IBM Selectric II and Acorn Electron keycaps (and cherry fit)

[off]

You can glance the correct way to fit those my-stem-is-just-too-thick Acorn Electron keycaps onto cherry switchstems on the top right side in some of the pics; the not so nice way is in the top left in those.
I.e.; don't cut to expose the +, leave a sliver around them. This makes a tremendous difference in both wiggle, fit, and overall sturdiness of the cap/fit. Be warned that that sliver doesn't have a lot of margin for error, so it will take some patience, but taking the easy way out (like I did, chopping the top/bottom clean off) is really a lot worse.

Without further ado, pics from my 'koninginnedag 2012' (Dutch national drinking/partying/fleabargain day) finds:
An IBM Selectric II was sacrificed for the greyish keycaps, that prove to be a *lot* of work to make cherry compatible, and I'm not even sure it's doable in an efficient/properly fitting way.
An Acorn Electron was the donor of the brown/yellowish keycaps, awesome, and it's casing will probably serve as modbasis for a future Cherry keyboard case; probably without the bottom half since it's quite tall for today's standards.
Standard Cherry doubleshots included for size/colour reference, straight from ASCAII, not cleaned further.

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0006 how not to, and how to cut to cherry fit.jpg (109.95 KiB) Viewed 6559 times

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*edit, noticed the top pic becomes the threadpic, so a slight shuffle was in order

[ripster]

So removing the Selectric keys destroyed the key stem bars?

You COULD make them Cherry Mx Compatible by completely grinding out the inside and adding a stem from a "donor" key.

http://geekhack.org/showthread.php?3040 ... ing-Spring

[off]

So removing the Selectric keys destroyed the key stem bars?

Not sure what you mean, all keys are 'tiptop' though dirty as all hell; and the two on the side were my attempts at making them fit nicely (they didn't fit 'nicely' at all; afair one did work, but wobbly and didn't grip the stem much).
If you mean the metal bars that the caps plug on to, those are still attached to the now probably demolished/compacted Selectric.

[ripster]

Yeah, I mean did you pull them with pliers or something. Mine would not budge.

[off]

The bars were still more or less fine; only one (think it was backspace or somesuch, a key that was on it's own slightly apart from the rest of the keys) gave an oddly worrying sound when I pulled it's cap off.
I used my trusty keypuller... which did take quite a beating, but them caps are really really really tough as nails compared to the abs used these days (not sure of it even being abs). Trusty keypuller being of the two intertwined paperclips variety.

[ripster]

I used a wire key puller.



Thanks for the pics. I think that satisfies my curiosity for now. If I change my mind next time I'll use my Chuck Norris key puller.

[RC-1140]

lol, that grey key in the middle looks pretty disappointed...

: <

I want an Selectric so bad, but my mother would kill me if I bought one...

[ripster]

Nobody ever got fired OR killed for buying IBM.

[off]

Myself I love the front-print on the Electron doubleshots, a shame it won't fill a full board though; would have to be something like 2x34 keys. Almost all of the keys, but not all sadly, have front-printed stuff on them, ofcourse only half of them have anything that you could map to something to make sense these days..

Just for redundance, if anybody wants to cherify their keys (and I think that the stem-shape used by the Electron caps is utilised for a lot of keyboards, like perhaps Cherry M8 styled ones) you will need to slice off the front and back portion to make them fit inside the Cherry switch mechanic; if you slice off too little you'll notice very significant binding/blocking, and too much and you'll have wobbly caps, so take it bit by bit untill you settle on the right amount, from then on it can go pretty darn quick, too bad I settled on the wrong amount.
In the third, fourth and last three pics, the caps that have the proper amount sliced off for seamless yet sturdy Cherry switch compatibility are the yellow-ish ones on the right.

[Kurk]

I plan to do something like this.... so, how did you slice off the stem mounts of the Acorn keys? With a chisel, dremel, carpetknife, secret magic?

[off]

I don't know what your subject caps are, but these Electron ones were soft. Really really really soft.
Just used a stanley.

And see post above, do take it slow. GL/HF/PostPics!

[Mrinterface]

Here is the selectric simulator : http://www.mrinterface.com/keyboardsims ... index.html