Let me start by saying I’m a “floor guy” at a small town hardware store. I am in training to be a manager but not one yet. I do a bunch of stuff around the store. Which leaves me busy a lot of the time....
5W diode laser and Cricut brand infusible ink. I don't know how deep it penetrates, but 2% @ 45mm/s puts down a muted but easily readable legend on PBT that doesn't come off with 91% IPA or 100% acetone nail polish remover.
So this is a variation on dye sublimation, one of the main ways legends are printed onto single-color keycaps. The process is basically your second idea and exactly as @Uranium_Green says.
Coat the area in ink from a marker meant for permanently decorating cloth or various polyesterish plastics. The intended heat source is a glorified clothes iron made for DIY crafting.
Feed the Laser a simple bitmap image and run it low and slow, so it heats up the plastic but doesn't melt or char it like on several of the earlier trials in that photo.
This should cause the heat-activated ink to integrate more or less permanently to the polyester-based PBT plastic. Then I clean off the unlasered ink with isopropyl alcohol and/or acetone. The zapped ink doesn't fade at all, though as you can see it's not super vibrant.
The sweet spot to do this without charring or melting the keycap is pretty small, though though there's probably another configuration where you use higher power and quicker movement. There might also be one at even lower power and longer time. I'd seen several people try it, but with weird projects on cheap lasers you've typically got to find your own settings. Also, don't laser ABS; very bad idea.
You're right. The main challenge was just zeroing in on the point where the plastic softens to let the heated ink penetrate without deforming or burning the keycap. I think there's potential here to do it better than I have, but I do think I landed on one of 2 or 3 different possible settings that will work decently well.
It's a low-rent form of dye-sublimation, and I don't know if they're using lasers, but dye-sub is one of the preferred ways to add legends to PBT keycaps.
LOL, this is the sort of stupid thing that happens when you have ideas for nonstandard layouts but you don't type well enough to trust yourself with blank keycaps.
Was definitely planning for a jig, though I hadn't got as far as planning for something to do multiple keys, and yeah, switches would be the obvious choice for mounting securely. Some sort of quick-n-dirty fabricated plate would give the type of predictable spacing that could work. Gotta get that initial placement just right, though. :-)
Obviously our engravers are pretty different models, but what sort of settings are you using, and what sort of shades are you able to pull from the dry-erase? I notice that the "cardinal" and green I was able to get were not a world apart from the old Cherry 9009 keyboards that inspired the GMK set. I also wonder if the chemical composition of Cricut's "infusible ink," at least the dye, is much different than dry-erase.
Oh, and for any crossover fans, the fountain pen was a a Lamy Safari with a Chinese 1.5mm stub nib and Herbin Perle Noir ink. My wife literally asked me the other day, "why aren't you into typewriters? You like every other weird old way to write stuff down."
The problem being everybody has to be on board. "Other UT" thought that having Mack wind down with Muschamp in waiting was the perfect scenario, but it seemed like nobody was on the same page, particularly Mack and whoever decided that Mack was indeed winding down. One should never underestimate how long a CEO coach will keep CEO'ing.
Am i the a**hole for telling my coworkers no?
Let me start by saying I’m a “floor guy” at a small town hardware store. I am in training to be a manager but not one yet. I do a bunch of stuff around the store. Which leaves me busy a lot of the time....
Undiscovered country music (startrek.website)
Messing around with infusible ink markers and a laser engraver.
Texas A&M set to fire Jimbo Fisher? Sixth-year coach would be owed more than $75 million in buyout (www.cbssports.com)
EDIT: Baffling journalism professors everywhere, the headline asked a question that could be answered "Yes." Aggies pulled the trigger....