@Proud Muslim Cleric How about "majestic"? Does it suits your needs?

Dye Sublime?

This

Yea it's always useful to have a catalog of things that can be done. One day one might need it ;) Thank you for you nice words :)

I just ordered my 3018 CNC mill yesterday, comes with 2.5W laser. Want the mill to make my own split mech keyboard. This is the solution to the caps. Much easier than Lettaset I used decades ago on my mech ZX81 keyboard. Might try that finger nail UV ink.

I don’t think he would take $5

I'm happy to have helped ;) btw. have my daily driver equipped with a set I printed that way and till now it holds up great :D

@@MakenModify That's great news. I plan to make a portable electronic journal. I'm fitting a full keyboard to 20 keys with 5 macros. Durability is important to me for my project.

sounds cool. I think the process is relatively durable, but not as strong as dye sub for example but never the less an easier diy solution

Just try to stay save with the laser. Best would be to build a box around it. ;)

@@MakenModify Thank you, I will!

@@MakenModify What types of materials would you recommend for building a box? Could you send me a link for the right kind of safety goggles?

@@qbalsdon Yea a box is not that easy, since you need a filter for the window (or a camera inside and Monitor outside) so at least you will need glasses. Only problem with these things is that if someone else enters the room they often don't have glasses on when entering the room. Here is an (as I think) good video on the topic of glasse: ukposts.info/have/v-deo/gXGAmI2ehaqirJs.html

@@MakenModify Thank you so much!

hehe cool, curious for yor results ;)

@@MakenModify I got EXCELLENT results. Your process worked perfectly for me. Thanks Again.

@@winstonpotgieternextkast1685 awesome, happy to hear ;)

yea it even worked for me with fine golden glitter (nail art supply). Only down side to this process is that it fades a bit and is not as resistant as Dye sub for example. Happy you like it ;)

Your welcome, but by now i would suggest to use diy die sub printing (at least for white keycaps)

hehe, happy to have you ;)

Awesome, happy to hear that :) did you share it somewhere?

I haven't yet. Just did a trial cap but I'm going to do a whole board and then post

Yea i know, but that works a bit different (without adding pigments)

@@MakenModify Since most prints are made with the CMYK palette I believe you can actually make any color you want by measuring the right amount. Like you showed with the red print. It's amazing

@@sterkriger2572 yea and it even works with "nail art pigments" (see geekhack thread in the description). But it's not super durable if you leave it like that. But that was just a bit R&D and inspiration ;)

Oh you made it here? Such an honor ;) since rebuilding my other CNC I've consumed a good amount of your videos. Looking forward to the next AORUS video ;)

Hehe, there is white toner I think but in some tests even nail art pigments worked ;)

yea would love to... life got in the way but gets more likely to be the case every day ;)

Thank you :)

since this is how they are often made, that should work pretty well i think, but I did not test this yet.

you would need to have a dye sublimation printer, which would print on a special paper. This is used by some print shops for printing t-shirts. My plan was to go to one of them and have them print a set of letters on that paper. At home you could "iron" it on. But so far I didn't find the time to go to the mentioned shop, sorry.

i have found videos of people online claiming that the paper they used didn't require a special printer not special ink, but there is a possibility of them lying ( cuts, etc...). thanks for your response and i will investigate further.

Problem with most videos is you don't know how long the printing lasts... might be that it can be done with cheap paper and an inc jet printer but how resistant this coating is is in doubt. ;)

exactly. i'll try it anyway since it's only 10 euros and if that doesnt works i can always make crappy T-shirts out of it or something

Take a look at keycapdiy.blogspot.com/ At the above URL, you can see his experiments starting in Dec 2013 and continuing. And I would have to agree with the blogger that dye sub with ABS keycaps is impossible since if you do some research, you'll find that the dye sub process takes a temperature of about 400°F (204°C) and ABS plastic has a melting point of 105°C. PBT has a melting point of about 433°F (223°C) so PBT keycaps can be done with careful temperature control. I don't know if the gentleman associated with the above URL is still working since the last blog post was in May of 2016, but there should be useful information there if you intend on doing DIY dye sublimation of keycaps. I've been looking for a relatively inexpensive way of making some custom keycaps myself since I'd like to make a custom keyboard myself. (See www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/gists/d6314df3ad657cc9a0342bd396d56730 ) Unlike most of the DIY keyboards out there that reduce the number of keys, my plan is to go larger. I figure the Jumbo layout with a 24x7 Matrix would map quite nicely. But getting nice looking keycaps for the extra 34 keys above a 108 key layout presents a problem... (yes, the layout I'd like has 142 keys).

