damorgue's concept caps - Currently looking for ideas

[damorgue]

damorgue's concept caps Can be found here too.
This is where it started. Feel free to post any ideas you might have for a keycap design. Any and all ideas are welcome but try to avoid copyrighted trademarks. Below are some of my custom key caps, some of which don't have images uploaded yet. I have mounts for Cherry MX, and the upper part of a 2 part buckling spring cap, but Topre and Alps are still a bit loose and need a bit more work. I don't have a Topre or Alps profile, so those are have all been made with Cherry profile so far.


Zip It!





Snitch



Guy Fawkes




GH 7 year aniversary cap, doubleshot metal



Ripster






Me Gusta




Y U NO



Melted



Deformed



Comedy/Drama



Leaf



Scales



Screw



Beast



Nessie



Fossile



Trinity



Steampunk



World Wide Web




Voronoi



Cracked



Fingerprint



Castle




Chess set



Shield



Further randomness and old assorted images








Old responses:

Ok, I definitely need better camera gear to photograph heat patina. Freaking impossible to photograph with my current crappy camera.




The last pic shows a spot where I messed up and used dirty tools which contaminated the patina.

You could probably glue a sticker on the top, or emboss the legend and you would end up with something quite steampunk looking.

Sky blue patina:


Fitting is great, so I will probably sell off a few prototypes soon and make some more.

[damorgue]

Also, if someone knows how to scale images at DT, I'd be grateful. [img width=200] for instance doesn't transfer well, and I haven't even found the correct tags for that here.

[suka]

Really nice, especially the metal makes them true eye-catchers!
What tools did you use for the voronoi shapes? I tried with blender and some plugins a while ago, but did not get such nice shapes without lots of fine-tuning.

[matt3o]

how much a keycap like that would cost? I guess shapeways?

[HzFaq]

That zip it cap is really awesome, they're all cool though, nice work.

[damorgue]

Really nice, especially the metal makes them true eye-catchers!
What tools did you use for the voronoi shapes? I tried with blender and some plugins a while ago, but did not get such nice shapes without lots of fine-tuning.

Blender without plugins can do it too

how much a keycap like that would cost? I guess shapeways?

I can't get machine time on local machines so unfortunately I have had to turn to shapeways

As usual with additive manufacturing, there are two variables which affect cost. Volume of used materials and bounding box size. For instance hollowing out the inside of the caps with faces makes them a bit cheaper. The web cap has very little volume, and is thus cheaper. The castle is both large and bulky and thus expensive. It is a bit of a case to case thing.

Material is of course a major factor in price as well. Rough figures are:
€8-15 for polymers
€35-90 for various metals (for the record, €90 is silver and most are in the lower range)

[Muirium]

I'm guessing there's not much (or any) of a volume discount with this kind of work? Because the kind of metal caps I'd like are a full set with embossed legends. But likely not at currently reachable prices!

[damorgue]

I'm guessing there's not much (or any) of a volume discount with this kind of work? Because the kind of metal caps I'd like are a full set with embossed legends. But likely not at currently reachable prices!

Unfortunately not. I began printing a set through work, which was free, but I never finished it.

One might be able to print a mold and cast them, which should create some sort of volume discount. I'd still recommend just milling those molds though, to make them absolutely perfect since they will be used repeatedly.

[IonutZ]

Are you still working on this? Think you could make some topre ones?

[damorgue]

Semi active at least.

I don't have a Topre board unfortunately. I made some caps with Topre mounts based on measurements, and I also made some MX-Topre adapters a few years back, but I never really tried them as extensively as I would have liked. The MX caps have reached a very nice fitting since I made things like

to ensure the best fitting possible. I'd probably have to make something similar with Topre to get them just right, as well as match the profile of the cap itself to Topre. I have very accurate Cherry profile, and semi-accurate OEM, DCS and DSA models and I would need a proper Topre cap to make one accurate to match.

[justcallmecrash]

How about a completely round cap? Like on an old typewriter?
http://www.anniemation.com/textures/gea ... eys-tn.jpg