deskthority

Hello!

I just got a HHKB2 and kind of felt in love with it, and now I want to make it pretty as well.
I know that elitekeyboards sells caps for topre, but they only seem to have white and black caps for HHKB, and I already got both of the sets.

So I'm wondering if there is any other way to get a hold of caps without spending a fortune on them.
I've seen some caps at taobao, but honestly, that homepage is almost impossible to understand with google translate, so I don't really know what to buy.

I bet there's some other HHKB fans here that knows how to make my HHKB even prettier!

You can only buy black and white caps for the HHKB. You can use realforce keycaps but the left shift will be the wrong profile. It will only really work with blank keycaps as well.

You could dye your keycaps with rit dye. I did it with some Unicomp keycaps a year or so ago. There still holding up to this day (it's on my Son's keyboard).

fossala wrote:You can only buy black and white caps for the HHKB. You can use realforce keycaps but the left shift will be the wrong profile. It will only really work with blank keycaps as well.

You could dye your keycaps with rit dye. I did it with some Unicomp keycaps a year or so ago. There still holding up to this day (it's on my Son's keyboard).

Yeah, I've been thinking about rit dye, but it seems hard to get the right kind of dye in Sweden, or at least I don't know what the right kind of dye is called here in Sweden.
And it feels kind of bad to mod caps that costs 100USD per set, if I fail it's worthless.

Ah, well, if there is no keycap sets for the HHKB I guess I'll have to buy some realforce caps and use them instead. Kind of sucks but not much to do about it.

Check if you can deal with the wrong profile on the left shift first by moving your CTRL key onto your left shift. I've tried and it's something I couldn't live with.

Huh, I'm pretty sure the left shift on my HHKB (equipped with pink Realforce keycaps) has the same profile as the rest of the keys on that row. I think the right shift key is also of the correct profile, even though it's like 0.5 units too small. Will have to look that up when I have time.

Also I think printed keycaps could work, depending on how picky you are. A few legends will be wrong, and you won't have all those second layer legends, but I think it'd definitely work for me personally.

The biggest problem for me is the price really. I'm quite fine with paying $95-$110 for keycaps (I've only done so once though), but then there's the shipping of $50 or $60, can't really remember, from EK. $170 for a set of keycaps is pushing it in my opinion, but to each his own there I guess.

fruktstund wrote:Huh, I'm pretty sure the left shift on my HHKB (equipped with pink Realforce keycaps) has the same profile as the rest of the keys on that row. I think the right shift key is also of the correct profile, even though it's like 0.5 units too small. Will have to look that up when I have time.

Also I think printed keycaps could work, depending on how picky you are. A few legends will be wrong, and you won't have all those second layer legends, but I think it'd definitely work for me personally.

The biggest problem for me is the price really. I'm quite fine with paying $95-$110 for keycaps (I've only done so once though), but then there's the shipping of $50 or $60, can't really remember, from EK. $170 for a set of keycaps is pushing it in my opinion, but to each his own there I guess.

Hehe, yeah. EK is not an option, that's why I'm asking here.

And I think fossala got the left and right shift mixed up there, didn't even think about it until you mentioned it, I was thinking about the right shift all the time.

And another thing I've been thinking about... Why did I hate my realforce 88UB when I love the feeling of HHKB2, is it really that different when you have plate mounted topre switches or is it something else that makes me like the HHKB? I know for sure it's not placebo since I don't really give a rats ass about the prices of the boards I buy.

Yeah, sorry I meant the right shift. Smaller because of the FN key. Stupid me.

huttala wrote:<snip>Yeah, I've been thinking about rit dye, but it seems hard to get the right kind of dye in Sweden, or at least I don't know what the right kind of dye is called here in Sweden.
And it feels kind of bad to mod caps that costs 100USD per set, if I fail it's worthless.<snip>

Any textile dye suitable for nylon or polyamide will work on PBT caps, e.g. Dylon multi-purpose or universal dye. The outcome, however, can be different from the advertised colour shade. E.g. a light blue could turn out much darker or a yellow much more orange than expected. Yes, it would be a 100$ risk in your case
Here's a write-up of my experience:
http://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/dyei ... t2059.html

Kurrk wrote:

huttala wrote:<snip>Yeah, I've been thinking about rit dye, but it seems hard to get the right kind of dye in Sweden, or at least I don't know what the right kind of dye is called here in Sweden.
And it feels kind of bad to mod caps that costs 100USD per set, if I fail it's worthless.<snip>

Any textile dye suitable for nylon or polyamide will work on PBT caps, e.g. Dylon multi-purpose or universal dye. The outcome, however, can be different from the advertised colour shade. E.g. a light blue could turn out much darker or a yellow much more orange than expected. Yes, it would be a 100$ risk in your case
Here's a write-up of my experience:
http://deskthority.net/workshop-f7/dyei ... t2059.html

Thanks! Might risk it later, but right now I don't feel like risking it.. :p
The caps (that I've only found from EK) is 90USD + 50USD shipping + Swedish taxes, so around 190~ USD for a set...

huttala, look at the bright side of things, that board is already beautiful, no need to spend any more money on it =)

fossala wrote:Yeah, sorry I meant the right shift. Smaller because of the FN key. Stupid me.

Ah, that explains things.
Actually, when I think about it, I may not have noticed the right shift being in the wrong profile because I seldom use the it... I'm more of a left shift person.
Edit: checked the profile, and both of the bottom rows are in B profile, so the only difference is the smaller keycap.

Next time I'm going to Japan (thinking of going in April actually) I'll have to try harder to find Topre keycaps in the stores there. In the stores I asked about it they said they hadn't even heard about it (and gave me that ばかな外国人/dumb foreigner look a few times), but there is stuff om Amazon's Japanese site, so there ought to be keycap sets available somewhere in that country. If I manage to find some I could contact you huttala! If you're willing to wait until May, that is.

When I was there two weeks ago I found RealForce keycaps in several stores, mostly in Akihabara.
Do bad I didn't buy any, my new HHKB JP wants some color modifier keys. Byt buying three full realforce sets just to get six small keycaps seems like insanity…

Speaking of caps...does anyone know how the different rows on RealForce and HHKB relate? How many different row-types are there?

hq1ify wrote:huttala, look at the bright side of things, that board is already beautiful, no need to spend any more money on it =)

Sure it's pretty, but it's nothing compared to the poker I had, and that bugs me.

fruktstund wrote:Next time I'm going to Japan (thinking of going in April actually) I'll have to try harder to find Topre keycaps in the stores there. In the stores I asked about it they said they hadn't even heard about it (and gave me that ばかな外国人/dumb foreigner look a few times), but there is stuff om Amazon's Japanese site, so there ought to be keycap sets available somewhere in that country. If I manage to find some I could contact you huttala! If you're willing to wait until May, that is.

I guess I could wait, I've been waiting for ages for the R4 set, so why not wait some for Topre caps as well? Would be awesome if you contacted me when you are there tho, I hope you remember it