[IC] Beamspring Keycaps 1:1 Clone

[ifohancroft]

Is there still an interest in a 1:1 clone of Beamspring Keycaps?

To be fair, even though I haven't had a chance to try MT3 yet, it does satisfy all my desires in terms of looks, which was my initial reason for wanting to create a Beamspring 1:1 clone, but at this point I am going with the Beamspring clone as I have started already and I'd still like to have one, so I wanted to see if others are still interested as well.

Here's the idea:

- I'm trying to reverse engineer the keycaps of my Selectric to find out how they are made (sizes, radius, etc).
- Will possibly try to acquire more keycaps in the future if needed (I want Beamspring boards anyway, although who knows when I'll be able to afford them).
- See if there are certain features used in the different size keycaps and try to extrapolate them to create the sizes needed for ANSI/ISO boards.

The manifacturing part would be hard because of funding, but first I am trying to get over reverse engineering the keycaps and re-creating them in CAD.
The CAD files will be released under CERN's Open Hardware License (the strongly reciprocal version), regardless of whether I manage to get the set in manufacturing.

P.S. When I say Beamspring keycaps, I mean like on the IBM Selectric II and the IBM 5251 (I believe they are the same).

[Muirium]

Matteo and Photekq 3D scanned a set of mine (since sold on…) for what became MT3, so there is in fact imagery out there to start from. This was a few years back and I can't remember how many keys I loaned them. Think they were understandably less interested in the stepped mods etc. given their project was to make an MX homage set rather than the real thing.

As for my own interest in what you make: perhaps. If you had some tasty 3279-inspired colours.

[ifohancroft]

Matteo and Photekq 3D scanned a set of mine (since sold on…) for what became MT3, so there is in fact imagery out there to start from. This was a few years back and I can't remember how many keys I loaned them. Think they were understandably less interested in the stepped mods etc. given their project was to make an MX homage set rather than the real thing.

As for my own interest in what you make: perhaps. If you had some tasty 3279-inspired colours.

Thank you! I'd check with Matteo and Photekq about the scans. As for the colors - I can't see why not. I mean once a profile has been made, all colors are possible (well, technically it does depend on the printing method, but I am aiming for double shot, so yeah).

P.S. Does tagging work on here?

[Muirium]

P.S. Does tagging work on here?

Nope. PM them the good old fashioned way, by hand.

[ifohancroft]

P.S. Does tagging work on here?

Nope. PM them the good old fashioned way, by hand.

Thank you!

[Weezer]

You can sort of tag people by using quotes.

Code: Select all

[quote=weezer][/quote]

would send me a notification that would direct me to your post. But it would just say I was quoted instead of tagged

[ifohancroft]

Thank you! That still works for pinging people.

[Muirium]

I don’t get notifications for people quoting me. I’m guessing it’s a user account option and may well not be the default setting. Do Not Assume it works!

[Weezer]

That's true, it can be turned off. But if you want to ping or tag someone to a post that's currently the only workaround

[Muirium]

As far as I remember: I've never turned it off. Is quote notification = FALSE the default or was i just grandfathered in as a greybeard? I dunno.

Also: a few things are broken here right now with the recent server move. PM notification emails for example. Kbdfr reports this is still the case, in a PM conversation with me, where I'm getting notifications 100% of the time and he's stuck on 0%, despite toggling with his settings.

[Weezer]

I made a new account to test the quote function a little bit, prior to my first post on this thread and the new account got the notifications.

[photekq]

Matteo and Photekq 3D scanned a set of mine (since sold on…) for what became MT3, so there is in fact imagery out there to start from. This was a few years back and I can't remember how many keys I loaned them. Think they were understandably less interested in the stepped mods etc. given their project was to make an MX homage set rather than the real thing.

As for my own interest in what you make: perhaps. If you had some tasty 3279-inspired colours.

If yours got scanned I'm not sure what ever happened to the files. I already had my 3278, so I worked entirely off that. I never possessed or worked off any 3D scans of beamspring caps; just manual measurements of my 3278 keycaps.

We purposefully didn't want to replicate the shape of the keycaps 1:1. They are pretty bloody close in shape, but not exactly - I put my own spin on them and iterated until both matt3o and I were happy with them.

However, the profile's different; as you know, beamspring keyboards have upwards-angled stems, which influences the top profile heavily. I adapted the profile of the keycaps to give a similar top profile when mounted on an MX board with a decidedly "average" angle - I forget which angle exactly, I think it was around 5deg.

[ifohancroft]

Matteo and Photekq 3D scanned a set of mine (since sold on…) for what became MT3, so there is in fact imagery out there to start from. This was a few years back and I can't remember how many keys I loaned them. Think they were understandably less interested in the stepped mods etc. given their project was to make an MX homage set rather than the real thing.

As for my own interest in what you make: perhaps. If you had some tasty 3279-inspired colours.

If yours got scanned I'm not sure what ever happened to the files. I already had my 3278, so I worked entirely off that. I never possessed or worked off any 3D scans of beamspring caps; just manual measurements of my 3278 keycaps.

We purposefully didn't want to replicate the shape of the keycaps 1:1. They are pretty bloody close in shape, but not exactly - I put my own spin on them and iterated until both matt3o and I were happy with them.

