Tai-Hao TH series keycaps

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Tai-Hao's old Cherry-style keycaps are called "TH series". According to Tai-Hao, the "A~Z" keys were double-shot and the rest were "silk printed". In reality, it seems that the double-shot tooling was a bit more extensive than they remember; for example, E3Eves's wiki photos of his or her TH-5539-5 shows Alps-mount keycaps where the arrow keys are double-shot.

There's a couple of things I want to confirm:

a) Tai-Hao report TH series to be Tai-Hao profile — I'd like to see evidence to prove that they're not the same profile as Cherry keycaps

b) The extent to which double-shot tooling was available, i.e. which keycaps were double-shot and which were not; we know that characteristic is in general true for TH-5150, but I don't know how this applied to the different TH-5539 variants

[Wodan]

Ha i just harvested a Fame for mike.

Will take a few profile comparison shots before sending it off.
One thing that I noticed, the edges of the keycaps appear a little sharper to me compared to original Cherry. But that doesn't make it a different profile yet...

Oh yeah and B too. I'll just flip em all and then take an upskirt group shot.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Thank you.

These go back a long way, and memories have faded, so it's preferable to examine the keycaps anew and be certain.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Also, the non-double-shot keycaps are "silk printed", so I'm curious if they look in any way different from normal pad printing.

[Wodan]

What is a good example for pad printing?
Cherry Caps with LED windows ?

[kbdfr]

What is a good example for pad printing?
Cherry Caps with LED windows ?

These are not just pad printed, but also coated.
Read the discussion here between 7bit and sixty (5+ years ago ):
photos-f62/cherry-942had-02-t1547.html#p26679

[Wodan]

God damn sixty was such a genius scientist ...

Real big loss for DT!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The clear coating on Cherry pad printed keycaps is mentioned on the wiki, albeit only for G84 keycaps:

[wiki]Pad printing[/wiki]

With that said, pad printing remains very poorly understood. In Tai-Hao's experience (as a major keycap manufacturer) the change from pure thick ink to thin ink with clear coating was due to a change in the ink that may have been due to RoHS restrictions. However, thin ink and clear coat (selective or whole surface) goes back quite some years before Tai-Hao seems to have made the transition.

As shown on the wiki page, there are a number of observed legend types:

• Thick gloss legends, uncoated (e.g. old Nan Tan and Datacomp keyboards)
• Thick matte legends, uncoated (e.g. Dell Latitude)
• Thick matte legends, spray coated (Filco)
• Thin legends, selective coated (most keyboards on the market)
• Thin legends, full surface coated (Cherry)

We also have thin matte legends, uncoated, on Acer keyboards, that appear not to be dye sublimated.

Nobody knows which of these are pad printing, which are silk screen printing, and whether any of these were produced by some other method we're not familiar with. Dosmar in Finland also provide silk-screen legends, as well as Matias:

http://www.dosmar.fi/products.php?k=14784

If the keycaps on the old Tai-Hao keyboards are pad printed, they should be thick, gloss, and uncoated. The only photo that appears to confirm it is this one, of the KME RB-2001-1:



You can see the light reflecting off the legends.

If the TH series keycaps look different, then maybe we can differentiate silk screen printing that way. However, if the legends still look the same, then silk screen printing may have produced the same effective output. It's all still a mystery!

[Wodan]

Here's the pics I promised:
http://imgur.com/a/AYVQd

Only VERY few caps are actually printed and the printing - as you can see in the album - looks pathetic.

All the pictures free to use!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Curious … What does the pad printing look like not zoomed in? The Cherry pad printing looks pretty rough when magnified that much too.

If those really are Tai-Hao's own keycaps, they did a good job with replicating real Cherry, and the profile is indeed the same as Cherry. Interestingly Tai-Hao use a blobby asterisk where Cherry in this instance uncharacteristically used a straight line asterisk.

I'd like to see a regular thick ink keycap for comparison; it does appear that the Tai-Hao ink is comparatively thin and matte, but I can be certain of this.

PS what keyboard are the Tai-Hao keycaps from?

[Wodan]

The pad printed caps are from the classic beige GB:
https://imgur.com/a/qeHup
Note that the Cherry text is doubleshot, only the logo is printed

The caps are from a Fame TH-5539 NIB

[Daniel Beardsmore]

What I meant was, something like a Nan Tan or Datacomp keycap, something known for its thick ink printing:




That's from my KB-6251EA and DFK192 respectively; the latter image is a much clearer example.

Basically, this would function as a control, to clarify what a normal Far East thick ink keycap looks like under your setup.

Cherry pad printing in my very limited experience is totally flat: you can't feel it or see anything beyond a two-dimensional image, while thick ink printing is quite distinctly raised as you can see above. Tai-Hao pad printing should be similarly raised, but the silk screen printing may have a different appearance that could help identify it.

TH-5539 isn't a model, but a loose collection of different designs — it's very confusing! The individual designs have separate numbers, which aren't all identified yet. (Another one just got IDed the other day after someone found one and I passed the photo onto Tai-Hao.)