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T520 custom keycaps for FN and CTRL?

W500/W510/W520 and W700/W701 Series
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painiac
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 11:44 am
Location: Toledo, Ohio

T520 custom keycaps for FN and CTRL?

#1 Post by painiac » Sun Sep 21, 2014 11:35 am

I'm sure this has been addressed many times in the past, but I'm late to the party because I just got my first ThinkPad, a T520. I love everything about it it, except that the positioning of the FN key messes me up. I promptly switched the FN and CTRL key mapping in the BIOS settings.

Now, my problem is an aesthetic one. I want properly labelled keycaps, and since they're different sizes they can't simply be swapped.

I've been searching around, and the only suggestions I've seen have involved begging the keyboard manufacturer for blanks (which they indicated was not successful), using stickers (nope!), or trying to blank out the keys with solvents or mild abrasives (too much work).

None of these is satisfactory. Does nobody make replacement keycaps with proper labelling?!

RealBlackStuff
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Re: T520 custom keycaps for FN and CTRL?

#2 Post by RealBlackStuff » Sun Sep 21, 2014 12:28 pm

Black nail polish comes to mind, should be easy enough!
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
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painiac
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 11:44 am
Location: Toledo, Ohio

Re: T520 custom keycaps for FN and CTRL?

#3 Post by painiac » Sun Sep 21, 2014 12:33 pm

Well, I wasn't planning on keeping them blank or trying to repaint them myself... I am obsessive lunatic, but not quite THAT obsessive!

Sleepy664
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Re: T520 custom keycaps for FN and CTRL?

#4 Post by Sleepy664 » Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:27 am

The right Ctrl key is the same size as the Fn key...so it looks it could be swapped from another keyboard (there are guys on eBay selling individual keys). Then you could just give the original left Ctrl key a "sandpaper treatment" and be done with it. Or you could put the original Fn key there if you don't mind the gap (I didn't try that but it should work).

painiac
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 11:44 am
Location: Toledo, Ohio

Re: T520 custom keycaps for FN and CTRL?

#5 Post by painiac » Thu Sep 25, 2014 9:06 am

That's actually a stroke of genius...
I'll have to try swapping the existing keys to be sure it'll work.Thanks for the suggestion!

flowjowrian
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Location: Cologne, Germany

Re: T520 custom keycaps for FN and CTRL?

#6 Post by flowjowrian » Thu Jul 13, 2017 3:59 pm

Sleepy664 wrote:
Thu Sep 25, 2014 12:27 am
The right Ctrl key is the same size as the Fn key...so it looks it could be swapped
Thanks for the tip. I did that and it works like a charm (T460s). I never use the right ctrl, so I dont mind the FN key being located there.

Now the left strg actually is the left strg. :thumbs-UP:
The second key from the left still shows "strg" although it is actually the FN button. I might try to erase the "rg", so that it is more obvious, that here we have the function button.

http://i66.tinypic.com/24qquj9.jpg

Thanks and bye! :)

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