kind of I would guess. Yes it will block some light, but the coat is not very thick so it will most likely shine through a bit.

yea but heating it should make it softer and result in more tearing. I tried freezing them but did not make much of a difference. Nowadays I use my CO2 laser to engrave them and that works pretty good.

Thank you. The laser machines got pretty cheap meanwhile. But also it looks good it dose not hold up for a long time without a clear coat.

Sorry, I'm not sure if i got your question right. The body of the Keycap? That was a PBT Keycap i bought from aliexpress. The powder I used was toner from an laser printer (office printer) cartridge. The machine is used was a self build CNC machine I built from an old 3D printer.

that is a question with no definite answer. It depends on what you want to do but if it is really only to print onto keycaps, get something that is as cheap as possible... by now some have tried to do what i showed but not all succeeded. And even if it works it still not a perfect result. You can also do dye sub at home as far as i know, might even be easier and cheaper (if you don't already have the tools).

hehe xD meanwhile there is also DIY die sublimation. But that needs an old ink jet printer and diy sub ink. By now did not test that but just as a hint ;)

Likely not. Maybe a bit ;) The idea is that both, powder and keycap melt and fuse together. Resin dose not melt. The powder might melt and fuse a bit to the Resin but I guess the connection would not be very strong.

Not on keycaps. I used it to make pcbs with the laser but on keycaps it would most likely damage the cap where the laser hits it or even make the paint fuse even more to the plastic. But the effect might even be interesting, who knows. Sadly am to busy to try atm

Did not try it yet but yes and no. The laser melts the pigment which would maybe grab the resin, but the resin will not melt so the bond will be pretty weak. Also the epoxy might release harmful gases when hit by the laser so i wouldn't recommend it.

On epoxy resin keycaps I transfer my pictures by printing them on the smooth side of a transparant plastic sheet (overhead projector sheet for inkjet) with my laser/LED printer (mirrored print!). After this I apply a thin layer of new epoxy on the keycap and press it, printed side turned to the keycap with a small instrument, avoid bubbles. If the keycap is hollowed you can put an AA battery on it to keep the pressure. on the transparant sheet until the epoxy is hard enough. I's really a very thin layer, just to wear the print. After two days gently apply some heat to the foil with a paint-burner or a gas flame from a distance(don't burn it). After it has cooled down just gently pull the foil away from the keycap and you will have a flawless print on it. If you don't heat it up a little bit, a part of the inkt will stay on the foil and your picture will be disturbed and not transferred completely. It works great and the result is as sharp as the picture. It also works with mixed color logo's, even photo's. If you use polyurethane keycaps it works also, the bonding between epoxy and PUR is excellent. After the picture is on the keycap (you can't rub it of easily btw), i apply some epoxy coating on it again. The colors become clearer and brighter and the keycap will not ware down. I designed this proces myself after some research on the internet, the heating I figured out myself. success !!

nice, yea I have no idea how good adhesion would be but I once added a dab of epoxy to two Keycaps to get a homing bump and that stuck just fine for years. More of a problem could be that that the surface of standard keycaps is not flat and on say Cherry profile they aren't even parallel to the bottom. But I've seen done was completely MSLA printed caps (with legends).

