Feature request: More accessible option.

[Roskott]

Solid Steonotoppers.zip

This is what I did to make the Toppers so that I can pull them on and off without much issue, thus not having to devote my daily driver keyboard to existing solely for plover, or have to slowly pull and replace the keycaps to more easily use the program.

Each key sits on top of a cherry mx keycap, a loose amount of string runs through all four rows, loose enough to not interfere with the key presses, but enough that the entire lot can be pulled off all at once without much issue. To keep each of the keys seated properly on the keycaps, a small amount of silicone was spread around the inner lip of the cherry keycap portion to act as a nonslip surface to keep the keys from sliding or popping off at release of the key.

To slice these on SuperSlicer I enabled the Arachne perimeters. I used a negative volume cube with each of the keys to hollow out the existing stem, and reduce the weight. 2 2mmx30mm negative volume cylinders were used parallel to the xy plane intersecting at the midpoint of the cherry key stem to facilitate the string.

I am very new to 3d drafting, so this is little more than 3 models stuck together, but it is a start. I noticed that the keys that are to be placed on the qwerty row are far more stable than the others, for the numbar this was a simple matter of turning them 180deg around, but all keys on the asdf row as well as the vowel keys would need to be reworked. I am working on that now, as well as making it so that the print head will not be printing onto nothingness. for several layers.

My set are being printed into PETG with a 0.4 nozzle at 0.24 layer height.

Now would be a good time to also say that you should look around at your local libraries to see if they have access to a 3d printer. I promise it will be significantly cheaper than the Shapeways method, and most libraries with exhaustively work towards helping you get to where you need to be with this skill.

Version0.2 of this idea will rectify "newbie" model issues
Version0.3 will reduce the height and thus material
Version0.4 will hopefully be a more elegant final version someone will find useful.