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Every #keycaps piece
Deep Dives
How keycaps are actually made: double-shot, dye-sub, and the processes in between
Material and profile get the attention. The mold, the second shot, the transfer press, and the shrinkage table are what set the price, the lead time, and whether the legend is still there in ten years.
thock10 min read
Guides
ANSI, ISO, or JIS: a practical layout buying guide
Two boards can look nearly identical in a listing photo and still take entirely different keycap sets. Here's how to read Enter key shape, bottom-row widths, and spec-sheet shorthand before ordering — not after a set arrives that doesn't fit.
thock9 min read
News
GMK CYL Orange Alert opens at Divinikey, the second Alert-series set to reach group buy this year
GMK CYL Orange Alert opened August 14 and runs through September 14, 2026, hosted by Divinikey with KBDfans, UniKeys, and Keebz N Cables running alongside — an orange-beige-gray Cherry-profile doubleshot set with Katakana accent legends and an estimated February 2027 ship.
thock5 min read
News
GMK Just Beachy's group buy opens August 18 across five vendors on five regions
GMK Just Beachy opens for orders August 18, 2026 at five vendors spanning five regions at once — Keebz N Cables, Divinikey, Prototypist, KBDfans, and Unikeys — capping an eight-week climb on thock's Trends Tracker that hasn't logged a single down week.
thock6 min read
Trends
GMK CYL TA Neo's group buy is closed — here's what a November 2026 ship estimate actually means
GMK CYL TA Neo closed its group buy July 17, 2026 after a June 19 open, and the thock trends tracker has logged two straight weeks of cooling attention since. That's not a warning sign — it's what every closed keycap buy looks like while it waits on production.
thock7 min read
Ideas
Mixing keycap profiles on one board: what actually works
Mixing profiles reads as a deliberate design choice or a rookie mistake depending entirely on where the swap lands. A handful of zones tolerate it well. The alpha block almost never does.
thock6 min read
Trends
GMK CYL OG Extensions climbed eight interest-check weeks, then opened a group buy of its own
An interest check posted on Geekhack pulled ahead of both open GMK CYL group buys on the thock trends tracker — eight straight weekly reads without a single flat week — before opening a group buy of its own that has kept climbing since.
thock7 min read
Ideas
Retrobrighting: what UV and peroxide actually reverse in yellowed ABS
Vintage ABS keycaps go the color of weak tea, and the hobby's fix is a jar of hair developer and a sunny windowsill. The chemistry behind that fix is real — but it reverses one specific kind of damage, and builders regularly aim it at problems it cannot touch.
thock7 min read
News
GMK CYL Masterpiece R2 closed at KBDfans, finishing the Katakana argument R1 started
Energieschleuder's six-year-later return to Japanese craftsmanship aesthetics climbed the thock tracker all window, scoring 46 in W26 before the buy closed June 26.
thock8 min read
News
GMK CYL Pandemonium: the eclipse-themed keycap set that closed on a plateau
DeltaKeyCo's Berserk eclipse group buy climbed the tracker from its June 1 open, posting a score of 33 in W26 with a flat direction — a mid-window plateau it held through its July 1 close.
thock10 min read
News
DCS Dolch closed at Divinikey — a computing-history colorway's first DCS-profile run
The Dolch colorway — dark grey alphas, lighter grey mods, named after the 1990s portable workstations — ran a four-week DCS-profile group buy at Divinikey and nine regional storefronts, closing 2026-07-01.
thock9 min read
Trends
DCS Grass Valley closes: what the profile's 2026 run tells us
Grass Valley's group buy closed 2026-06-01 and the tracker dropped -18 that same week — but DCS Dolch opened the same day at +29. The momentum didn't dissipate; it transferred.
thock9 min read
News
GMK CYL Selene closed at KBDfans with the sub-line's first material-first colorway
GMK CYL Selene ran 2026-05-15 through 2026-06-19 at KBDfans with a special-effects glitter-reflect colorway in purple and teal over a silver-grey base. Designed by whysoda and inspired by the Greek Titaness of the Moon, the buy closed with Q1-Q2 2027 fulfillment ahead.
thock6 min read
Trends
DCS Olivetti and the quiet rebellion against Cherry orthodoxy
A March group buy closed strong, and eight weeks of steady tracker movement later, DCS Olivetti is the clearest sign that experienced builders are ready to argue about profile again.
thock8 min read
News
GMK CYL Prussian Alert closed at KBDfans, capping the loudest GeekHack IC in the CYL sub-line's recent run
GMK CYL Prussian Alert ran at KBDfans from 2026-05-15 through 2026-06-12 with a Bauhaus-leaning red-on-cream palette. The order window followed the loudest GMK CYL interest-check thread on GeekHack the sub-line had seen before an open.
thock6 min read
News
GSK Sweet Nightmare ran a four-day window at KBDfans with an eight-variant matrix
Goldenstar's Sweet Nightmare resin run opened at KBDfans on 2026-05-08 and closed 2026-05-11. The four-day window is unusually tight for a formal group buy, and the eight-variant matrix — four colorways across two finishes — compresses a configurator's worth of choices into a half-week.
thock6 min read
Guides
Keycap profiles, compared: Cherry, OEM, SA, and MT3
Most beginners agonize over switches for weeks, then drop any keycap set on top and discover the keycap was doing half the work all along. Profile shapes the sound, the typing angle, and the way a board reads on a desk — and the four profiles below cover almost every set on the market.
thock11 min read
Guides
Keycap materials, compared: ABS, PBT, and the rest
Most builders obsess over switches and quietly accept whatever keycaps came in the box, then wonder six months in why their board doesn't sound like the YouTube video. Half the answer is the plastic. Material decides how a cap rings, how it ages, and what it feels like under a fingertip on day one and day one thousand.
thock10 min read