Space Invaders key cap molding

[XMIT]

I've been working with Engicoder to try to make some silicone rubber and urethane resin molded Space Invaders key caps. Sorry for the delay here. It's been a long month.

I did have a chance to cast a one sided mold of a Space Invaders ANSI enter key cap. This is basically a flat top key cap since the spherical top would require a second mold. This was just a proof of concept.

The little tabs on the underside of the key cap are really quite hard to get. Doing those well would require either a really thin resin, or more likely, a little vacuum chamber. Without the tabs the stabilizer bar doesn't stay in place.

Otherwise it works really well, very promising. A two piece mold in a vacuum chamber, would come out beautifully.

Top of key caps.

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Bottom of key caps. Without the little tabs the stabilizer won't fit.

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Sitting happily on the board.

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[Spaceman1200]

nice work, very interesting

[Muirium]

Colour me a bright shade of intrigued!

I've got a big ass enter, full size, black space invaders board I've been meaning to TKL chop someday. (Still in America. No rushing that!) Perhaps I'm being wildly optimistic about what carnage I can do the the plate, but I'd love to ANSI it in the process.

Commendable choice of switch mount to investigate!

[fohat]

Yes this is a good project.

A reasonable ANSI Enter/Backspace mod for Hi-Tek would be huge, even if it meant Dremeling the PCB and jumping some wires.

PS - Quite a while back I sent Gloyz some Hi-Tek caps, along with other switch types, in hopes that she would use them as templates for her work, but nothing has come of it yet.

[Muirium]

Gloyz? Someone from another forum? I was talking with Rsbseb about making these caps, too. But as you know he timed out.


This is the board I have in mind for custom caps:



An identical pair from Cindy. One is Andy's. I cleaned up the other one, and Teensied it, and used it for a while. The case isn't as sturdy as my NMB back here, and that damn sticker left a lot of tacky residue that seems resistant to washing. So I'm keen to TKL chop it sometime for several reasons.

I'd actually just need 2 new caps: an ANSI Return and the 1.5 unit key above it. I'd go HHKB Backspace, and leave the top row alone. I prefer that layout anyway. Sure I could come up with something sneaky for the board's remaining 1u backspace key!

[Chyros]

I'm sure there would be great interest in this. I get so many comments and questions about the coloured caps on my Matrox 8255 that if you can make NEW coloured ones I'm sure they'll go. Nice work, always on the cutting edge you two!

[jacobolus]

What someone should clone are the spherical space invader caps from Symbolics MacIvory keyboards.
http://www.johnbear.net/symbolics-keybo ... yboard.pdf
(for more pics see http://www.asl.dsl.pipex.com/symbolics/ ... board.html)

[Muirium]

Sure, *after* we've patched our existing boards!

[Engicoder]

Great work!! This is looking very promising. Have you tried a few remove and install cycles? How do the retention tabs hold up? What type of resin did you use?