Have been promising a long time to do this, so finally took a few hours to butcher another mini!
As you can see, for the most part, it’s pretty good, but NOT perfect
what I’ve discovered…..
2 part epoxy works best
Each keycap row is a different depth – the top one needs the least glue, row 3 the most
My errors here. I used a hard plastic glue from Bostick. it doesn’t grip well enough on the top of the keyswitches. I glued everything, waited a few hours, half the keycaps didn’t stick
glued the rest, waited, half again didnt’ stick…rinse and repeat about 6 times, adding more glue till finally they all stuck.
The 2 part epoxy stuck fast and hard! – but I used too much.
The repeated adding of more glue caused the multiple key levels you can see in the picture
I’ll try one more time I think!
Bleugh.Biz Blog Thingy 
How goes your 3D printed key’s? I looks like you have had a fair amount on your plate lately.
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Waiting on the resin printer to arrive 🙂 ETA is November so I’m hoping to have it all ironed out in the new year 🙂
CAD is pretty much done so it’s just print, iterate and print again till they’re perfect…4 or 5 months away I think
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how about 3d printing a insert for the mini keys and then glue THAT into the keys ?
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I tried, it didn’t work!
The inner parts of the keycaps are different and slopes differently within the rows also.
If it were as easy as making 5 types of insert for the 5 rows, I’d have gone further, but an insert designed for the far left of row 1 puts the far right of row 1 at the wrong height and angle!
I got too annoyed to go further.
Have found since that ensuring the keycaps are well stucksioned in the mould and using slow set epoxy works best.
The keys switches all sit in at the correct angles and the correct levels with no intervention needed!
My third attempt will be perfect!!
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I butcheried the keys and glueing them in place yesterday, I also used a slow-setting 2-component epoxy (JB Weld steel reinforced epoxy for the US viewers). They’ve been setting for 16 hours and I just pulled it out of the mould. Looks pretty much perfect! Keys feel a bit wobbly but it needs to cure some more, perhaps that will fix it.
Video of the process so far: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkavXXu0LhU
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Thankyou for posting the video 🙂 very informative!
Hope it works for you at the end of it all!
My second attempt was ‘ok’ but I’ll have it perfect by the third I recon!
3D printed keycaps will be at some point in the first 1/4 of next year hopefully! Printer will
Be arriving soon!!
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