UPDATE 10/4/2020: Funny is back after a 4 week hiatus, I was moving my operation to a new location closer to home! Wires have arrived and are working great (check video below) price updates and explanation, Vender has been chosen and I am excited to work with https://keebmeup.com/index.phpHi everyone, this is my first post on Geek Hack!
My name is Funnycolorsman92 (Funny for short) and I have been apart of the community for a little over 2 years now just lurking, and I have to say that I love the DIY nature of it. This is not a new concept, but I over the past 4 months of research and development I have made some really big improvements over previous designs of an alps to Cherry Adapter with a few more additions that were never addressed in previous attempts. This post is a gauge to see whether or not people would be interested in the product, but also a way to gauge just how big the alps community is! If you own an Alps keyboard, this data will be used to gauge interest and potential GB's for alps keycaps. So it would mean the world to me if everyone spreads this form around!
Alps-MX adapter poll:https://forms.gle/hy9gayjivc9pe9az7Vender Link:https://keebmeup.com/index.phpBackground information:This project has been a 4 month long adventure, with a lot of prototyping and revisions, and resin tolerance testing, and most importantly a lot of support and help from some dank people in this community! A lot of other attempts had been made in the past by other creators, but I do not believe that anyone has ever gone this far to have every variable accounted for when it comes to compatibility. Thanks to SLA printing having a low barrier to entry I have developed a lot of designs for adapters that simply would not work on a traditional FDM printer, or at least not to the same tolerance and accuracy as I have been able to achieve. My goal was to set out and create an adapter that can take any cherry MX keycap work with any standard Alps keyswitch, that goal quickly changed once I figured out why no one has really pursued this idea to its fullest extent, because of some pretty major road blocks; that being what do you do about the stabilized keys? I am glad to say I have answers to those solutions as well!
Goals:I started this project with really no expectations, but as more and more issues arose I made some goals for what I wanted done:
1.Tolerances: Making sure that adapters printed correctly, and with in my margin of error
2.Total compatibility with any profile keycaps: This is a little bit more challenging I have no doubt that GMK EPBT will fit on very well and most OEM cherry caps should be fine as well, but in reality my adapters are with in a .03mm Margin of error and some manufacturers have higher acceptable tolerances than that so while I do not think it has universal compatibility, it should be really damn good.
3.As little additional height as humanly possible as to not ruin the look, feel, stability of the switches and keycaps, The final additional height to the overall design is roughly 2.75mm from standard OEM alps keycaps.
4.Fully reversible with no damage to the keycaps or alps switches: Making sure that the adapters do not compromise the plastic from keycaps or Alps key switches and I can confidently say after much testing, it has been achieved The goal was to make the adapters tight enough so that they wont come out from daily use, but loose enough so that if they snap in a keycap it is not the end of the world.
5.Stabilizer support for every scenario: I wanted to make sure that every possible compatibility scenario was doable, and with that I ended up designing and creating a MX to MX adapter for Cherry mx stabilizers, and a custom 2.75u wire for larger keycaps that would not otherwise be compatible.
The Resin:SLA printers differ greatly from their FDM counterparts, for one being a lot messier and for the most part much more of a pain to use. With that being said I believe that the results still speak for themselves with just insane the tolerances are in printing. I have developed a bit of an obsession with trying to find the right resin proportions for the strongest prints, allowing for genuine mechanical use rather than just for prototyping. A sort of "secret sauce" has been made to create some pretty insanely strong parts. The best example I can give of just what the resin is capable of doing is creating functioning silencers for 9mm firearms, which is pretty dope. The only draw back to using multiple resins to create prints is upfront material cost, which will be somewhat reflected in price.
The Design:
I am proud to introduce Funny Adapters! Like I previously mentioned, the design went through some pretty radical changes over the last 4 months, I have lost count of the amount of revisions, but I believe it is somewhere in the 20-25 range (still counting). The main reason for the shear amount of revisions is due to tolerance error and printer variables. It took a very long time to zero in the right dimensions for the X,Y, and Z axis to finally get to the point that the printer was producing parts with in an acceptable margin of error of roughly .03-.01mm. All of that for some really good end results.
