Hey guys!
Today will be the start of a new series that I’ve been wanting to do for a long long
time.
I really want to get more hands on with everything, I love making and modding stuff, and that’s
how I started in the hobby.
So!
This is episode one of the Kpop Mech Series!
Where I’ll be doing themed boards of a bunch of groups.
Blackpink just had their long awaited comeback like a week ago.
Probably the most popular Korean girl group internationally, so outside of Korea, especially
in the west.
Tonnes of views on YouTube, they have international members, and yeh, just crazy crazy popular.
We’ll also give away a copy of their new single ‘How You Like That?’ at the end
of the video.
For today's build, we have the Square.X 60 from iNETT that I recently did a build video
on.
What I liked most about this board was its aesthetic design, and that it had a lot of
different parts which straight away got me excited because it gives a lot of opportunity
to mod it and to build on a theme.
First off, personally I’m more of a Reveluv, but my girlfriend has been a massive Blackpink
fan for a while, true Blink, so I hear a lot.
She loves all of them, but her bias is Lisa.
While mine is the main vocal, Rosè, because she’s an Aussie girl, has the good old Australian
accent which seems to amaze everyone.
Hopefully she doesn’t lose it, cause I love hearing it.
With Blackpink it’s easy compared to other groups because their colours are straightforward.
So we’re gonna make the case black.
The plate pink.
Dye some GMK keycaps.
Change the bottom logo pieces.
And just about everything else.
Okay so the case is made from polycarbonate, so I really wanted to dye it black, like translucent
black.
And I saw this cool post on the mechanical keyboard subreddit, and it seemed easy enough
after watching a bunch of vids.
But keeping it short, I absolutely stuffed it.
I was scared of it warping, so I dunked it in at around 80-90 degrees celsius, because
you can always go hotter, but yeh, turned out terrible.
A few things.
There’s 2 components in the iDye Poly pack.
You have the dye, and this colour intensifier stuff, and it didn’t seem to mix properly,
resulting in this very uneven look.
And the baking tray I used looked messed up after this, so I think the coating impacted
on this as well.
But wait, check this out.
Amazing right?
Acetone was cleaning it quite nicely.
But then I learned that it makes polycarbonate very brittle.
And then I left it in too long.
It made it all weird, and put deep lines in it.
It was so messed up.
Unfortunately, of course I won’t be able to dye it anymore, but glueing, filling, priming,
and painting fixes it all.
It sucks, I did want a translucent look, but now I have no choice but to make it opaque.
The problem with painting parts that are supposed to tightly fit together, is that paint adds
thickness.
Especially if you want to do it properly, so you have primer, then the paint, and then
a top coat.
It all adds up.
So I did try to keep the contact areas pretty thin, which is easier with an airbrush.
What is my favourite Blackpink song?
I’m gonna say Really from Square Up.
It’s a bit more laid back and less aggressive than their other stuff, which is kind of their
image.
So a bit more chill.
And yeh, just a love song.
The plate is what makes this keyboard so unique and acts as the accent piece.
It has a yellow e-coat, which is quite thin.
So I just primed straight over it, no sanding.
Blackpink’s pink is actually quite light, pretty pale.
Of course it’s not the exact colour, but I found Infectious Pink from Createx to be
somewhat close.
Now to the bottom.
We have the weight which we’ll paint pink, but more importantly, these 2 poly pieces.
The big Square.X logo is just a simple rectangle, so I went to my mate Laser_Ninja’s place
to yolo some logos out.
Ok!
Favourite MV?
They’re all great productions, as with most groups.
I’d say DDU-DU DDU-DU.
I just like the whole aesthetic around Square Up.
The promotions, the artwork and design, the moving posters.
All amazing.
And for me, it was just the perfect balance.
Not being too grand, and still fun looking which
I liked.
You wanna see more terrible experimenting?
If you’re into keyboards, you know GMK keycaps.
Top tier stuff, expensive, and generally you don’t wanna mess with them.
But I need something for this board.
GMK Blink is a long way away, especially since it’s on hold at the moment because of old
mate YG.
So… let’s try and dye them.
I’ve dyed keycaps before, and many others have too.
But they tend to be PBT, while GMK is doubleshot ABS.
The good thing about white on black is that you’re only dyeing a small area, because
you can’t dye black to anything.
I used the same brand iDye Poly, and this time I didn’t use the intensifier stuff
because someone said not to, so I wasn’t taking that risk.
So using just 1 pack, I put the caps in at 70 degrees.
I’m using a polypropylene colander, because it apparently doesn’t take on dye.
I was monitoring the temperature constantly, and mixing once in a while, but after an hour,
close to nothing, especially for the legends.
So then I bumped it up to 80 degrees for 2 hours.
And some caps were taking in the colour.
Especially this backspace key, but you can see that it was quite uneven.
And from here on out, it was just a mixture of stuff, dunking less caps, I added another
packet of dye to hopefully make it more concentrated.
And legit, like hours and hours, not much colour got in.
But honestly, because the official Blackpink pink is so subdued, this was actually fine,
but when I was doing it, it just looked quite close to white, even though the bottoms clearly
showed it was pink.
So I kept pushing and wanting to get it darker, and that’s where the danger comes from.
From Wildcat’s dyeing video, he recommended I think 70 degrees max, but those are different
ABS caps.
I didn’t see any warping at 80 degrees, but once I bumped it up higher just for a
few minutes, the colour started to penetrate, however the longer keys started to warp.
So I thought okay, let’s just do quick bursts.
And this is like 90 degrees celsius.
And yeh, pushed too far, many of the keys started to warp just a little bit, which sucks,
but you know, this is how you find what your limits are, and I’m happy to be the one
that sacrifices a $110 worth of plastic.
So, if you really wanted to try and dye GMK caps, White on Black would be your best bet,
just because you won’t be able to see unevenness that easily.
And this is just for my setup, because I haven’t done this before.
So keeping it at 80 degrees celsius or lower was safe for me, and I kept it there for like
more than 5, 6 hours, so time in the pot wasn’t an issue.
But the liquid will slowly evaporate.
With a different pot, amount of water, brand of dye, colour of dye, number of packs, the
use of my colander/strainer, all of these are variables, and who knows what’ll happen
if you change those up.
I do have a set of Infinikey white on black which are PBT plastic, and will most definitely
be easier to dye, and I’ll be using those on the next episode.
Now let’s put it all together.
I swapped out the stabs to these pink C3 ones.
And for the switches, I have Gateron Ink Black V2’s that I grabbed from Switchkeys, and
I lubed them with Krytox 205g0.
Why are Blackpink so popular?
Of course being part of YG Entertainment, being one of the big companies over there,
it’s a given.
And they only have 4 members.
So we have Jisoo who’s from South Korea.
Jennie is also from there, but was in New Zealand for a while.
Lisa is from Thailand.
And Rose from Australia.
So that’s pretty cool, and it does make it a little easier for them to promote and
connect with overseas audiences because of their English.
Now this was the scary bit.
Remember, that this top black piece was broken before, and I only superglued it together.
I sanded off most of the paint on the inside otherwise it would be impossible to fit.
And yeh, it was pretty hard but I got it on there, and hopefully when it’s all screwed
together, it won’t just burst apart.
Aaand to finish it off, I printed off some stickers.
Oh and yeh the pink dye on the white caps looked horrendous.
Uneven, I tried to clean it, so I just airbrushed them, which ended up fine because I get to
add more character.
I played around a bunch on Illustrator seeing what would work, and I just went with a classic
GMK look for the enter key.
It took me a while to come up with something, but this is perfect.
Blackpink in your Area!
I didn’t want to copy GMK Blink, but I drew up a Square Up cube, no way round it.
Sorry.
And finally Blink for the bottom right blocker, which is the official fandom name.
And I went for something a little more edgy, because this keyboard is wayyy too neat for
Blackpink.
And here it is all done.
There’s two ways to go about doing a Blackpink theme.
You can either go mostly pink, or mostly black.
And that’s what they do when they release their EPs and such, usually there’s 2 versions.
I used pink as the accent colour which ended up looking super striking.
Originally I did want that black translucent look, and yeh, it woulda been really cool
to succeed, and I would love to try it again on something else.
And the caps, I wrecked them.
Pushed too far.
The colour looks good, a little darker than what I should’ve done, but they warped.
And listen to this..
Yup, like half of them affected the keypress because of the warp.
So it feels pretty terrible to type on, but it is quieter, so that’s something.
I ended up repainting the bottom, so it doesn’t actually match the black of the top piece.
The iNETT logo took me ages, because I kept messing up with the black blending with the
pink.
But that turned out so cool, and I’m happy I got to keep some branding on there.
And for this piece, I turned the C and N letters around, just in case.
They’re just 2 normal words alright?
Nothing suss.
As a whole, I think adding a bit more edge and flair would be something I would have
liked, which is tough to do, you’d have to do some sort of custom keycaps, probably
more artsy airbrushing, I dunno.
But that’s what Blackpink are known for, so I’ll improve as the series continues.
I made a lot of mistakes throughout this video, but we learn from these things, so I’m happy.
And that’s our first episode of the Kpop Mech series.
So keen on doing this, and starting these new upcoming series.
I know that this one won’t appeal to everyone, being Kpop and all, but I’m super excited
for these other series that will be completely different to a lot of content we’ve seen.
Let me know what you think, who’s your bias, favourite song. and all that stuff in the
comments.
To enter the giveaway, just follow whatever I chuck in the description.
The winner will receive a hard copy of their new single, which comes with a photobook and
all that cool stuff.
So thank you for watching.
Coming up on the next episode, we have a really really special board celebrating the debut
of Red Velvet’s subunit of Irene and Seulgi.
So stay tuned.