IC.md

Hello dear MK community,

Today we are teaming up to try to fill a void in the current offer on Choc keycaps. Here are the contestants:

• u/mburger89 owns a Planck light and designed/printed his own keycaps
• u/fkcaps is creating a custom dye sub service (read more here)
• u/adroom has created the Bamboo, a 40% low profile keyboard (read more here)

We would like to check your interest around choc keycaps and keyboards, as we have faced some important questions.

What kind of keycaps do you need?

Planck Light has kinda set a standard among choc keycaps, with a rectangular shape.

PHOTO of planck keycaps

This may be problematic as MX and Choc footprints are slightly different, so PCBs may implement both, but in a square space... Now if you put rectangular keycaps in a square space, that is not going to look nice.

PHOTO of rectangular keycaps in square spaces

Question #1: should we go with square or rectangular keycaps?

Note: if you know any PCB that is both MX and Choc compatible, please let us know in the comments, we'd love to make a list.

Profile

u/mburger89 and u/adroom have both designed a keycap profile. We won't be able to actually print them both (unless we meet MOQs but given the small size of the choc market right now, we highly doubt it).

So here are the profiles side-by-side:

PHOTO of TEA and mburger's profiles side by side

Question #2: which is your favourite profile?

Sizes

To keep mould costs down, we expect to produce only a few sizes (most choc keyboards are ortho anyway).

Question #3: what size do you need?

We were thinking 1u, 1u with homing bump, 2u and 1.5u. Please share your opinion in the IC form.

Material and legends

With no further ado, question #4: ABS double-shot or dye-sub PBT?

This obviously has a huge impact on the mould costs so choose wisely!

Now the little twist with dye sub PBT is we are partnering with FKcaps which intends to provide a custom dye sub service. So if we go with dye sub PBT, everyone would be able to pick its own legends.

We won't dive into details about what the FK team is doing, but here is a little screencast of their application to give you a taste.

TODO: FK demo video

We can't give much information about the price impact of this choice but both of these options should be in a similar price range:

• ABS (includes ortho support, approx. 100 keycaps)
• PBT (specific for a layout of around 60 keycaps)

Bamboo keyboard

The Bamboo keyboard has been introduced to the community by u/adroom, and will probably have its own IC but we are including it here to know if there is interest in a joint IC (ie. you order both the keyboard and the keycaps).

Delivery will have its own schedule, but purchase might happen in the mean time.

Thanks!

Thanks to all those who will participate in this, we are looking forward to seeing more low profile keyboards in this community!