I have always wondered what a rubber coated key cap would feel like verses the hard plastic that all keyboards come with. After ripster posted his sand blasting key mod I decided that it was time that I really look into the rubber option a little harder than I had in the past. After digging around some this is what I found
As you can see from the image above it comes in both a dip can and a spray can. If you dig around the
Plasti Dip site you can also find that they also have a design your own colour kit as well that along with a thiner you can use to make your own colours that can be sprayed as well. I don't have a air spray gun so I went with the spray can. Currently the spray is offered in six colours (white, black, clear, yellow, red and blue) locally (Home depot) I could only find black so that is what I have used here. But I have ordered the other colours from here
garage-toys.
I first tested this on some of the keys off a cheap rubber dome board I had laying around (sorry no pictures of the test). From these test keys I decided that I kind of liked the feel of the keys so decided to do a full set of home row keys on a board that I use every day so that I could have a better feel of how they would feel in actual use.
For my test board I decided to use my 86U I have at work. For keys I used some of the dye rejects I got from megarat (I just knew those would come in handy to have around).
Before I get to the actual pictures though I would like to say that I don't have a good camera so the pictures are not all that great but should be OK. Also I'm not sure how I did it but the close ups of the keys after I sprayed them with plasti dip were taken in some kind of grey level mode. But I think they came out ok.
So here is what the keys looked like after being sprayed with plasti dip:
As you can see the key has a pretty good texture to it. According to the can you should use 3-5 coats. This key has 3 coats and on the last coat I used a light coat in the hopes that it would give the key a little more texture. It seems to have worked.
Here is another shot of the same key but from the side
Some notes on the above pictures. These are taken with the key sitting on the box I used to spray them on. As you can see I just sat them on the box and started spraying them.
I bagged them up along with a key puller and took them to work so I could use them through out the day to see what I thought of them. When I went to install these keys though I ran into some issues. Because of the way I sprayed them I got some over spray on the key stems and the Tolerances on the Topre switches would not let me install them take a look at this picture to see what I mean
Even that little bit of over spray would not let me install the keys on the 86U. So ended up waiting another day to actually install them. Ended up using a little steel wool to remove the over spray.
So here they are finally installed on the 86U
And a close up
After using these for a few days I can say they do feel different that your standard keys. But is it a pleasant feeling? I'm not really sure. I like them but I'm not commited to them either. I think what I really need to do is spray a full set and see how that feels. I think I have enough of megarat's dye rejects to do that so I'm going to do as many as I can over the weekend and see what I think after using a full set. But my initial reaction is that I'm going to end up liking them. But will I like them enough to leave them on? Only time will tell.