However, the profile's different; as you know, beamspring keyboards have upwards-angled stems, which influences the top profile heavily. I adapted the profile of the keycaps to give a similar top profile when mounted on an MX board with a decidedly "average" angle - I forget which angle exactly, I think it was around 5deg.

Thank you!

Yes, I believe the angle was 5 or 7 degrees for MT3.

Any tips on measuring Beamspring btw?

[Muirium]

Matteo's the man to talk to re: the 3D scans. He had my caps for a while, and I got a sweet Elven set of MT3 as my booty!

[XMIT]

Do you have any idea what device he used to get those 3D scans?

I've got a number of items that I'd like so scanned. Lots of interesting spherical profiles that I've gathered over the years. Now that I'm filled with rage over the going price for a Space Cadet, I'm newly motivated to 3D scan all of my Micro Switch key caps.

[Muirium]

Write him a PM. You'll phrase your questions more competently than I can.

[PlacaFromHell]

Any tips on measuring Beamspring btw?

I did a keycap family inspired in beamsprings a while ago. Although my results are not a match (neither pretend to be), there's a mayor characteristic that I must point here. The base of the keycap is absolutely normal filleted square, the TOP of the keycap is actually a squircle. If you think in the keycap top like a pseudo cylinder, it has only three faces: top, bottom and a continuous side. Tangential keycaps on the other hand, would be like cubes with rounded vertical axis corners, producing a sharp and undesired looking, just like in SA keycaps for example. Here you have some examples:



Here you can see my final result and the experiment I did before noticing this:

[shine]

Of course there is interest! I'm super interested!!

Actually SneakyRobb has designed a beamspring top row profile that fits perfect. I 3D print color keys for fun, i'm eager and looking forward print the other rows.

Regards! hope you succeed! count me in

Is there still an interest in a 1:1 clone of Beamspring Keycaps?

To be fair, even though I haven't had a chance to try MT3 yet, it does satisfy all my desires in terms of looks, which was my initial reason for wanting to create a Beamspring 1:1 clone, but at this point I am going with the Beamspring clone as I have started already and I'd still like to have one, so I wanted to see if others are still interested as well.

Here's the idea:

- I'm trying to reverse engineer the keycaps of my Selectric to find out how they are made (sizes, radius, etc).
- Will possibly try to acquire more keycaps in the future if needed (I want Beamspring boards anyway, although who knows when I'll be able to afford them).
- See if there are certain features used in the different size keycaps and try to extrapolate them to create the sizes needed for ANSI/ISO boards.

The manifacturing part would be hard because of funding, but first I am trying to get over reverse engineering the keycaps and re-creating them in CAD.
The CAD files will be released under CERN's Open Hardware License (the strongly reciprocal version), regardless of whether I manage to get the set in manufacturing.

P.S. When I say Beamspring keycaps, I mean like on the IBM Selectric II and the IBM 5251 (I believe they are the same).

[ifohancroft]

Of course there is interest! I'm super interested!!

Awesome!

Looking at my Selectric keycaps, I think Beamspring keycaps may not sit that good at a normal keyboard, however, I am still making a one on one clone profile, but besides that, I'm thinking I may also do a second profile, that just has the looks.

The 'inspired' profile, I am thinking should be 343211 (1 being the F and Number rows) like SA, where Row 4 and 2 are the same but turned 180 degrees, but with the Beamspring curves, esentially just the angles changed, so I guess it would be like SA with Beamspring curves.

Actually SneakyRobb has designed a beamspring top row profile that fits perfect. I 3D print color keys for fun, i'm eager and looking forward print the other rows.

Thanks! I'll get in touch with him.

Any tips on measuring Beamspring btw?

I did a keycap family inspired in beamsprings a while ago. Although my results are not a match (neither pretend to be), there's a mayor characteristic that I must point here. The base of the keycap is absolutely normal filleted square, the TOP of the keycap is actually a squircle. If you think in the keycap top like a pseudo cylinder, it has only three faces: top, bottom and a continuous side. Tangential keycaps on the other hand, would be like cubes with rounded vertical axis corners, producing a sharp and undesired looking, just like in SA keycaps for example. Here you have some examples:



Here you can see my final result and the experiment I did before noticing this:

So if I'm understanding this right, are you saying to create a surface or a curve that goes from a square at the bottom to a squircle at the top and wraps around?

[Muirium]

Oh, Squircles, well spotted! Apple's taken a shine to them in recent years, though the irony is this MacBook Air chiclet keyboard's keys are all still just rounded squares!



Know if Topre Hi-Pro caps use something like this, too? They've always looked pleasingly elliptical to me. Especially the longer keys.

For all its strengths, MT3 doesn't quite do this:

[PlacaFromHell]

So if I'm understanding this right, are you saying to create a surface or a curve that goes from a square at the bottom to a squircle at the top and wraps around?

If I'm understanding your question right, yes. That's the process I did with mine:

Spoiler:

Know if Topre Hi-Pro caps use something like this, too? They've always looked pleasingly elliptical to me. Especially the longer keys.

For all its strengths, MT3 doesn't quite do this:

I'm unsure about both, they mostly look like not doing this, but I might be wrong. You can straight up notice this bad behavior in SA as they are aggressively squared.

[ifohancroft]

If I'm understanding your question right, yes. That's the process I did with mine:

Thank you! That's exactly what I was asking.