Round 5: The Cappening

[zslane]

Damn sexy as always, Muirium. I don't know how anyone can look upon your photos and not fall instantly in love with SA.

So how come no row 1 mono-legend kits in Round 5a??? 7bit would have even more of my money if he made them available!

[scottc]

That black white combo is delicious, Mu! At first glance I thought it was your 3276. The red/white shiny 60% looks stunning also.

[Muirium]

Thanks. Those pictures, especially the black and white fullsize, look good and moody because of thunderclouds. I'm really peeved the sunshine was playing tricks on me. It all came today, while I was miles away riding, instead of yesterday when I was bloomin' shooting pics. Mind, it was nice to avoid the downpour I suppose…

[BrewingHeavyWeather]

Yikes! Glad I don't have one of those boards. Ducky's usually quite competent too, but that's miserable.

The stabilizers aren't in exactly the same position. They are a fraction of a mm off on each side. So, with the spacebar directly on, they rub against the stabilizer "housing", and may or may not have excess friction on the metal bar.

Low quality, phone white balance off, plus multiple generations of JPEG. All leftovers. Ducky DK9087 G2 Pro.

Also, I had to kind of mangle the spacebar to get it working, then use some heatshrink tubing and glue to get the stabilizers to stick, after destroying half of the mount on each side in the cap. That spacebar is a Ducky-only key, now.

...

Yeah on my Ducky G2 Pro the spacebar is really sticky if I push it down too much. So I just put it on the switch gently and it is a little higher now but it works. What exactly did you do to the spacebar?

More than I should have needed to, but it was too late by the time I realized it . I snipped of the outer halves off, on the key cap. I then applied heatshrink to the stabilizer on the keyboard, then wider heatshrink on the key cap stems (after finding that it worked, but was a bit loose). Then, I applied superglue to the outer edge of the larger heatshrink on each side, and pressed it back down. Now, it's all mushy, but activates like it's supposed to. Just the one layer of heatshrink wouldn't hold the parts together.

In hindsight, not the best mechanism, but these caps' plastic was much stiffer/more brittle than the DSA spacebar, and white, so I didn't want to risk melting it and screwing them up even worse. But, it was also clear it wasn't going to behave just by grinding things a little bit.

I may well get other brands in the future just for ease of cap swapping. I do like the feel of my Ducky better than any other I've been able to try, though, outside of this issue (not counting Model Ms and Fs, of course). It's not like I won't have enough key caps to use...

[Phill1]

Will you post some white mods sometime?

[Muirium]

Maybe. I've certainly got them!

[Prelim]

sorry if it is a dumb question, but I'm relatively new to the "SA scene"...

why do the shifts have a different profile row (R3 instead of R4, I think)? I saw is also happened in Hack'd by Geeks keyset, but surprisingly their are correct in other SA keysets (Penumbra, Comando or even Filco spherical sets)

[Khers]

SP don't have the molds... And seem uninterested in making them

[zslane]

Signature Plastics also appears uninterested in making a proper FT ligature mold as well. *grumble*grumble*

[Prelim]

SP don't have the molds... And seem uninterested in making them

humm, so aren't these keysets made by SP? I'm confused

[Phill1]

They have matching molds... If your row 4 is actually row 3

Penumbra was all row 3 I think, same with the Filco one,

Commando and Calm Depths both used row 3 profile for their 4th rows

Edit: Penumbra was only row 3 for the middle 3 rows I think. Bottom mods and nums/f row are sculpted

[Khers]

They are indeed but those sets don't include any row 4 stuff, only row 3 (the Filco set also uses row 2 and commando even uses row 1, but still no 4) and hence don't have this issue.

EDIT: Ninja'd by Phill1

[Prelim]

ohhh, thank you for the explanation guys!

btw, is R4 on the that row more comfortable? Why don't all sets make it in R3 then?

[Phill1]

Row 4 is the "right" row for that row* instead of just repeating row 3 a second time. Signature Plastics should really make a r4 shift, rather than force people to mismatch or have the wrong row profile


*Jacobolus would likely disagree

[zslane]

R3 has the virtue of being flat. It is a "universal" keycap shape in that sense. That's why DSA sets are so much easier to build wherein any keycap can be used anywhere on the board (every single key is a flat R3 key when it comes to SP's DSA profile).

