3D Printing

Adafruit Hacks a Keyboard with the Ember 3D Printer

If you had access to Autodesk’s Ember 3D printer, what would you do with it? Well, if you’re like the Ruiz Brothers at Adafruit, you might 3D print some custom key caps for your computer’s keyboard.  Using the printer’s high resolution and clear resin, the Ember was perfect for the small-scale, fine-featured prints, allowing for LED backlighting to shine right through to a user’s fingertips.

3D-printed-custom-keyboard-using-autodesk-ember-adafruit

This is a pretty simple project for Makers of any skill level.  All that’s needed is a 3D printer, some post-processing materials, and a keyboard. Due to its customizability and LED backlighting, the Ruiz Bros. chose a mechanical keyboard with cherry mx switches for their project. The key designs themselves feature connector pieces so that replacing any key on the keyboard is a snap.

And, over at the Adafruit Learning System, the brothers give an outline of how to design your own custom key caps, as well as how best to print it.  Don’t worry, you don’t need Ember, or any other DLP or SLA 3D printer to make them.  But printing in a clear material will really give your LED keyboard a nice effect.

3D printed keys from adafruit

For the Adafruit boys, though, this was a great way to show off the high-resolution capabilities of Ember for very small objects.  In addition to putting out this project, they also give a nice breakdown of Ember in the review video below: