Keyboard Builders' Digest / Tips & Tricks
HuB keycap profile
HuB is a lesser-known sculpted and spherical keycap profile – designed by trashman back in 2016.
Published June 10, 2022
The HuB, a sculpted DSA-like keycap profile, was designed in 2016 but I wasn't aware of it until recently. It was brought to my attention by this post.
HuB is a short, sculpted, spherical-top keycap profile designed by TheVanKeyboards (source).
At first glance I thought these were DSA caps, but on closer inspection it turns out the profile is sculpted.
Indeed, designed by Evan aka trashman, the HuB keycaps are sculpted sphericals, somewhere between Cherry and DSA. With regards to height, they are slightly lower than these two:
In comparison to other profiles, HuB has been referred to as "spherical Cherry", "sculpted DSA", and "shorter DSS" by community members. I could add the "high-pro sculpted LDSA" attribution as well.
HuB is designed to resemble the height and sculpt of the popular Cherry profile combined with the spherical tops and high-gloss finish found on SA profile keycaps.
Asking for explanation with regards to the origin of the name, trashman resolved it as High utility bonnet. In hindsight, knowing his other projects and his naming conventions (TheVan Keyboards, TheVan44/Minivan, CaraVan, Garbage Truck, V4N4G0N, etc.), I'm not sure why I was surprised.
It’s half joke. :) Hub was named hub because then it would be hub caps for your minivan. But then I later came up with what each letter stood for – trashman.
Originally, six row profiles were created for HuB. Rows 1-4 roughly follow the sculpt of Cherry keycaps while row 5 is not angled and is similar to DSA profile.
The spacebars for HuB are convex and "pre-flipped" with the front edge of the keycap lower than the rear, angling the spacebar toward the typist and providing a larger surface for the user's thumbs to strike the face of the keycap.
History
This Trashman.wiki page has a great overview of the history of HuB with all the ups and downs:
- Originally developed under the name XYZ, prototyping of the profile started in April 2016.
- The first full prototype set was produced in August 2016.
- The HuB profile was announced on March 8, 2018 in this tweet.
- In April 2018 a Kickstarter campaign was started to fund production of the tooling for injection molding of a planned double-shot version.
- After 3 weeks, the campaign was cancelled.
- In early 2020, 250-250 sets of single-color (black and white) ABS keycaps were produced.
- The first batch of HuB keycaps reached users in June 2020.
Available here: https://thevankeyboards.com/page/hub
Published on Fri 10th Jun 2022. Featured in KBD #82 (source).
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