Thank you :D It is printer toner ;) but printer toner basically is a polymer pigment.

hehe thx. Yea it worked quite good. Now a days I would most likely go the DIY dye-sub way but this is always an option ;)

Jep I used a oneplus 5t with open cama for all my recent videos. Before I used a canon 500D but the non existence of a proper video auto focus drove me nuts. But I edit my video and do a bit of grading in Davinci so it might not be as obvious ;) Edit: And I use external mic of cause

Günstige gibts inzwischen viele, man braucht auch nicht viel power dafür. Aktuell würde ich aber wenn es helle Keycaps sind lieber Sublimationsdruck (DIY dye sub) probieren. Is einfacher, sicherer und haltbarer ;)

I had succes using random "Nail art pigments" i ordered from China. You can find pictures of that in the geekhack post (video description). Thanks for your nice words ;)

oh, nice, how? :D Are you doing it as a service? Get asked often for doing it but don't have the time to do unfortunately. Would be happy to send them somewhere ;)

@@MakenModify yes well its not just keycaps but i need and easy way to get ink on plastic shells, i do electronics and 3d modeling, atm I was losing my mind trying to figure out how I was going to make keycaps for retro computers and get logos on the enclosures, like the c64 and amiga, and this would make everything so simple.

Today I would use powder coating powder. Tha is also available in many colors. (Would look on eBay I guess)

I left them as is without any protection, to see how it will hold up. for a business it's maybe a better idea to use a DIY dye sub method like the one shown on Linus Tech Tips. It just needs an inkjet printer, special ink and paper as well as an flat iron or something similar. Dye sublimation is a proven to work process that works with dark colors on light colored keycaps. My process is more of an experiment ;)

@@MakenModify I understand your reasoning for saying that, but I've been doing A LOT of research on this exact topic. We have a special way of customizing our keycaps already that makes it where doing that won't be possible, as it will mess up the current pattern we do on it. I think if we put a sealant over this, it could potentially last a lot longer than it did for you. I think it is worth a shot on our end.

@@bencarney8972 sure. It also makes a difference if you do a complete board or just some accent keys. I'm curious to what you are making, drop me a line (UKposts, Instagram or Twitter) if you can share more ;)

@@MakenModify Hey! I followed you on Twitter (Winclark12), but you don't seem to allow DM's. If you would, shoot me over one and we can get to talking a bit more! I have a few more questions anyways, so this will be nice!

It worked for me with silver nail art powder but powder coating powder should work nicely 😉

Should... But depends ;) i have seen people do it on clear caps with varying success and the color should not matter. Material on the other hand can matter. I can't promise you anything, you have to try ;)

I have a vinyl cutter but that would losen after no time. You could use it as a stancil for spray paint though. Some people use water slide decals that you can print. But thats also not very resilient. Best bet is to get an ink jet printer, swap the ink for sublimation ink and iron it on (works for pbt caps). This was mor an experiment that worked surprisingly well 😉

why to use alcohol to cool it ? can tap water be used ?

@@leoyru.3361 I had to drill holes in acrylic at work and I was told to use alcohol to cool it. I don't know wether water would work.

i actually used 3% power and 50mm/min using Laserweb, I heared back from some who tried it, some succeeded some not... did not quiet figure out yet what the problem could be for some... maybe the setup, maybe wrong caps, maybe to thick coat, don't know. looking forward to your results ;)

yep in the Geekhack thread linked in the video description you can see that I even tested golden nail art pigment on a black cap and that worked pretty good so that should also work ;) Edit: the cap was wite but i added black as a first layer for testing

awesome. Btw you can also use powder coating powder ;)

it worked with the laser printer pigment and with some random "Nail art pigments" from China. I would suggest you try it on some cheap blank caps first

No problem I'll write a bill ;)

It's toner for a laser printer.

I have a Glowforge and believe that the fans may blow the toner off, we'd have to likely devise a way to block the air temporarily from the laser head.

The ton sticks pretty good maybe it sticks even better if there is a tiny bit of water (like condensation) on the caps

any luck? i'm thinking of trying to fuse white toner onto black keys with a glowforge

meanwhile did somethin similar. Take a keycap, engrave the letter with a CO2 Laser (i have an K40) and then fill with enamel colors. Quick and easy... only need the laser ;)

@@MakenModify Milling Resin as an advantage. You can have the outer shell a solid color, and fill in with a translucent color. Mill to the Translucent layer. Then fill in with more Translucent Resin.

I will checkout meawhile's work. And then check in with my local maker spaces maybe someone has a Laser.

