deskthority

My goodie bag from Taiwan Tai-Hao arrived today. I'll sort out the switch photos another day — out of time at the moment. Plus a BSOD took out a load of them.

These are their normal doubleshot keycaps:
The yellow one is a bit thin, and in real life it's a much, much brighter yellow (the writing on it is barely readable), while the red and green appear pretty much correct in the photos.

At least the sprue marks are at the back!

They also sent a couple of boxed rubber gamer keycaps:
For fun, I popped them onto my M0116:
Full keyboard:
=)

Not so keen on the rubber ones, but what a gorgeous shade of green!

What worried me is that when I removed the rubber keycaps, some of the switches were heaving right up out of the plate. I hope I've not busted that board, as—while I never expect to use it—it's in near-new condition.

The doubleshots look slightly translucent, was that the flash?
Were you probing tai-hao for future orders?

They are a bit translucent, yes. The yellow one shows it under normal lighting, but the others do not.

I just wanted some switch samples for research purposes, and they offered to send me some doubleshot samples too as I'd asked about it.

The ABS ones really don't look too bad, are they more like 'OEM' 12mm profile? Did they mention anything about pricing or order quantity for them?

No sprue marks!

@dirge — they're at the back

@lysol — they can do Alps plus custom fonts/colours etc but didn't actually give me the MOQ :)

@Jmneuv — sorry, looking at the green one again now, yes it's also translucent as in the photo; the red one is fine

If these doubleshots are OEM profile, I wouldnt mind getting a full set in a rich warm color and use them for o-rings at mx reds or blacks

The row 1 keycap is 10.9 mm tall in the centre, and 11.5 mm tall in total. Basically the same as what's on my Tactile Pro 3.

We're doing a group buy for these 104 key caps on geekhack. If you're interested, please fill the form. It is still in the IC stage.

http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=43668.0

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1P8Lnz6 ... E/viewform

Well 8$ per set is sure a sweet price! Also, their legends look totally decent to me.

Grond wrote:Well 8$ per set is sure a sweet price! Also, their legends look totally decent to me.

Something doesn't smell right :-\

8 bucks Americano for 104 or just the 8 that Mr. Beardsmore reviewed? Because the first is fishy indeed and the latter sounds like a plausible teanslation error.

8? I only had three conventional DS sample caps, plus two rubber WASD/arrows sets (which I guess I should give away to anyone who wants them now that I've photographed them).

Counting never was my strong point.

I was commenting the group buy elton posted. They say 8 bucks for a full 104 set – minus spacebar.

apart that they look like Duplo blocks?

Frankly they look totally ok to me. I wish companies like Filco offered stock keycaps like this – in white on black, of course.

just kidding I have very little interest in standard sets, but for $8 I could take a couple if it helps reaching the MOQ

here's a lurker that just made a account to post here, because i own a alps keyboard that could use some colour!

i checked the geekhack-group buy thingy but it seems they only buy caps for cherry switches? :/

i'd definitely be interrested in the rubber-keys as they have a alps stem-thingy, you got them as a freebie? what kind-of research do you do to talk them into something like that?

The green WASD+arrows set (eight keycaps) is Alps mount; the orange set is Cherry MX mount. The group buy is Cherry MX only, yes.

I contacted many companies — Alps and all the Alps clone vendors, various keyboard manufacturers, Cherry, NMB, Futaba, George Risk and many more (which reminds me, I need to chase up on Mechanical Keyboards … done). I had some long discussions with several companies, and I was able to get both Monterey and Chicony to confirm that the "Monterey" switch was made by SMK (and it even says so on the KB-5181 PCB!). (SMK themselves are a bit snotty and weird and didn't tell me anything. It's hard to date SMK second generation at the moment, but the Monterey design is an early one, as they were using the tactile version in 1986 on the Apple IIGS.)

I also asked to buy samples from numerous companies, and Xiang Min, Taiwan Tai-Hao and Himake (part of Hua-Jie) were all kind enough to send me free samples. Taiwan Tai-Hao doubleshots also came up, and Felly Du threw in some samples of those, too. I wasn't expecting actual boxed rubber key sets, just a few loose keycaps.

I could have found more if I spoke Chinese, though ;-)

even tho they're boxed sets they don't seem to be part of their product line - i was hopefull to find more alps keycaps

OT: seems to be rather hard to find alps keycaps unless you want to buy another keyboard (just) for the caps.

an ALPS GB would be totally feasible from SP. I think kbdmania recently did one. but running a GB is no easy affair

matt3o wrote:an ALPS GB would be totally feasible from SP. I think kbdmania recently did one. but running a GB is no easy affair

Do they do full sets? I'd enjoy an alps GB.

Halverson wrote:

matt3o wrote:an ALPS GB would be totally feasible from SP. I think kbdmania recently did one. but running a GB is no easy affair

Do they do full sets? I'd enjoy an alps GB.

I've seen a picture on kbdmania of a TKL custom keyboard with alps switches and beige caps (from SP I think). I'll post it if I find it again.

They clearly stated to someone that they don't do anything else then 1x1. I've those pics too, Matt3o. I'd say that they just found a batch of keyboards to harvest from.

wouldn't it be cheaper to GB keycaps rather than harvest a bunch of keyboards? and if it was a salvaged from a bunch of keyboards why would it only be 1x1 (why waste the other caps)?

i'd be fine with only 1x1 keycaps because i just want to replace the chinese lettering caps on my ducky - it's distracting and annoying (because i don't understand that scripture! :p). also, with 1x1 blanks there wouldn't be a problem of me only wanting a set ammount rather than a complete set...

Halverson wrote:

matt3o wrote:an ALPS GB would be totally feasible from SP. I think kbdmania recently did one. but running a GB is no easy affair

Do they do full sets? I'd enjoy an alps GB.

Taiwan Tai-Hai do Alps too btw.

I recieved the caps and made some pictures!

behold, my shitty desk:
i'm kinda sad that my wasd cluster looks horrible, but the arrow cluster looks nice

also, thanks Daniel for sending them over!

That is pretty much my favourite shade of green :)

Kermit, is that you?