Keyboard Builders' Digest / Tips & Tricks
Mobop keycaps
Mobop is a retro-inspired uniform keycap profile shared by Penk Chen – for low-pro switches!
Published August 10, 2023
Penk Chen (creator of the Penkesu cyberdeck) published Mobop, a low-profile keycap set designed for Choc V1 switches – in the range of 1U to 2.25U, plus a 4.75U spacebar. (Have I told you I love homing dashes?)
And all keycaps above 2U should work with Choc V1 stabilizers (PG1350) too.
I wasn't able to decipher the name so reached out to the author inquiring if it has a hidden meaning:
That's actually a working title (lame one) – the keyboard will be part of my next portable Framework Mainboard terminal build, so mobo-p for short – Penk.
If the shape of these uniform caps look familiar, it's not a coincidence. Ardent kbd.news readers may remember similar profiles seen on vintage boards but also some novel ones introduced this year.
Siemens – Penk's original source of inspiration –, Tandberg, Reuters boards of the '80s, the Marquardt 6425 caps, and more recently Doys by Deadline.Studio and BLOCK by HIBI. The SLK by Kema/FKcaps has a similar circular top surface too, and maybe Matt3o's MTNU could be seen as a transition between this retro design language and the common Cherry/SA world.
Last time, after the Doys & BLOCK posts, cerement sent me an elaborated list with even more examples of this type of keycaps (thanks!): e.g. Devlin Teletype Z series, and there are also those old MX-compatible Adler electric typewriter models.
All in all, we have something similar for low-pro switches now.
Resources
Published on Thu 10th Aug 2023. Featured in KBD #130 (source).
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