K95 RGB Mod Log!

[jkraghify]

Hey guys, I have owned my k95 rgb for half a year now and I love it, but I want to mod it. I am in the planning stages for the first mod, and I am going to share it with you guys.


[spoiler=Preliminary Teardown!]

I opened up the keyboard just to familiarize myself with how Corsair put it together. I did not mod anything yet.



Yes, that is two k95 keyboards. The one on the left is water-damaged and I have it to prototype all my mods. It also happens to work since I can repair these things (yay now I have an office keyboard everyone will be jealous of!)

First, I removed the keycaps. Pretty easy--we all can do that.



Next, I found and removed the 30 screws on the front face of the keyboard. There were two hidden screws--one under the corsair logo and one under the right volume roller guard.



Here is where I discovered that the aluminum plate has to be installed before the switches are soldered onto the PCB. This was a little disappointing because it means that if I want to paint the aluminum plate, then I have to de-solder every single switch. Not really that big of a deal though. If I really thought it was worth it, I could do it. I think there are better ways to change the color though.



Put it back together for the time being. I am thinking of doing a repair guide for this keyboard after I finish modding it, especially if I end up taking it apart again.




Mod 1: White Frame
I was thinking of painting the entire keyboard white (I have a black/white themed build); however, I took the keyboard apart and found that to get to the brushed aluminum sheet, I would have to de-solder ALL the switches... Not gunna happen (unless you guys REALLY want, these keyboards are expensive!)

I will instead laser cut a thin sheet of white acrylic to fit around the switches from the top. I need to get my hands on some calipers so I can properly design the acrylic sheet to fit around the switches. It will take me some time to measure and draft the cut paths.

 

THIS MOD IS COMPLETE. People have been posting pictures of their own version of this mod (I made my templates available on my Dropbox) on my Corsair User Forums Keyboard Cover Mod post.


Mod 2: Mirror paint inside keycaps
If the inside of the keycaps are mirror, the k95 could look a LOT brighter. If someone can give me a good idea on how to mask off the letters so the light still shines through the keys, that would be great. I tried using painter's tape, but it was incredibly difficult to get it down there. Maybe I need to use a couple toothpicks or something (please help me!)

Please help me brainstorm for more mods. I would like to mod this keyboard as far as I can without breaking it.

[MrYuriy]

Cool stuff. Keep updating it & us on it! #PlannedConfusion

 

Now, apologies for going a bit off-topic, but.. Your first pic gave me an interesting idea.. Building a mechanical keyboard INTO a desk. Your lone keycaps placed exactly like a keyboard gave me the idea.. And it looks so sick if it can be executed well! What do you think? Lol.

[Charger]

Well I would like to see the plate come off just because I have yet to see some one take of the the RGBs apart but if it isn't something I would ask you to do purely for my enjoyment lol

anyways ya all plate mount keyboards need the switched to desoldered(with normal led keyboards it needs the switches and leds to be desoldered) to paint the plate since the plate is captured between the pcb and the switches

[Swndlr]

subbed

[jkraghify]

Cool stuff. Keep updating it & us on it! #PlannedConfusion

 

Now, apologies for going a bit off-topic, but.. Your first pic gave me an interesting idea.. Building a mechanical keyboard INTO a desk. Your lone keycaps placed exactly like a keyboard gave me the idea.. And it looks so sick if it can be executed well! What do you think? Lol.

 

Thanks for the idea, it is not at all off topic! That is a great idea, but unfortunately I move around a lot (college student) so the keyboard needs to be mobile as well, plus the desk is part of my rental apartment

[Charger]

Cool stuff. Keep updating it & us on it! #PlannedConfusion

 

Now, apologies for going a bit off-topic, but.. Your first pic gave me an interesting idea.. Building a mechanical keyboard INTO a desk. Your lone keycaps placed exactly like a keyboard gave me the idea.. And it looks so sick if it can be executed well! What do you think? Lol.

not very practical but can be done

[ManWithBeard1990]

One of the things you can do, once the plate is off, is file it in such a way that the clips can open, so you can open the switches without removing them to exchange springs and sliders. That way it's easy to convert a particular key from one keyswitch to another without soldering.

[jkraghify]

Mod Update!

 

After 5 hours (probably more) of measuring and drafting the dimensions of the keyboard (I could not get them from Corsair) I managed to create a white base plate cover out of thick paper. Get ready for pictures!