But when it comes to sculpted profiles like SA, the most canonical arrangement is R1-R1-R2-R3-R4-R? (where the very bottom row can be R3 or R4 depending on the design philosophy in effect). It creates a lovely concavity that just feels "right". SP makes 1U keys in the row 4 profile, and only the shift keys are "wrong", so going R4 for row 4 still makes a lot of sense, especially for those of us who hold out eternal hope that SP will eventually remake their shift key molds. And they might as well since they have two errors to fix on them, not just one.

[Muirium]

It's a muddled mess to answer, because SP's left us in a muddled mess.

We got a few extra molds made especially for Round 5 which fixed up similar problems in Round 4 SPH. That's why the blue REPAIR kit exists. 7bit's been talking about paying SP yet again for the molds for 2.25 and 2.75u caps in row 4. But SP likes to give us a lot of SHIF T.


@Zslane: I'd like to try a Row 4 profile bottom row. I'm not sure it's better, though. It's one of those things I'd need to try to even know my opinion, and that's no promise that the same is true for everyone else.

A lot of your questions are best answered: People seldom agree on anything!

[zslane]

Did 7bit ever reveal SP's price for new shift key molds? And did the price reflect both the R4 shape and a proper FT ligature?

[chzel]

I seem to recall something like ~4000€ per mold?
I might have a transient brain malfunction though, don't trust me!

[Prelim]

@@ what a rip-off!!

[chzel]

Injection molding molds are really expensive. That's why it's a mass production technique. You have to make thousands of parts to make it worth.
But, again, I don't trust my memory on the price I posted.

[zslane]

I recall that SP wanted to impose a $6000 setup fee on the Granite GB at one point, but relented for some reason. Maybe 7bit can ask matt3o what the magic incantation is to get SP to do that for R4 SHIFT key molds.

[Prelim]

I still don't get why a R1-R2-R3-R4-R3 would be better than R1-R2-R3-R3-R3. If that last row will be always R3 (instead of R4 as it should be), why choose R4 in the row before? It just feels awkward to me

[Muirium]

Two adjacent rows of the same profile doesn't feel right. Sculpted caps like SA are all about producing a curve. A convex curve, like I also do on my arrow keys. Breaking the pattern with a flat slab of row 3 is not good. I know this from Round 4 SPH where the whole of a TKL right of the 60% block was row 3. Blech! Round 5 handles all that much better.

The bottom row is a bit of a special case, being made for thumbing. The row above it, meanwhile, is not. Having home row and Z row flat is a huge break from SA's curve. Better off waiting for row 4 Shifts than that. Even if it's a forlorn hope.

[Halvar]

The Commando and CalmDepths GBs on GH user row 1-2-3-3-3-4, probably to circumvent the shift problem, and that was a bad idea in the end. To me, Round 5 is much better.

[kungfoo]

Does anyone else have problems, getting the stabilizers to stick on a Filco?? Mine barely stay in the caps, most noticibly so with the space bar...

[mtl]

The Commando and CalmDepths GBs on GH user row 1-2-3-3-3-4, probably to circumvent the shift problem, and that was a bad idea in the end. To me, Round 5 is much better.

If memory serves, they also liked the notion that having all the alpha keys the same profile would allow a single set of keys to be rearranged for qwerty, colemak, dvorak, etc.

[Halvar]

Yes, that's an advantage of course if you're interested in alternative layouts.

[zslane]

Does anyone else have problems, getting the stabilizers to stick on a Filco?? Mine barely stay in the caps, most noticibly so with the space bar...

Are you referring to the tiny plastic inserts that the Costar stabilizer wire hooks into?

[Muirium]

Of course.

Costar stabs are a pain in the arse. Cap inserts are a nasty hack compared to real stabilisers. I find the fit on them to vary quite a bit with different caps, so nothing out of the usual there.

[zslane]

Yeah, I had to glue the inserts from my Filco into my DSA Dolch keycaps because the fit wasn't snug enough. *shrug*