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K95 RGB White Base Plate Cover Mod


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EDIT: This is now an open source project!

The layout file I used to make this mod are located in this dropbox folder as .dwg and .ai files. Thanks to Corsair Forums member "meap," the cutout templates are now available in PDF for those of you that can't use autoCAD or adobe illustrator. Thanks to Corsair Forums member "HaselnuesseTo," the cutout templates are now available for the German K70 layout! Thanks to Corsair forums member "TobyMoose," the cutout templates are now available for the NA K65 layout!

 

Currently supported layouts:

  • North American English - K95, K70, K65
  • German - K70, K65*

 

*No official German K65 pdf. To use this mod for the German K65, print out the German K70 template and cut off the numberpad area.

 

QUICK REMINDER: If you are planning on printing the PDFs out, do NOT scale them! That could mess up the size of the print and it will not fit the board if you are using a non standard paper size (The files support both ANSI and ISO standard paper sizes). Do not "Fit to page." Print at the original size, or the print will not fit.

 

[ame=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyNXl7JNm1U]Video of the mod[/ame]

 

Hey everyone! I own two k95 RGB keyboards (I am using one at work and one at home over the summer) and I decided it would look better with a white base plate cover than with the regular brushed aluminum one. It took a long time to measure and draft the cut paths for the base plate cover, but I think it was worth it. Pictures incoming!

 

http://i.imgur.com/CUPdzQ1.jpg

 

I first drafted the keyboard in AutoCAD. I made the draft; it was not provided by Corsair and it took way too much of my time to make. My current version of the draft is still a couple hundredths of a millimeter off, so I can't cut acrylic to fit over the keyboard yet.

 

http://i.imgur.com/kAJXmAU.jpg

 

I took the keyboard to the Mechanical Engineering labs this morning. I skipped class to reserve the laser cutter :D

It was a better use of my time anyways. Fluid Dynamics. Can't be too useful can it?

 

http://i.imgur.com/PnO0F8x.jpg

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Laser cutting is super fun. Sorry for the bad quality, I had my camera on "Close up" preset because I was taking pictures of my room mate's gecko last night. I'll show you guys later. I got a really good picture of her :D

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http://i.imgur.com/w1wL3zY.jpg

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IT FITS!!! Well, sort of. It took a bit of force to get the right side around the numpad to stay on. I need to refine my measurements still *sigh* (I really wish Corsair would just give me a dimension drawing!)

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http://i.imgur.com/vYceP2U.jpg

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After I got the whole thing on. the G keys are separate from the rest of the keyboard because I needed to check to see if I had aligned them correctly in my draft (I had no way to measure vertical displacement from the rest of the keyboard). I'm glad I separated the two parts because it turns out I was almost .6 mm too low! I will fix that for draft 2.

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Now: Comparison Time!

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http://i.imgur.com/RLT8qcY.jpg

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http://i.imgur.com/n3as46V.jpg

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http://i.imgur.com/FjD8GR3.jpg

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http://i.imgur.com/i8acHmp.jpg

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Here's a small video comparison I made. I do not own a video camera so it is poor quality video.

[ame]

[/ame]

*

 

and here's that gecko picture I promised!

 

http://i.imgur.com/BXkKaeR.jpg

Edited by Jkraghify
Project Update - More and Better information
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Lol if I could make money with this, I would be really happy :D it has been a lot of work :p

 

I'll be updating the mod log later this week. I am working on making the keyboard cover out of plastic for durability :P

 

The mod really was to satisfy my own curiosity though, and it's been really fun designing a product :)

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I am cutting the plastic keyboard covers today! I'll see if I can make extras and exactly how delicate they are/if they look any good in plastic.

 

pictures to come in about ~16 hours! Let's hope they turn out good! :D

Edited by Wired
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UPDATE

The plastic looks good! Even better news, the plastic is flexible enough that I don't worry about these covers ever cracking or breaking. (FYI I used High impact styrene)

 

Also, I found out my file is a very tight fit for plastic (I may be overall maybe half a millimeter too small, but with a little force (and a lot of patience) the plastic was able to stretch the extra small distance to fit over the keyboard nicely.

 

I did not quite finish all my cuts because the cuts took quite a bit longer than I had expected.

 

I painted one of the plastic plates with a mirror paint to see what would happen and was a little disappointed with the results initially, but I noticed something cool that happens only with the mirror finish--lights reflect off the outer edges of the keys. Look for what I am talking about in the pictures below and tell me what you like: mirror or pure white!

 

Also I will see about sharing my design. I would like to see first how corsair reacts to this mod since I had to reverse engineer their switch placement and plate design.

