Beamspring Caps with POM plastics (standard and doubleshot)

User avatar
Sangdrax

08 Sep 2017, 05:23

So, I had been wondering about the non-yellowing white plastic in beamspring and selectric caps was. Even in the same device, you would see the actual white abs yellow and at the same time this other plastic did nothing. While cleaning some recently, I realized where I had felt that almost slightly greasy white plastic before. POM gears.

My 3278 seems to be solid POM on the engraved caps and ABS doubleshot on the ABS caps while the Selectric II caps seem to be ABS shells doubleshot with POM for the white as well as some ABS/ABS doubleshots. There are extra tiny anchors in the ABS/POM to help hold in the notoriously difficult to bond POM. Turning them in the light, you can even see the separation of the two plastics in the top of the key. It doesn't blend into a single surface like doubleshot ABS.

The pictures aren't great but here's some examples of stuff.

Doubleshots. Yellowed ABS in center. Notice the little extra anchors on the POM stuff. One uses the walls of the cap and one uses the top.
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Oddball mounts and more anchor examples.
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What fits on the board. Notice you'll need two sets of keys to fully replace everything since you're short one standard key on every row.
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User avatar
E3E

08 Sep 2017, 08:42

Have you tried swabbing the bottoms with acetone? I'd be curious to see if it's truly POM or not. I'd imagine it's a rather uncommon material for key caps. As far as I know, POM -can- yellow.

User avatar
Sangdrax

08 Sep 2017, 09:16

Took a little time with a tin of rustoleum acetone but did get it to swab off the uppermost surface of the white material. More resistance than normal ABS, whatever it is and definitely feels slippery, almost like the teflon tape I use for plumbing. Really not sure what it is now.
Last edited by Sangdrax on 08 Sep 2017, 09:19, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
E3E

08 Sep 2017, 09:19

That's interesting. Yeah, us keyboard fans are most familiar with the typical three, POM, PBT, and ABS, but who knows what other plastics were used for keycaps. There was recently a Korean group buy for keycaps made out of PPS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphenylene_sulfide

:o

User avatar
Daniel Beardsmore

08 Sep 2017, 09:42

The only other one I can think of is Tenite, which Cherry used for the tall doubleshot keycaps.

xueyao

08 Sep 2017, 12:05

Whatever it was, i think we can agree they are pretty great key caps on an amazing keyboard with almost no compromises

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