 

 

I first drafted the keyboard in AutoCAD. This is an older draft that I am not using and it is not accurate to the spacing on the actual keyboard (I am not sure if I can actually share those or not). 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.

 

 

 

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

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

 

 

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

 

 

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!)

 

 

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.

 

 

Now: Comparison Time!

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Oh, and here's the gecko I was talking about earlier. She likes the camera.

 

[X_Rated_Box]

woah nice

[linuxnutcase]

neato, nice job on the white, nice and bright,

 

some ideas I have for k95 mods,

1. add some lights on the sides facing down for like a downwards glow,

2.add a usb hub in either the back or either side, and maybe mic and headphone jacks,

3. this would be hard and kind of far out, but added some kind of screen, like one of those blacklite car radio screens in place of the tramp stamp.

4.also if you could make the volume wheel light up that would be handy.

5. this may be hard, but if you could add some diagonal arrows above the right and left arrows, like this https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=keyboard+with+diagonal+arrows&view=detailv2&&&id=CB39D2887372332D4E543A834AC3CA9DC4D8275B&selectedIndex=1&ccid=UV8iC4EQ&simid=607989480726269135&thid=JN.ZzMAlikF93shqbQwNsjQgQ&ajaxhist=0

 

thanks for posting this topic, good luck on your modding,

[TheBlackPantha]

Cool stuff. Keep updating it & us on it! #PlannedConfusion

 

Now, apologies for going a bit off-topic, but.. Your first pic gave me an interesting idea.. Building a mechanical keyboard INTO a desk. Your lone keycaps placed exactly like a keyboard gave me the idea.. And it looks so sick if it can be executed well! What do you think?

Now THAT would be extremely cool if pulled off right. It would be an extremely time-consuming and hard task to get the holes right though. 

[jkraghify]

Now THAT would be extremely cool if pulled off right. It would be an extremely time-consuming and hard task to get the holes right though.

I could do it for sure. I have access to more tools than I can think of; however, desks are flat and keyboards need to be angled for comfort. This might be a project when I start renting a house and I can build a table from the ground up  The holes are not the problem, the desk is.

 

 

neato, nice job on the white, nice and bright,

 

some ideas I have for k95 mods,

1. add some lights on the sides facing down for like a downwards glow,

2.add a usb hub in either the back or either side, and maybe mic and headphone jacks,

3. this would be hard and kind of far out, but added some kind of screen, like one of those blacklite car radio screens in place of the tramp stamp.

4.also if you could make the volume wheel light up that would be handy.

5. this may be hard, but if you could add some diagonal arrows above the right and left arrows, like this https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=keyboard+with+diagonal+arrows&view=detailv2&&&id=CB39D2887372332D4E543A834AC3CA9DC4D8275B&selectedIndex=1&ccid=UV8iC4EQ&simid=607989480726269135&thid=JN.ZzMAlikF93shqbQwNsjQgQ&ajaxhist=0

 

thanks for posting this topic, good luck on your modding,

 

1-Good idea! I will see what it takes to get a neon affect underneath the keyboard. I'm not sure I could make the RGBs synced with the keyboard but who knows lol. I will look into it.

 

2-the USB hub is a weird one I'll open the keyboard back up and take another look at it, but I am not sure if that's possible with the available space.

 

3-I was thinking of making a custom badge to put over the tramp stamp it would be very easy to install and I could possibly give one to you

 

4 & 5 seem really hard I don't think I can do those

[jkraghify]

Mod Update!
 

I refined the design for the white backdrop and experimented with some "mirror paint" designed for acrylic and glass, not paper.

 

 

It looks cool and I made a quick comparison video. My k95s are using the K95 RGB Audio Spectrograph by Elestriel.
 

 

Below are the comparison pictures without the video processing

And there are more comparison photos in this imgur album.
 




 

[-rascal-]

Wow! That actually looks pretty damn amazing!

Nice and clean.

 

Mirror effect paint, eh?

Hmm....I could use some of that on my Corsair K70 (non-RGB, just red LED's :mellow:).

 

 

Fluid Dynamics? Psh, you can skip a few classes.

I'm taking the ONLY Mechanical Engineering class required for Electrical Engineering (I know), Thermodynamics, we are only 2 weeks into the summer term...and I hate it.

