcouch]

Thanks!

[sealcouch]

UPDATE!

[lux27]

I tried to dye the keycaps of a cherry g80-1800 (grey) using a german cloth coloring product called "Simplicol" http://www.amazon.de/SIMPLICOL-Textilfarbe-Marineblau-150g/dp/B0014D6DW6/ref=sr_1_45?ie=UTF8&s=drugstore&qid=1279874108&sr=1-45

I put the keycaps for about 4 hours in about 70°C-80°C hot water+Simplicol and lept the temperature, but they didnt take on any color

what am i doing wrong?

[Jim66]

Show Image

UPDATE!

Show Image

Show Image

I think the blue looks spot on. I'm not sure about the brown though..

[sealcouch]

yeah, I know. I wasn't to pleased with it honestly. =/

[ironman31]

So I'm in a catch 22. I'm dying the keys of my dell at101w and the only way to get them to take color well is to get the water near boiling, but when that happens some of the keys warp beyond use.
What do?

[WhiteRice]

Harvest some keys from a keyboard that uses different material

[ironman31]

Don't have access to any other "throw aways" :/

[ironman31]

except for the other dell at101w, which ill try the keys and hopefully i can keep the temp better than last time

[WhiteRice]

except for the other dell at101w, which ill try the keys and hopefully i can keep the temp better than last time

Why not buy one?

[Infinite north]

Get a cheap meat thermometer, they are handy for all kinds of things.

[ironman31]

Get a cheap meat thermometer, they are handy for all kinds of things.

yeah, im using one now

[ironman31]

Some turned out fine


Others went bad


So I figured out that 200 degrees F is the best for the plastic that Dell AT101W keys are made of, and I replaced the warped keys with ones from the other Dell that I have.

And now my minitouch looks pretty cool.

looking at them now, they are a little darker tint in person.

[ironman31]

the flash on my camera faded out the lettering. They are actually clearly visible in person

[ManjyomeThunder]

I picked up some RIT dye for use on my new AT101Ws which should be here in a few days, but I couldn't resist trying them on my Customizer 104 first. I was really worried about how they'd turn out, and if I'd accidentally melt them, because this is my primary keyboard and I'd hate to have screwed it up and had to order new keys from Unicomp.

I took off the F keys, Prt Scrn, Scroll Lock and Pause, along with the top and right hand keys on the number pad. I used one box of brown dye, and put it in a fairly large throwaway pan on my stove mostly full of water with a decent amount of salt, and heated it so that it was steaming.

I washed the keys in soap and water, rinsed them, and let them soak for a minute in rubbing alcohol.

At first, I was getting almost NO results except for some dirty brownish grey keys, but I continued to let them soak through eating dinner and reading through almost the entirety of this thread. I turned up the heat a bit (from 3 to 5 on my stove, goes from Low, 1-9 and High) since the plastic supposedly had a high melting point.

Success. In about 15 minutes I have beautiful, rich dark brown keys that I suspect will look VERY nice on my keyboard with the black frame and grey primary keys. Thinking about doing the alphanumerics in black (Sort of a "Das"-y or Otaku Filco sort of thing, blank keys being the idea) and the rest of the keys in red (WASD in RED too, for gaming pwnage, amirite?).

Just letting them dry now. Only issue is that with the dark brown the text is invisible or VERY hard to read. It varies. Actually, the text on the side of the keycaps (like "Break") show up fine. I think it's the glossy finish on the side.

[Parak]

Has anyone tried this with non-doubleshot keycaps from cherry G81s? I also wonder if there's an easy way to get plain white caps for some multicolor otaku... hmm...

[ZeNmAc]

Has anyone tried this with double shot keys?  Like dying the white double shot letters on black keys dark gray or black?

Do you think it would work?

[ManjyomeThunder]

Worked out rather horribly with the AT101W. Minor key warping (only a few keys, still usable), but very blotchy colors, especially on the side of the keycaps. Same temps as with the Customizer, which again, came out great.

[ironman31]

I found that 190-200 F was good for my at101w keys, nice even color and took well.

[ManjyomeThunder]

Unicomp Customizer 104. Scarlet, Royal Blue and Dark Brown.

[Stone]

Nice!

I'm quite tempted to try my Datahand keys but I don't have any spare at the moment Anyone know offhand which plastic they're made from?

Stone

[ManjyomeThunder]

Uh.  I would never RitDye expensive keyboards where keys would be difficult to replace.

Also, Rit Dye does not last forever you know.

I remember seeing other posts that made it seem like the dye went deeper on OCN I think. Hopefully it lasts a decent amount of time, at least on this kind of plastic. Can't imagine the color wearing off as quickly as Filco keys become shiny anyway, amirite?

Probably a good idea to NOT dye expensive boards' caps, though, like you said. Good thing for a lot of us that Unicomp sells spare sets.

[ZeNmAc]

Another guy did it on Cherry Double Shots.  Works fine.  Watch the temperatures carefully since many double shots seem to be ABS.

Cool, thanks.  I may have to pick up a cherry keyboard to try it on .

BTW, I've said it before, but the dye on my at101w's looks really nice at first, but wears off after a few months.  I dyed the wasd keys red and after several months they were almost the original color on top again.  The rest was black and now it's faded into dark red on keys I use more.  I already re-dyed the keys once.

[Konkistadori]

Any good guide for dyeing HHKB Pro 2 keycaps? Im thinking to color white keys into red if possible into dark red like blood.

How long will that dye last? few months? years?

And if someone have spare black hhkb pro 2 keys i could buy them ..

[ironman31]

I think the topre keys take it better (deeper) than other keys. I cut one of the ones I did in half and found that the dye didn't go deep at all, even though it had a nice daqrk color

[ironman31]

Mine didn't even go that far. I could rub off the dye if I rubbed it on a piece of paper with a little bit of force, lol.

[jpc]

RIT dye vintage ad.

[ricercar]

|It was a good day to dye.

I've been attracted to the Japanese Topre board with yellow key caps.



My cheap American cover of said keyboard:



One bottle lemon yellow Rit dye in steaming but not boiling pan of water. Stir for 20 minutes. Add another bottle and stir for another 20 minutes. I've come to the strong belief the first twenty minutes are the only valuable time period for vibrant coloring.

[Oqsy]

ricercar: is that an MX-11900 with black painted case and a "enter \" keys mod?  ooo it also looks like the left shift was made into a single space and another key inserted... perhaps just an MX from another region?

[ricercar]

Was a $24 USD NIB Black 11900 with Spanish-localized layout and double-shot caps. I swapped out the Spanish-legended double shots for white (now yellow) US caps, and yellow-legended arrows from Spolia Optima's grey double shot gift set to me.

[Oqsy]

good answer
those arrows look rather dolch-ish with yellow instead of white.

[ricercar]

Sorry, had to plug it in anyway and makes sure it worked....

And it pulses!

Perfect line to use with the wife.