@@NicholasMarshall Yea milling resin should work better. Also there are people that do dual shot resin lettering but that only makes sense if you plan on doing kind of mass production.

geewizwow might do a video on it but its basicly made from left over pats of an old 3d printer and some aluminium extrusion. But sure why not ;)

sounds cool :D Do you mill stuff on it as well, like the keycap holder? look forward to seeing the vid

geewizwow the holder is 3d printed but yes, its mainly designed for milling pcbs

that's a pretty good question... I have no idea xD I would guess it will block most of the light but might shine through but haven't tested yet.

It was a self built machine for that i used parts of an old 3d printer. It has an arduino with CNC shield running GRBL. For software I used laser web and another software for these tests

I did some experiments with nail art powders maybe that's a way ;) (worked for me with gold and silver powder)

Should work but did not test it. You might have to turn down the power due to a lower melting point but in general I don't see why it would not work.

Might. Did not try that yet. I tried some random "Nail art Powder" from Aliexpress, which worked pretty good. On toner basically both components, the cap and the powder are thermoplastics and fuse together quiet well. If only the keycap is melted it might work but maybe not as strong, but I honestly don't know what micra powder is made of as a base material so I can't tell you ;)

It depends on hom much you diy it, but if you buy a cheap generic "laser engraver" from China its maybe around 100$. If you allready have a cnc or a 3d printer it can be done for 30$. But that said, with that equipment you will not "produce" full keysets in minutes, it will just get you started. By now i would maybe prefer to go the diy dye sub route. Prominently Linus Tech Tips made a video about that recently.

@@MakenModify those keycaps end up losing the ink right? what about those printers that don't require ink, the ones that are pretty fast? those are too expensive right? why do they not require ink on top of the keycap like yours?

@@marcelfernandezromero8905 im not really sure what you mean. Professional co2 laser engraver? They can etch the surface but will not change the color (on pbt caps). Dye sub ink will penetrate into the PBT cap, so it's not only on the surface it's considered the best method for printing on keycaps. Only doubleshot is considered better but there the lettering on the cap is a different piece of plastic and can only be produced by a two stage injection molding process.

@@MakenModify alrightm thank you for educating me

The color will start to fade at constant use (see the geekhack thread in the video description). Maybe a real DIY Dye Sub will work better for you. This was just an experiment. It worked fine and I can live with the slightly faded legends but it's not perfekt.

Pretty well actually. Only some lost a bit of color but that might well be due to changed settings while making the full set

hm... yea i did but only once with a silver pigment on black. It worked, maybe the silver layer was quiet thin. You might have to work in several thin coats where alignment might be the biggest problem.

Multilayer was my first thought also but indeed allignment will probably mesh up everything then. Maybe gonna try yellow toner or some resinart/nailpolish pigments. After that a try with a fiberlaser (a friend of my has one) will be the next thing to try out I guess. I will let you know if and how I succeeded. Thanks anyway for your prompt reply! :)

@@MakenModify thanks for sharing your thoughts on this subject. This is a really inspirational video. I hope one day to be able to show yo my results :)

I use white dry rub-on transfer letters on black keycaps. The problem is that that the rub-on transfers will wear off almost immediately. I mitigate against this by spaying the keycaps with satin finish automotive catalyzed clear-coat (not air dry clear). It's not a perfect solution but it last quite a long time.

Yea that video is quite old now, back then laseres were not that powerful (at least those that were reasonably priced). You could also try powder coating pigments for black. Maybe that helps. Other than that diy dye sublimation seems to be the way to go now a days 😉

@@MakenModify i have seen on the forum someone mentioned there are separate pigments for laser marking. I will look into them. I refuse to do dye sublimation for now, i dont have inkjet printer nor the finesse to perfectly align every letter on every key. It would kill me to see one slightly misaligned. I have one last shot. The keycaps I bough are "artisan" keycaps with a special color not the mass manufactured ones. I also believe that the glossy paint on them is something unusual. I will buy some cheap PBT ones to try

@@DanielBulyovcsity you tried that on artisans? Those are most likely made of resin. Resin dose not melt it just burns. For the video I used PBT caps. There the pigment melts, the keycap melts and both fuse together.

