Filco/Costar/Kinesis Advantage key cap replacement questions

Input Nirvana · 30 Mar 2012, 00:20

We are trying to exactly replace the key caps on Kinesis Advantage keyboards. Signature Plastics provided the original doubleshots used in the early Kinesis days. Eventually Kinesis cut costs and started providing singleshot abs key caps that have the same profiles, but the skirt is taller. These key caps are provided by a different manufacturer, we think Filco--?

Signature Plastics publishes their key cap profiles. I'm trying to find Filco/Costar profiles so we can match all the keys exactly. There are several that are not on the 'standard' keyboards.

I've got 2 threads at GH trying to get this.

Any help?

dox · 30 Mar 2012, 00:48

The keys on the top row of the filco numpad are taller than regular Esc key. I'm pretty sure that this is what you are looking for. Knowing that filco are manufactured by costar and WASD keyboards too, they might be able to get some. Shoot him a email.
reaper have one, you can ask him to take some pictures of the profile compared to regular Esc key.

sordna · 30 Mar 2012, 07:27

Here are the undersides of some kinesis keycaps, if it helps:
http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title= ... post509954

Input Nirvana · 03 Apr 2012, 05:47

I think we have all the keys confirmed except these two:
R2 1x1.25
R4 1x1.25
These would be Costar/Filco/equal....NOT Signature Plastics.

Any place I can see a list of profiles, key cap part numbers for this - - -???

Input Nirvana · 11 Apr 2012, 06:04

This is turning out to be challenging, because of a few uncommon key cap sizes. SP has the keys in ABS, DS, and PBT. I've tried Imsto, and now Qtan to see about getting the keys in PBT. I find it hard to believe SP is the only game in town.

I will look at 3D printing if necessary!

bjarven · 13 Dec 2012, 15:19

I'm trying to replace some keycaps on my advantage, searched the board and found this thread.

I'm looking mostly for replacing the thumb keycaps with blank ones, and have looked at the blanks that can be bought at wasdkeyboards. I think I've identified ok replacements for the long ones, but not for the uppermost caps on the thumbcluster. Any ideas where I could find something like that?

And yeah it would be nice to have something equivalent to the round homerow keycaps too, but there seems to be a smaller chance of finding that.

This is the current state; (crappy phone photo)

bootstrap · 13 Dec 2012, 17:55

This thread that Input Nirvana started will help. I found blank PBT keycap replacements for my Kinesis Contourd Keyboard, including ones for the thumb clusters, from Signature Plastics. (Look at the DCS Family - there is a choice between ABS and PBT but you will probably not have all the keys in the same colour.)

The spherical keys for the home row belong to Signature Plastic's "DSA Family" - they also come in ABS or PBT.

bjarven · 13 Dec 2012, 18:24

Great! I can't access that thread atm but I'll start looking through the SP inventory. Will probably order some if they aren't too unreasonable on prices.

bootstrap · 15 Dec 2012, 16:17

bjarven wrote:Great! I can't access that thread atm but I'll start looking through the SP inventory. Will probably order some if they aren't too unreasonable on prices.

The SP blank keycaps cost $1 each, doesn't matter which family, size, row, colour, ABS/PBT, etc. Postage of 24 keycaps in a bubble mailer to Malaysia was about $7 - it could be less to Europe. This is the e-mail address: sales@solutionsinplastic.com

bjarven · 17 Dec 2012, 12:58

I've checked out SP's inventory now and can't find that many caps that would fit on the 2x1 keys on the thumbclusters. Only a a few 2x1 Row 4, and they only seem to come in white or gray. And from the geekhack thread I've concluded that I should get some that are marked 2x1 Row 4/4 too? I haven't seem them in the inventory at all.

So I'll get all the other keys from SP and the 2x1 keys from wasd i think.