Keycaps are an integral part of the keyboard, and their printing process plays a key role in the appearance and user experience of the keyboard. Meanwhile various methods and techniques are widely used. The following is a brief introduction to some of the main printing process.
Laser Etching
Laser etching was an early mainstream keycap technology that utilized laser engraving techniques to burn grooves into the keycap surface. This process is clear, long-lasting characters that resist wear. However, the engraved characters are generally more linear. It can only produce black characters, so only white keyboards can be used.
Screen Printing
This process employs ink technology to cover the silk screen on the keycaps, which the character part is hollowed out, offering excellent visibility, and many kinds of colors are possible. However, screen-printed keycaps are prone to color fading.
Laser Filling
Laser filling process involves a secondary printing using ink applied through screen printing progress on laser-etched keyboards. This results in high durability, surpassing both laser etching and screen printing in terms of longevity.
Hollow Printing
With the rise of RGB lighting effects, keyboards have evolved towards incorporating lighting effects. Hollow printing involves creating keycaps using transparent materials, with the surface covered by an opaque material. This allows the keycap characters to be illuminated directly, meeting the demands of RGB lighting effects. Although keycaps are beautiful, characters are easy to wear.
Two-Color Molding
Two-color molding produces a backlight effect with good durability. this process will directly fuse the two colors of the keycap material, utilizing the color contrast to represent characters. It prevents character wear and offers vivid colors, but fine character details are challenging to achieve.
Dye Sublimation
Dye sublimation is a special ink printing technology, which adopts solid resin ink materials, melting pigments into the keyboard material through heating processes. The printing effect is very solid, with characters that are durable and exhibit excellent gloss and form. Nevertheless, the complexity of the process leads to high production costs. It is really suitable for high-end keyboard
enthusiasts.
Through these processes, keycaps are able to display a variety of patterns and colors on the keyboard, enhancing user experience. To some extent, the continuous innovation and improvement of the keycap printing process has also promoted the advancement of keyboard design to a certain extent.