(Maybe you can help me with my assignments  )

[jkraghify]

Wow! That actually looks pretty damn amazing!

Nice and clean.

 

Mirror effect paint, eh?

Hmm....I could use some of that on my Corsair K70 (non-RGB, just red LED's :mellow:).

 

 

Fluid Dynamics? Psh, you can skip a few classes.

I'm taking the ONLY Mechanical Engineering class required for Electrical Engineering (I know), Thermodynamics, we are only 2 weeks into the summer term...and I hate it.

(Maybe you can help me with my assignments  )

ooh thermo was fun; I took it last quarter I had a good professor. EE is hard my dad is an EE and I can't understand anything he does. I'm studying civil engineering.

[PetiteBob]

If I would to attempt that some how my house would be on fire

[MrYuriy]

Continued beautiful work. Kudos!

 

Loving the mod and your autograph on it

[jkraghify]

Just a little something while I wait on the plastic to get here...

This is the laser etching process

 

http://i.imgur.com/vM87zdG.webm

 

[jkraghify]

MOD 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!

 

Another piece of news: I have made this project open source. My layout files can be found here in this dropbox link.

 

Video of the mod:

 

[spoiler=Pure White Plastic VS Paper (Paper is on top)]

 

 

 

[spoiler=Pure White Plastic VS Mirror Plastic (Mirror is on bottom)]

 

 

 

[jkraghify]

Got a shout out from corsair on facebook! I guess they really liked the mod because I am sending them a keyboard cover today!

 

[LargeBanana]

Got a shout out from corsair on facebook! I guess they really liked the mod because I am sending them a keyboard cover today!

 

please give me an easy way to make my k70 looks good. i mean a way that i can do without crazy laser etching machine.

like paper template or whatever i want it so bad to make the color pop out a little more.

[jkraghify]

Sorry for taking so long to reply to this topic. I have moved this thread over to the Corsair User Forums because it received a lot more attention there.

 

please give me an easy way to make my k70 looks good. i mean a way that i can do without crazy laser etching machine.

like paper template or whatever i want it so bad to make the color pop out a little more.

I have PDF templates available on my dropbox here. Use the correct template for the siza paper you are using and do not scale, or the cover will not fit

[LargeBanana]

Sorry for taking so long to reply to this topic. I have moved this thread over to the Corsair User Forums because it received a lot more attention there.

 

I have PDF templates available on my dropbox here. Use the correct template for the siza paper you are using and do not scale, or the cover will not fit

do i need to take off all the keycaps before applying the paper white base? what paper should i use? what size of paper do i need?

[TheConverter]

What are your thoughts on the keyboard itself? Do you think it's worth it?
 

Just bought a K30 a few days ago, it has pretty much the same thing as a membrane, 6 G-buttons which are more then enough. I was thinking about getting a K65 RGB when it will be available in Europe.

[jkraghify]

do i need to take off all the keycaps before applying the paper white base? what paper should i use? what size of paper do i need?

Take a look at my post in the Corsair User Forums, it explains it all.

 

As a TL;DR, yes - you need to remove the keycaps. You can use any two sheets of paper you want as long as it follows ANSI or ISO standards (8.5" x 11" for Americans or 210 by 297 mm for the rest of the world). I advise to use standard printing paper as the PDFs are made to be printed on two separate sheets of paper.

 

 

What are your thoughts on the keyboard itself? Do you think it's worth it?

 

Just bought a K30 a few days ago, it has pretty much the same thing as a membrane, 6 G-buttons which are more then enough. I was thinking about getting a K65 RGB when it will be available in Europe.

 

I would not be the one to ask if you want an unbiased opinion (Corsair sponsors me sometimes and I really like them) Mechanical > Membrane any day of the week.

I have been very happy with my K95s. If you want to play around with RGB, I would advise looking at the STRAFE RGB (which is yet to come out) because it has an updated LED controller and is capable of 16.8 million color keyboard animations without any flicker. (again, it's not out so please fact check this if you are interested)

They K series compared to the STRAFE has a much better look to them IMO because of the brushed aluminum, dedicated media keys*, and volume wheel*. Functionally, they are the same apart from these differences.

 

*The K65 RGB does not have dedicated media keys or a volume wheel, but the K70 and K95 do