 

Pure White Plastic VS Paper (Paper is on top)

 

http://i.imgur.com/Spssdg5.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/ESiHikV.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/zxY30O0.jpg

 

Pure White Plastic VS Mirror Plastic (Mirror is on bottom)

 

http://i.imgur.com/CUPdzQ1.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/NKkj5WT.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/UE0jN10.jpg

Edited by Wired
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Would you be kind enough to share the template? :)

I want one!!

... the Back Plate I mean, not the Gecko. Although that looks pretty awesome also.

Great news for you two, my template files are now uploaded to dropbox! You can view and edit them if you want. Please make sure to read the readme file!

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Just one word: "Awesome"!

It's sad, that I don't have the possibilities to do the template on my own.

I have the transclucend keycaps from MaxKeyboard and would like to see the effect with your template.

Can you not open .dwg or .ai files? I just bought my translucent keycap set too!

 

What file format would be useful to you? Are you using the NA layout?

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The problem is not that I can't open the file. I'am not able to reproduce your work becaus I have not the knowledge and not the tools.

 

Ah. Well, another way to cut out a cover I would suggest is to print out the template on a large piece of paper and use an xacto knife. If I had known people were going to ask for these I would have made more... Paper would be your best bet. It's very forgiving if you mess things up--it might just take an hour.

Edited by Jkraghify
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Ah. Well, another way to cut out a cover I would suggest is to print out the template on a large piece of paper and use an xacto knife. If I had known people were going to ask for these I would have made more... Paper would be your best bet. It's very forgiving if you mess things up--it might just take an hour.

 

Make more and send me one! :D:

 

or how do I find someone with a laser cutter to cut me one?

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Make more and send me one! :D:

or how do I find someone with a laser cutter to cut me one?

 

Unfortunately I can't cut more of these out until I go back to the university :( Laser cutting is not cheap. I would say you want to make this out of paper because I have only two extras, and I imagine many people want them. More people have asked for my extra covers than I can give out, so I need to find a fair way to choose who can get a keyboard cover.

 

More News!

Installation guide video is up!

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Any K70 plate cover mod? Can someone make me one I can tip?? :o

 

It's on the download page as a beta (I simply removed the G keys) though it may not be flush with the ends of the keyboard. I made my best guess, but I don't have a K70 so it is just a guess :P

 

If you end up using it, please tell me if it works or if it needs a revision.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Thanks! The profile you're referencing is actually not a profile-but some third party software created by Elistriel, one of the forum members here. Her audio spectrogrpah program can be found here, and as you can see in the video, lines up very well with music and looks pretty awesome.
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Unfortunately I can't cut more of these out until I go back to the university :( Laser cutting is not cheap. I would say you want to make this out of paper because I have only two extras, and I imagine many people want them. More people have asked for my extra covers than I can give out, so I need to find a fair way to choose who can get a keyboard cover.

 

More News!

Installation guide video is up!

I don't have access to laser cutters etc so I'd really like one of these and the fairest way is to put names in a hat, and pull them out 1 by 1. Oh, and sell one to the person who suggested the hat idea, of course :biggrin:

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Hi! Currently I have my own template made using Publisher :D but only on alpha. I wanna try your template.

 

What paper size to use to print this to fit the keyboard? Im using a K70 ang planning to print this in 2 parts since Im using an ordinary print. I already know how to select certain areas for printing.

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If you are printing in multiple parts,the paper size doesn't really matter. Thickness - wise, you cannot go any thicker than 1/16th of an inch thick (i don't think this is an issue). Length and width wise... It just has to end up covering the entire keyboard. You should look at my templates, split it into two parts, and use appropriately sized paper for the parts you make.

My templates are available as autoCAD and Adobe illustrator via the Dropbox link in the original post. If you don't have those programs, autoCAD has a free three year academic license. All you need to apply is to be a student with a ".edu" email address. Illustrator has a 30 day free trial you could sign up for as well.

 

There are probably other programs you could use to look at these things with (solidworks and Google sketchup come to mind) but those are the programs I used to laser cut the keyboard covers.

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I managed to figure it out. Needs to select Scale 1:1 choose mm then input 1 and 1 on the plot scale.

 

Here is the sample printed on photo paper for numpad only.

 

http://i.imgur.com/FB6k58c.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/8wixr29.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/M0m7tuC.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/zSUaZWX.jpg

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Nice work! I'm sorry if I misunderstood your original question, it seems like you have figured it out. Looks great! :D

Ps if these are new files and you are willing to share them I'd love to add them to my collection of templates

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