As I can't get on stripping the cream coloured cover off and sand blasting it due to the weather (a bit of snow this morning) I decided to attack the keyboard.
The user facing surface is legend printed on the underside, but it's not a membrane keyboard as such. There are individual switches below on a PCB. Now this upper surface has suffered a bit over the years. The lower right hand corner has had impact damage, and the plastic is peeling away all round the edge. The correct repair is to install a replacement plastic membrane, or even a keyboard, but as neither are available a work around was needed.
I decided to make a bezel that being held down by the same screws that retain the keyboard, would trap the plastic preventing further peeling, and cover the major damage areas.
So I created a simple drawing in Autocad, exported a .DXF to Sheetcam to produce a .TAP file of G code which I imported to MACH3 driving my CNC Plasma Table.
(Did I ever tell you I LOVE my CNC Plasma Table
![:ddb:](https://madmodder.net/Smileys/default/dancenana.gif)
)
It makes what would be a time consuming job simple, accurate and fast - how did I ever manage without one - how do you
![:scratch:](https://madmodder.net/Smileys/default/icon_scratch.gif)
Being a low mass item, once cleaned up and suitably drilled I was able to get a couple of coats of black satin on it before lunch by the simple expedient of accelerated drying using a hot air gun.
Popped it on, tested all still works - job done and I think the keyboard will last OK now for a few more years