Of all the colours available for 3D printing, dark brown was chosen? It is not pretty(tm).
But the shape is gorgeous!
But the shape is gorgeous!
Happens frequently when you buy a roll of a hard-to-use color, such as this.
By experience I can say that most bright colors would look bad on a project such as this. Bright colors are fine only in very specific circumstances, or for highlights.
In almost every other case, a desaturated color looks better. Off-white and dark-grey are my most-used colors.
> Most of the parts are printed from a PLA with a low amount of metal-fill, which I found to have exceptional opacity
So, I'm guessing that they wanted the keys to have a bit more weight that the metal-filled PLA would provide? I'm not sure why the opacity of the material matters so much, but the author mentions that a few times.
Edit: nope, not weight... actual light blocking was needed.
From: https://github.com/JesusFreke/lalboard/wiki/Printing-tips-&-...
>Filament choice
> For the clusters and keys, you want as opaque of a material as you can get. Try printing a small 2mm thick solid sheet, and hold a flashlight up to the back. Ideally, you won't see any light leakage through the print at all. I tried a few different filaments that I had on hand, and by far the most opaque was some 5% copper filled PLA by Gizmo Dorks.
After reading this, I think the issue is the optical switches that are used for the keys. Because they are using an IR LED/phototransistor switch mechanism, the material needs to be as opaque as possible to prevent light from coming through and activating the switches accidentally.
I had issues with light leakage with thin layers of poor-quality PETG (with light shining through as a dark-green halo), but I've printed microscope light-shields with plain black PLA and PETG with only 1.5mm thickness.
I'd surprise me if the leakage from the material would be greater than the light that comes in from the hinge itself, but I guess the author has done some tests.
There's some good info on opaque filament that people have found on this thingiverse object: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1662956. Personally, I've also had good luck with eSun's black PLA, although it was a fairly old roll, so who knows if their formulation is still the same. And their black PETG definitely isn't very opaque.