@@MakenModify yes i figured out by now. Thank you

I built it from parts from an old 3D printer and some other parts I had laying around. But there are many ready to buy "laser engraver" that should work as well on eBay, aliexpress, banggood, Amazon,... you name it ;)

Built it myself from an old 3D printer. But use almost any cheap laser engraver for that.

Good idea, that should work I think as long as it wets the surface and dose not bead up

Yea the files were vector but rastered for engraving. But i get your point an i did test it back then. There were improvements but not very big. The software I used for tool path generating however did not really do a good job of following the vector line precisely. All in all this was more a prove of concept ;)

Might work but it might be hard to perfectly align it twice. What i also did was deep engrave something and then add enamel paint, wipe off the rest. After drying ther is a haptical feedback.

@@MakenModifyEnamel, that is what I was thinking about. I'm 60 and I barely remember in Junior High School Plastic Industry class where we engraved plastic using a router and then spread some sort of paint over the engraved area and the wiped off the paint on the surrounding area and then let the paint dry. It was a long time ago (mid 70s) so couldn't remember the terms to use. I figured I would just have to make a holder with an opening with the same width as the keys are wide and then just make thin template that would center each of the different lengths of keys. I figured if someone had a laser engraver, that they would also have access to or own a 3D printer.

@@EvilDaveCanada yea sure depends on the detail i guess. Btw i tried CNC engraving but that never worked for me. Recently did some tests with a CO2 laser and (for engraving) that worked really well.

Laser printer toner but powder coating pigment should also work

Don't know if there is white toner but I tested gold nail art pigments on black keycaps and that worked

yea I somewhere wrote that in these comments. That should work great but I did not test that yet. But there are videos of people using powder coat with a laser for fusing paint to surfaces

Slightly faded, have a look at the geekhack thread, linked in the video description ;)

serolfflores thank you. Actually i did a first commission. But to scale it up i have to refine the process. Biggest problem is to get it acuratly centered after use the machine for something else. I might build a dedicated machine tough ;)

@@MakenModify How's your process here? Is it possible to buy keycaps from you?

@@killerhomer0815 since my last video my live changed so much that I barley have any spare time... If time is money mine pretty valuable atm. => the price for commissions would be ridiculous :/ so no not really sorry...

Yea you can also just change the direction of the lines, instead of physically rotating the cap. The software I used back then just worked with raster images and higher resolution images did not translate to better prints, also due to software limitations. After the video i tried laserweb and that supports vector images and is overall a better software

@@MakenModify Ha! Duh! "How many engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?" Sheesh, do I feel dumb. XD I just assumed you were constrained by the tech. Didn't even occur to me to ask if you could just rotate the print plane! Should be nearly academic with a vector plot, though. IF you decide to do another in this fashion with the new software, please: post it! I'm fascinated by your approach here. Liked, Sub'd, Bell'd.

@@grumblycurmudgeon hehe thank you! Yea i know that feel more than I'd like to admit xD i did a few more tests back then which i posted in the geekhack thread (link in the description). Will see. Don't have the exact setup anymore though

I have vectors but the software I used wanted raster based images. But nevertheless its more about the precision of the movement of the laser an you only really see it with magnification

Sure. You only need a white pigment that works with that process and the laser power has to be adjusted but other than that it should work in any color combination. In the geekhack post (linkt in the description) i once printed a cap first black and after that in gold on top with no problem ;)

Good point, never found/took the time but now I posted an update on the geekhack thread ;) geekhack.org/index.php?topic=96010.msg2734727#msg2734727

The profile dose not matter at all. Only the material and color matter ;) My process is not exactly dye sub, on dye sub you basically can't scratch it of on this process you kind of can... in the video description is a link the the geekhack thread where you can see how they fared up to 1 year of use.

Ty I was wondering because all the videos I saw were using dsa and I wasn't sure if it only works with dsa since you are press and it easy with a flat surface or it was because dsa are the cheapest and easiest to kind blanks for

@@kyu_273 yea they are cheap and easy to get as blanks. Blank OEM PBT is not as cheap/easy

You mean the cutting mat? You get them in most craft stores or online :)

It's laser printer toner from an broke toner cartridge. But I also tested nail art pigments and it also seamed to work but no guaranties on that ;)

@@MakenModify ty :)