The Great Stabilizer Debacle:
Old Design:
New Design (testing in progress):
New 2.75u Wire vs AEK II
New 2.75u shift in action:https://imgur.com/MKY2DsYAlright so this is the falling off point where a lot of threads talking about adapters just kind of die out, from my understanding there are 2 major types of stabilizer types used for alps builds, the common wire mount stabs salvaged from AEK boards and Cherry MX stabilizers used with DIY 60% boards. So for 2u stabilized keys matias wires are MANDATORY, they are shorter than AEK standard wires height wise, and are available for purchase from the matias website and come with a bunch of other goodies that you will need to able to mount Cherry keycaps, same goes for spacebar, Matias wire and the included costar inserts will be used for that key. Leaving one elephant in the room, the dreaded 2.75u key. Matias wires are simply not wide enough to fit into both of the snap in points on the plate and AEK wires are too tall and even if they did manage to fit there is another problem, Cherry standard 2.75u keys use 2u stabilizer mounts meaning that the wire is not long enough to reach the costar inserts.
HOWEVER! A custom wire bending manufacturer has been contacted to create a custom bent wire that will be compatible with standard AEK 2.75u spacing. I have not forgotten about the Cherry MX stabilizer crowed, however small you may be, I have a solution for you as well, no longer will you have to suffer using TAI HAO alps keycaps with cherry stabilizer mountings and their pretty meh color ways because I have developed extenders that increase the height of the stabilizers so that they can plug into the bottom of the stabilized key. I call them MX-MX spacers and like everything else you see they will be available for sale along side everything else I have mentioned.
What You Will Need:Wire Stabilizer Users: -Matias Wire stabilizers and inserts for the stabilized keys purchased here:
https://bit.ly/31RArJh -A custom 2.75u wire if your layout has any 2.75u keys
-Funny Adapters
-Cherry MX Keycaps
Cherry Stabilizer Users:-Funny Adapters
-MX to MX spacers
-Cherry MX Keycaps
The OH $H*T Scenario
I know what you are about to say, "I just put on my fancy 100+ dollar keycaps and one of the adapters broke and now my keycap is useless!"
Some steps to takes if and when this happens:
-Calm down
-Deep breath
-These things happen
-Resin is not perfect
-Funny has thought of this a long time ago
-There is a solution
-Funny also wants to use his fancy GMK keycaps on alps boards too with out ruining them
There is a SOLUTION! The reason that two of the sides of the adapter are shorter than the others is to allow a pair of angled or thin tweezers to be safely inserted into the keycap and simply removed with out any problem or stretching to the caps. Mind you this fail safe also applies to the stabilized keys. Any 1mm diameter, or just really thin pair of tweezers should work, and if they are serrated that is even better, because there is more surface area to cause friction with when gripping the resin adapter, available on amazon for about 6 dollars. As for an adapter getting stuck in the alps stem, well Alps has thought of a solution for that, by disassembling the key switch it is possible to take a pair of tweezers, or something long and thin and simply push the adapter bottom out of the stem.
Recommended tweezer for pulling any broken adapters can be purchased here: https://amzn.to/3eTJo8w Adapter pulling demonstration in this baller 4 second video: https://i.imgur.com/NO2taBB.mp4What is currently happening (changed!):-Interest Check starting: 7/3/2020
-First Batch of Custom Wire has arrived test video: https://imgur.com/MKY2DsY
-Print designs for Funny adapters are finalized, Mx-Mx spacers have been redesigned should be finished testing with in a week
-Vender Chosen! Check out https://keebmeup.com/index.php
-Launch is happening once the website page for Funny adapters is set up and I test the new MX to MX spacers which should take a week tops (new name for the Mx to Mx adapters) Pricing (changed!) Shipping is now calculated in price (was not before sorry if I was not clear about that)-Current rate Funny Adapters 75pcs for $25.00 USD Shipped [CONUS]
-Current rate Funny Adapters 105pcs for $35.00 USD Shipped [CONUS]
-Current rate Funny Adapters 135pcs for $45.00 USD Shipped [CONUS]
-Current rate MX to MX spacers add on 10 sets/20 pcs for $5.00 USD Shipped [CONUS]
-Current rate Alps 2.75u custom wire add on 1pcs for $5.00 USD Shipped [CONUS]
-International Shipping will be available
-All sales will be conducted with Keebmeup
-Replacement adapters will be available for any damaged adapters on arrival, I will cover the shipping cost.
TLDR:ALPS to MX adapters available soon from new dedicated alps vender:https://keebmeup.com/index.php, 2.75u Wires have arrived and tested here:https://imgur.com/MKY2DsY a 2.75 mm height increase, works for MX and alps wire stabs (with new custom wire), fill out the IC linked again here:https://forms.gle/hy9gayjivc9pe9az7
Example Keyboards (NEW):If you are feeling bold, Funny adapters can be flipped to work with the weird F row on AEK boards.Do this at your own risk, it may stretch the Vertical cross stem on the keycap.More images coming soon, adapters are being sent out to alps enthusiasts for photo shoots!
New personal orange alps build for testing:
