How to print/finish decent looking keys?

[seanspotatobusiness]

I was wondering whether I could find advice on how to print and finish these to look nice. I have access to an Ultimaker 2 to print in PLA or abs and then I could try to smooth them in a rotating tumbler of sand or using a solvent like acetone or chloroform or heat from a heat gun or soldering rework station. I could also print them using an SLA printer but that's more expensive.

Finishing them would probably ruin any legend that was indented in the print so maybe I'd then be better of using a laser cutter/engraver?

[rsheldiii]

Tumbling the pieces could definitely work, that could also be combined with some sort of shellac or polyurethane spray to seal the surface of the prints and make them a little smoother. .5mm layers on a well tuned printer look alright but without post-processing like tumbling an FDM print won't be fooling anyone (if that's your goal).

I'll be printing a few of these in resin (frosted ultra / extreme detail) from Shapeways; my main reason for upgrading this library has been to make a good platform to experiment with resin casting. Pricing is about $6 for a resin print, and $3 for a polished SLA print, which isn't too bad as long as you're not doing a full set. here's an example key I set up: https://www.shapeways.com/product/8Q5AQTV64/parametric-mechanical-keycap-v2-cherry

[seanspotatobusiness]

​​Yeah, I was thinking of using this to print a full set of over 100 keys so cost is a consideration for me!

I read that tumbling doesn't work great on plastics because they're too soft but I remember seeing a photograph that looked fine to me.