Hi there, I am using Keychron K1 SE and wanted to switch out the orange escape-key and the lights-key with wooden keycaps. After making some small wood clips, I tried to use some sawed Lego-Parts to put them on the Cherry switches. They fit surprisingly well, but are not held in firmly enough.

Can I purchase some baseplates for custom keycaps somewhere or should I try to get them 3d-printed (I have no experience with that)?

Thanks for any help

  • @TootSweetEnglish
    7•1 year ago

    Coincidentally, I’ve been working on designing cherry-compatible 3d-printed keycaps just lately. (Just last night, in fact.)

    The switches you’re working with appear to be different than the ones I’m dealing with. (Are your switches like this?) But for future generations, the measurements I’ve found that work very well with my Glorious Panda switches:

    +----------------------------+ -
|       -     __             |  \
|      /     |  |            |   |
|     |      |  |            |   |
|     |  ----    ----  -     |   |
| 4.5-  |            |  >1.2 |    > 5
|     |  ----    ----  -     |   |
|      \     |  |            |   |
|       -    |__|            |   |
|                            |  /
+----------------------------+ -

|                            |
 \____________ _____________/
              V
             6.8

    (All measurements in millimeters.)

    For Glorious Panda switches, you’d want to leave at least 3.8mm for the stem to extend up into the baseplate, but your switches look low-profile, so it’s probably a little different. I’m guessing some of the other measurements would still apply, though.

    I printed at 0.12mm layer hight with Hatchbox PLA on a (slightly upgraded with some metal replacement parts and a CR-Touch) Ender 3 Pro. And it fits nice and tight (though I can’t (yet) vouch for how long it would stay tight; it might be that the PLA would deform over time and get loser. Time will tell.)

    I’m honestly pretty new to the mechanical keyboard game, so I wouldn’t know much about where you might purchase something like that. I suppose one option would be to buy a keycap and cut it apart to get the stem you want, but you probably wouldn’t want to buy a whole set of keycaps just for that.

    • sebiOP
      2•1 year ago

      Wow thanks for the detailed response My keycaps are like this. I personally never heard of Glorious Panda switches as I am also very new to keyboard building. And I found out that they are actually Keychrons own switches and confused them with Cherry. So far, I found no measurements of them.

      I thought there would be some cheap plastic baseplates for people to build their own keycaps, but surprisingly this isn’t a thing. And purchasing a whole set for this is straight up waste.

      • @TootSweetEnglish
        4•1 year ago

        Oh, actually, another thing I’ll mention. If you want to 3d print something but don’t want to shell out for a 3d printer, there may be some options:

        • You might check with your local library to see if they offer 3d printing services. (My local library has a 3d printer that they allow anybody with a library card to use for a very reasonable per-minute-of-printing-time fee. A keycap or three would take a very short time to print.)
        • You could also check to see if there’s a hackerspace in your area that allows the general public to use any 3d printers they have.
        • I could swear Thingiverse had a feature whereby users could mark themselves as willing to do custom 3d printing for whoever might want to contact them.
        • Etsy has some shops that do custom 3d printing like this one.

        I’d imagine there are probably other cheap resources as well. The only danger here is that you might get hooked on 3d printing and have to get yourself a 3d printer.

        Also, just from a little searching, I ran across this free 3d model of a Keychron keycap that might be almost exactly what you need.

        Finally, there’s a chance that if you print something with higher resolution, you might get a slightly looser fit. So if you end up getting anything printed on a resin printer, you might need to take that into account.

        Whatever the case, good luck!

        • sebiOP
          3•1 year ago

          Thank you a ton for your advice. I’ll look into it. If you ever need something that has to do something with Webdesign or Music theory, please hot me up!