Velicifice'r
This is one of my first keyboard "Rebuilds". As usual for the year I made it, I had a bunch of extra keyboard parts laying around but wasn't quite sure how to use them, however my friend gave me an extra keyboard he had that had broken a keycap but was otherwise good. It was a velocifire keyboard with a nice light blue individual switch leds and some rather poor/mediocre cherry brown clones. Looking at my available switches and keycaps I noticed I had some Novelkeys Box Pale Blues and some cheap Matching in color backlight double shot flat and round keycaps. That's when I decided to put all the nice colors together! However the plastic case for the keyboard was black which I thought clashed a fair bit with everything else. I decided to aim for a "Ice Glacier" theme.
To do this I took apart the Keyboard, First the case, then desoldered the switches from the pcb and took the switches off. While everything was off I found some nice slightly off white spray paint and painted both the metal plate and the case this color. One of the reasons I wanted to try this out was I thought the reflection of the backlighing would be much nicer with the white steel plate, it would also help give that nice through white and blue color balance that a iceberg or glacier would have. I'm glad i did this because i'm really happy with how it turned out! After I the painting, I assembled the switches on the switchplate and then soldered on them to the pcb. The mx footprint worked out and I had no problem retrofiting the box pale blues to the pcb. After that All i had to do was piece togther the case again and bam! A nice typing and a looking keyboard!
PCB Breakdown:
- MCU: ???
- Firmware: Proprietary
- Format: Full Size 104 Key
- Layouts: Ansi
- Connection: 4 pin Usb Breakout connection
- Switch Compat: MX Plate
- Backlighting: Per Switch SMD Led
- Underlighting: N/A
- Audio: N/A
Switches:
- NovelKeys x Kailh BOX Heavy Switches, Pale Blue
- Clicky
- Travel: 3.6mm
- Acuation: 60g
- Bottom out Force: 80g
- Links: store page
Keycaps:
- Material: ABS
- Profile: A nonstandard roundkeycap with a flat surface
- Lettering: Doubleshot with translucsent plastic for backlighting
The flat profile takes some getting used to but these are at least functional and fit very well with the theme. I'm not a big fan of the font but with the backlighting everything fits togetether pretty well.
Case and Plate:
- Case Material: Plastic
- Feet/Stands: Flip out feet
- Plate Material: Steel
Bom and Cost:
Qty | Part | Price | Link |
120 | Box Heavy Pale Blue | $36.00 | product page |
1 | E-Element Keycaps 'typewriter' style sky blue | $17.00 | Amazon listing has changed |
~ | Paint | Found some! |
total cost: 53$