White key cap lettering turning grey

[gbohn]

Hi;

I recently got a 'das keyboard Professional S' keyboard. Within about a week I saw that some of the keycaps white lettering has already become 'discolored' or stained and is looking grey. (This comes with white lettering on black key caps. As best as I can tell, these are laser etched and filled with some white 'paint' material).

This first showed up on the 'W-A-S-D' keys, but it is starting to affect some of the others.

The problem is that I haven't found a way to effectivly clean the caps so they are bright white again. I tried wiping the key cap tops with water, then 70% Isopropyl alcohol, then Pure Isopropyl alcohol, and finally Windex. I used both Kimwipes and a cotton swab.

This improved things some, but the key cap lettering is still gray-ish (at least in parts). It's almost as if something has become embedded in the white lettering.

Does anyone know how to clean the lettering in a way that will restore the original brightness?

I'm not sure why this is happening in the first place. It's not like I'm eating Sandwiches while typing, or just worked on my car...

I've been using old IBM model-M keyoards with Black lettering on light tan key caps for years and never had a problem before... But then I guess I wouldn't with that combination

Thanks

[sth]

They're just wearing out probably. Model Ms used a different plastic (PBT) and printing (dye-subbed, meaning the ink soaks into the plastic rather than being printed on top of it) method than Das keys that is/was more resistant to wear and tear.

You might want to look into a set of dyesubbed PBT or some doubleshots to replace your Das keys. White PBT looks really good on those boards IMO.

[ajdane]

I have a Das ultimate, this made me kinda happy i got the blank keycaps and not the lettered ones. Though i must admit i really dig their font.

[kalrykh]

Is the das laser engraved and infilled? I don't remember. If so, the infill is likely absorbing shit from your hands.

[ripster]

See the Geekhack All About Keys Wiki about this downside.
http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title= ... ature+Wiki

When/if it comes back up.

[gbohn]

See the Geekhack All About Keys Wiki about this downside.
http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title= ... ature+Wiki

When/if it comes back up.

Thanks. I managed to see some GeeklHack Key cap articles using the Internet Wayback machine, but many parts and photos were missing from the Wayback 'snapshots in time' they had.

At any rate I did see references from a few people saying that they were having premature wear or degradation issues.

I guess it just sucks to be us

I thought I had a solution... I found an old Cherry G81-8000HPBUS-2 that I was thinking I could harvest double-shot keycaps from (and replace whatever subset of keys I wanted).

As it turns out, The Cherry keys have a lower-profile so I'm thinking mixing is less likely to work (because of the height differences)... And it's now important to have all the right keys.

If I have to replace them all (at least by area), then it turns out several keys don't match between the Cherry and the das. (The Caps-lock is stepped on the Cherry instead of straight. And it looks like the Control-Windows Flag-Alt space bar row has the right 'width' keys, but the stems aren't centered and they aren't even double-shots).

And even if I had them all, I think I like the higher profile of the original key caps.

Interestingly enough, the keyboard came from some type of meat company, and seems to smell like smoked meats...

At any rate, I'm tempted to try clear-coating the original das keys with Krylon 2X before they get any more soiled, but I don't know if that's a good idea... I was thinking that spraying them and wiping off the paint before it dried might seal the inlay material.