Cherry Corp LED Keycaps

[sixty]

From the depths of mainland China comes to me....



The most wild mix of Cherry Corp LED keycaps ever. As far as I remember these were taken from an Alcatel OEM keyboard that Cherry made sometime earlier this millenium.


First off we have these. Standard row 1 keys for F1-F12, every single one with a pretty LED window. Material from a Ducky owner's wildest dreams.


Ducky guys still with me? You may continue to cream your pants now. Oh my god... is that a center stem official Cherry Corp window key?? OH MY GOD.


Yes, indeed it is. These are probably even more rare than the chance of someone buying these keycaps for nearly $100 getting laid ever again.


Next up there are these obscure legend keys. The ones in the back are even higher than row 1. Never seen anything like them. The ones in the front are row 1 (F keys).


Then there are these. A bunch of row 3 (ASDF...) keys and a single one for the space bar row. How obscure.

Anyway that was that. Thanks to customs and hilarious shipping costs these cost me more than I am willing to admit.

[Crazy9000]

Those are pretty cool. More then I would have payed for them though :p.

Modding a keyboard so F1-12 have different colored LED would be awesome.

[sixty]

I didn't plan on paying this much either. For some reason they got held back in customs and I had to use another service to get them here. Cost 30 bucks alone for that. But after all the wait and broker costs from China I didn't feel like having them sent back either

[webwit]

About the cross of the Cherry keycap stem, the ones from signature plastics don't have a flat top but are a little bit recessed as you can see here on the caps at the top:



So... what's better? Are the SP caps easier to apply/remove, but more wobbly?

I always wondered why they did that.

[nanu]

You made me imagine why the SP caps get formed like that. It is probably a side-effect of whatever machining they must do to get a MX stem cast. The geometry of the stem hole can be explained like so, with the disclaimer that I have vague ideas but ample, blurry imagination as to how machining and injection molding work, so this is just wild speculation:

In order to carve the cross portion of the casting (that produces the stem hole), they use a circular cutter eight times in order to remove material from square-profiled stock. That is then joined onto the remainder bottom cast portion. The other half of the cast probably sits flush with the bottom edge of the caps, given those periodic circular markings.
Sixty had a video or something for how dual injection molding works; I forget which half gets injection..

The problem with this eight cuts hypothesis is that the radius of the circular bit is like 1mm. A laser can surely be thinner than 2mm, but a mechanical means with a spinning cutter is unlikely this thin... Are lasers capable of accurately cutting depthwise? Is the cast material metal? Curiosity is killing this cat.

[webwit]

Interesting. I didn't consider yet the possibility of a byproduct of the industrial methods they use.

[ripster]

I recommend watching lots of YouTube videos. The Magic Word is "Sprue".

My favorite comment so far researching a Injection Molding wiki:

Ive worked with injection molding.

Its boring as fuck.

If a machine is semi-automated then you have to sit in front of that machine all day and press a fucking button.

But if a machine is fully automated, then you dont have to press a button at all you just have to look at it

and you get like 8 more machines to look at <:(
bloodaid 4 months ago

[Crazy9000]

That sounds a lot like my job.

[ripster]

It reminds me of OCN.

[Moogle Stiltzkin]

anyone know where to buy these keys ?