Retrocommodore-64keyboards3d-printingopen-source
Printable Commodore 64 Keycaps Put PETSCII Graphics on Modern MX Keyboards, With a Font Traced From a Real C64
GitHub user szabadkai's open keycap set prints dark brown SA-profile caps with cream C64 legends and the PETSCII symbols on each letter's front, using a CC0 font he traced from photos of his own Commodore 64.
It began as one board’s set. “The set started as a full C64 set for an Ajazz 75% board and grew into a universal set,” and it now covers “ANSI boards from 60% to full size,” with “C64 legends, plain legends or blank” as options.
The lettering comes from a second repo by the same author. The c64-keyboard-font was “recreated from photographs of classic Commodore 64 keycaps, with cleaned-up shapes and consistent proportions,” traced from his own Central European C64. It includes “all 63 PETSCII graphic front legends, arranged by key in the preview,” ships as TTF, OTF and WOFF2, and is released under CC0 1.0. “The close-up photographs used for tracing are not included,” the README notes, and the font is an unofficial reconstruction that Commodore never endorsed.
Printing them takes some care. On a filament printer, “Two colours (FDM with a multi-material unit): in the 3MF every cap is one object with its legend inlay as a second part.” On a single-color machine, you can “fill the engraved legends with paint,” since “legends are cut 0.5 mm deep.” For resin, the README says to “print each cap with its open bottom toward the platform, tilted 30–45°.” The photos in the repo show caps “printed on a Formlabs Form 4 in Tough 2000 resin.”
Both repos are new this month, and the README offers files for printers with and without multi-material units. What’s still unanswered is how the 0.5 mm engraved legends hold up after months of typing compared with dye-sublimated caps.