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$