deskthority

We are cleaning buckets of keycaps from Model Fs, and suddenly there is a group of caps that has smudges around the legends. What is up with these? The smudges do not clean off.

Damn, they look terrible. They make me want to put my glasses on.
Do you think they might all be from the same keyboard and it was just a terrible dye-sub attempt? I've never seen ones that look that bad before.

So far not enough of them to populate a whole board. I am used to clear, sharp legends on IBM caps.

Some of the legends on my f xt look like that, but not as bad. The printing is sharp but they have that nasty yellow "halo" on them.

I have an entire NMB board with similar issues. NMB dye subs are usually pretty good.


I assume its some sort of manufacturing error. Possibly incorrect temperature or pressure.

The 1987-1989 made NMB RT-101+ keyboard sometimes have this problem. That's not rare to see but model m does.

Dyesub legends sometimes smudge, the green NMB boards are especially notorious for it (see Ben's picture). Also dyesub can bleach.

Double-shot FTW...

zslane wrote: Double-shot FTW...

They have benefits, but my XTs legends are still pristine after 30+ years with no shine or yellowing in sight. Something just ain't right with these examples.

Well, we have almost enough to populate an entire board now. Yuck! Anybody want some caps, free for shipping?

elecplus wrote: Well, we have almost enough to populate an entire board now. Yuck! Anybody want some caps, free for shipping?

I may pass, thanks though

Here's a pic to help people's eyes. Sorry it's a soggy potato, but hopefully it helps!

elecplus wrote: Well, we have almost enough to populate an entire board now. Yuck! Anybody want some caps, free for shipping?

I might be interested.

My Model F 5155 have the exact same thing on all its keys.

The fuzzy caps have been claimed.