A couple of years ago I bought some of the metal keycaps that OcUK sell, but their stems are slightly too short for my keyboard (a Levetron Mech5), which allows them to wobble a bit. I'm not sure whether it's the keycaps or the keyboard not conforming to the standard. I finally got around to fixing this by removing the stems and replacing them with plastic ones from the original keys.
The above image shows keys in various states along the way.
And finally, they keyboard as it looked after I had fixed just the number keys. You can't really see the difference in height from this angle, but the number keys are now the same height as the plastic keys, while the rest of the metal keys are shorter.
The above image shows keys in various states along the way.
- Top left: Metal keycap in its original state. The stem is recessed inside the keycap slightly.
- Top middle: I pulled the four parts of the stem out with pliers, then ground the inside of the keycap smooth.
- Top right: The burr I used for the aforementioned grinding.
- Middle left: Original plastic keycap. The stem stands slightly proud, making it a few mm longer than the metal one.
- Middle: The plastic stem sliced out. I left plenty of plastic around the top to increase the surface area for gluing.
- Middle right: The cutting disc I used to trim the plastic.
- Bottom left: I used epoxy to attach the new stem. To ensure it was positioned correctly, I put the plastic keycap in the keyboard when gluing, then twiddled the keycap by hand to align it with the surrounding keys.
- Bottom middle: I sanded the stem down a bit until the keycap sat at the correct height above the keyboard.
- Bottom right: Completed key.
And finally, they keyboard as it looked after I had fixed just the number keys. You can't really see the difference in height from this angle, but the number keys are now the same height as the plastic keys, while the rest of the metal keys are shorter.
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