Case and plate foam precuts at mkultra

https://mkultra.click/

Just got my foam in. It’s as good as you can imagine. Big time saver and huge sound changer. Just thought I would drop the link here for others interested. I’ll be ordering more.

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Thanks for the link. Ordered Tsangan and ANSI foams as well as case forms of varying thickness to try them out. I liked all the options they’re offering.

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Foams arrived while I was in South Korea.

MINI REVIEW

Installed 4mm Tsangan foam between 1.5mm brass plate and KBD6X PCB and a white 2mm black 4mm bottom foam between the PCB and Tofu case (read tray-mounted).

Installation: Very easy. No problem at all.

Feel: Feels softer, as if the foam between the plate and PCB is offloading some of the force when bottoming out.

Sound: Pitch seems a bit lower. Sound is subtly rounder and cleaner. What’s far more significant is that sound of keys on tray-mounted keyboard are much more uniform with the foam. Variations in pitch and volume still exist but not as much as before.

BOTTOMLINE:

  • Highly Recommended for tray-mounted keyboards.
  • Recommended in general for cleaner rounder sound and feel.

UPDATE1: Switched from 2mm to 4mm bottom foam to address echo from the ~1mm gap between PCB and case. Needed to use longer screws as well as add bottom screw, which usually leave out, to reduce height of the bottom row. It’d be nice if they offered 3mm bottom foam. I’d also be interested in 5mm sandwich foam for plateless build.

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I agree, 3mm foam would be a good option. 4 seems like it’s always going to be slightly too thick

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Wow… When I get around to building a TKC1800, i’m definitely going to go for this. If it’s that good on platemounts, I can’t NOT do it!

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Ordered more plate foams for rest of my daily-use collection: two Tsangan and one ANSI. Holding off on ordering case foams since neither 2mm nor 4mm meets my needs.

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Hey, thanks for the review!

I’m going to look into getting some 3mm foam in stock as an option for case foam or another idea I’ve been thinking about is a build your own thickness kit - 1mm, 2mm and 2mm. This would let you adjust to 1,2,3,4 or 5mm using different combinations. For those people that aren’t sure exactly the right thickness to use it would be a great option.

Another thing I am in the middle of changing is moving from switch top removal cutouts to MX Classic cutouts - just squares. It is foam - if you need to remove your switch top, it will move out of the way. It will hug the switches a little better and on tray mounts, keep the edge mounting slots a little cleaner and less fragile.

Today marks 3 weeks in business for me and there have been a LOT of lessons learned already in that time and I’m sure more to come. One thing I have always been OK with is taking advice, suggestions and help from anyone offering it so if you have any, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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I’m going to look into getting some 3mm foam in stock as an option for case foam or another idea I’ve been thinking about is a build your own thickness kit - 1mm, 2mm and 2mm. This would let you adjust to 1,2,3,4 or 5mm using different combinations. For those people that aren’t sure exactly the right thickness to use it would be a great option.

Fantastic. I’d be happy with just 3mm but BYO thickness sounds pretty good cuz it’ll allow us to cut out sections off a layer if thickness needs to vary.

Another thing I am in the middle of changing is moving from switch top removal cutouts to MX Classic cutouts - just squares. It is foam - if you need to remove your switch top, it will move out of the way. It will hug the switches a little better and on tray mounts, keep the edge mounting slots a little cleaner and less fragile.

Two thumbs up with this idea.

Today marks 3 weeks in business for me and there have been a LOT of lessons learned already in that time and I’m sure more to come. One thing I have always been OK with is taking advice, suggestions and help from anyone offering it so if you have any, don’t hesitate to reach out!

My two-cents worth: take it slow. Learning takes time and energy. I think you found a nice niche market here. Focus more on being a reliable and receptive vendor and rest will follow in time. Also put more effort into partnerships with designers and vendors to offer custom foams for new PCBs and cases to ship at the same time GB ships.

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Any plans on expanding the form factors available? I’d personally love to see the Tada68 plate foam renamed to the 65% plate foam & have the same custom layout upload option you have for 60%. I’d also love to see a 65% case foam, but I’m sure you can tell I’m partial to 65% boards LOL! I have yet to try any of your foams, but I am very keen too as I’ve only heard good things. I think if you can eventually offer plate & case foams for most form factors with the option to upload custom layouts for them all you’ll pretty much have the sound dampening for keebs market cornered!

I do have a question too. I’m thinking about ordering a Tada68 plate foam for my upcoming E6.5 build, but I would have to cut it to accommodate split backspace & WKL bottom row. How easy is it to cut this foam with an exacto knife? I’d hate to order one & not be able to use it.

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I’m in the middle of making some changes to the website to allow more customizations but you can always create a KLE and link it in the order notes for me to cut custom to your liking.

My biggest issue is getting case/plate mounting points correct. Once you move past the standard GH60 mounts that most of the 60% cases use, it starts becoming a lot more proprietary and that is why adding layouts has slowed down. I am reluctant to release layouts without having a physical board in hand to test on, as repeated mailings of replacements in the event of any errors (as was the case with Planck) is slowly eating me alive.

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My biggest issue is getting case/plate mounting points correct. Once you move past the standard GH60 mounts that most of the 60% cases use, it starts becoming a lot more proprietary and that is why adding layouts has slowed down. I am reluctant to release layouts without having a physical board in hand to test on, as repeated mailings of replacements in the event of any errors (as was the case with Planck) is slowly eating me alive.

This is why I suggested partnering with designers and vendors. They have a vested interest in having perfect-fitting case and plate foams with their logo available, adding value to their main product.

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Yes, I’ve already been up to this. I’m posting case and plate foams for Minivan/MHKB (thanks Evan!) in just a few minutes and have been working with quite a few GB runners to get foam produced for their new boards as well. I’m even doing some padding for artisan boxes and wrist pads for the Sol2, so people are thinking of things for me to do that I had never even considered!

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Ok cool I did not know I could do that, I’ll definitely be grabbing a plate foam for my E6.5 now hear that! I’ll make a KLE file for the layout I’ll be doing & put it in the order notes when I do order it. I do get where you are coming from with the case foams, most high end customs do have their own thing going on for mounting the plate to the case. I did not really think about that when I was suggesting stuff, just was tossing some ideals off the top of my head. Glad to hear you are starting to set up for more customization on the foams!

So I am relatively new to the community and building keyboards, so hopefully no stupid questions. How would I go about mounting a tray foam vs a upper plate foam?

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Tray foam goes under the PCB (between PCB and case). The plate foam goes between the plate and the PCB

So it goes, from top to bottom,

Plate
Plate foam
PCB
Tray Foam
Case

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Thank you!

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Anyone know what’s up with @MKUltraCorp? I ordered some foams when the store re-opened over two weeks ago and have heard nothing, I’ve emailed both to their email and from the box on their site.

Looking at their site it looks like the foams are in stock and ready to ship, but now going back through their post history on reddit it looks like they are in fact cut to order, so maybe it is just giant backlog…

I don’t know what their status is, but I needed to get in touch with them a couple of months ago, and I had good luck reaching them on discord at MKUltraCorp#3425. I had sent a message through the form on the website first, but I never heard back from them through that channel. Hope that helps!

I actually just got an email response back that it will be out within the next few days. I guess the backlog is about two weeks rn.

The backlog is MAD full, poor guy needs like 50 more lasers and a flotilla of staff to keep up with demand.

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