Here’s a fun build. Over on their YouTube channel our hacker [Atasoy] shows us how to make a custom floral keyboard keycap using resin.
We begin by using an existing keycap as a pattern to make a mold. We plug the keycap with all-purpose adhesive paste so that we can attach it to a small sheet of Plexiglas, which ensures the floor of our mold is flat. Then a side frame is fashioned from 100 micron thick acetate which is held together by sticky tape. Hot glue is used to secure the acetate side frame to the Plexiglas floor, keeping the keycap centered. RTV2 molding silicone is used to make the keycap mold. After 24 hours the silicone mold is ready.
Then we go through a similar process to make the mold for the back of the keycap. Modeling clay is pushed into the back of the keycap. Then silicone is carefully pushed into the keycap, and 24 hours later the back silicone mold is also ready.
The back mold is then glued to a fresh sheet of Plexiglas and cut to shape with a craft knife. Holes are drilled into the Plexiglas. A mix of artificial grass and UV resin is made to create the floor. Then small dried flowers are cut down to size for placement in the top of the keycap. Throughout the process UV light is used to cure the UV resin as we go along.
Finally we are ready to prepare and pour our epoxy resin, using our two molds. Once the mold sets our new keycap is cut out with a utility knife, then sanded and polished, before being plugged into its keyboard. This was a very labor intensive keycap, but it’s a beautiful result.
If you’re interested in making things with UV resin, we’ve covered that here before. Check out 3D Printering: Print Smoothing Tests With UV Resin and UV Resin Perfects 3D Print, But Not How You Think. Or if you’re interested in epoxy resin, we’ve covered that too! See Epoxy Resin Night Light Is An Amazing Ocean-Themed Build and Degassing Epoxy Resin On The (Very) Cheap.
Thanks to [George Graves] for sending us this one via the tipsline!
You know what they say, a beekeeper who can avoid the honeybees is called a beekeeper who can avoid the honeybees. Daren’t I use a keyboard made of resin which may negatively impact my health.
Should be possible to do this with clear epoxy, it will just require more time and patience.
It’s not the entire keyboard, it’s only one key. An entire keyboard of resin keys would not be practical to type, the keys are too heavy.
If touching the ESC key a few times per hour negatively impact your health in any measurable way, stay away from cosmic rays, 60Hz electromagnetic emanations from AC, microplastics on the air and water and food, UV rays…
Epoxy is pretty much inert once cured. Some are food safe.
Horrible stuff until it’s cured though.
Yes indeed, but only if. If you have worked a lot with epoxy you may develop an allergic reaction to to monomers. But once it has cured fully, there is no monomer to tickle your immune system anymore. But you first need the longer exposure to become allergic to it, you do not get it from cured epoxy or hearing about it from health guru’s.
If you do think you have an allergy but no clear explanation how you got it, then you are likely experiencing a nocebo effect: Just as placebos may work very well to feel better, nocebos can just by thinking it will makes you feel bad, make you feel bad, sometimes with extra symptoms.
It gives new meaning to “touching grass”
I’m surprised by how different the mold process he used is to how we make dice. Interesting to see!
“100 micron thick acetate”
don’t church it up or anything (this highly specialized engineering plastic comes as waste packaging in a metric shit ton of products from headphones to button down shirts)