Thanks for this! Topre’s soft landing is my favorite thing about them - I think it helps my arthritis.
I got into the game too late for Novatouch, but my two Realforce RGB R2s (in Norbaforce Astrophysical and Aperture ) don’t seem to have as a soft a landing as my 87Us or FC980C. Was hoping it would be as simple as swapping keycaps, but I guess the mystery continues. Mine are factory, not lubed, I’ve wondered if the rattles on the R2 fool my fingers into thinking the landing is harsher than it is.
In any case, I’ve ended up sticking with my FC980C (in Veracity) for my daily driving and relegated the R2s to gaming.
@norbauer I’d be happy to lend you a R2 if you wanna do some science on it, happy to bring it to you if you’re reasonably close to me in LA.
Just finished building the HG, used a Novatouch slider on Esc just to test and for me the GMK ribs turned out not to be real problem, at least not on the Esc position. If I push unnaturally hard then yes, the ribs just touches the ring on the housing, but normal typing it bottoms out first.
Not sure if it’s the plate or if the Novatouch slider is smoother than my HHKB 3 sliders but there is a notable difference.
It’s important to test all rows. R1 (in GMK terms) is set much higher than R3, for example, and thus its ribs don’t clack into a Topre housing. It’s been a long time since I used an NT but, iirc, the problem is mainly on R3 (the home row).
Fwiw, when I last had an NT (4 or 5 years ago), Novelkeys_ used to sell washers that you could put on top of the NT sliders so that the caps rode a little higher and thus wouldn’t interfere w/ the Topre housing – I believe they had uses for regular MX switches as well. I recall only using these on R3 on my NT but possibly used them for R2/R4 as well.
I don’t think that OLKB actually stocks them anymore, just a zombie page. NK_ had them for a short time as well but they’ve undergone many website changes since and don’t even have the stock page up.
I’d wager they are just a regular washer that you could find for industrial uses but unfortunately I no-longer have one on hand to do some caliper measurements for you.
@AdrianMan do you, by any chance have any lying around you could measure?
) don’t seem to have as a soft a landing as my 87Us or FC980C. Was hoping it would be as simple as swapping keycaps, but I guess the mystery continues. Mine are factory, not lubed, I’ve wondered if the rattles on the R2 fool my fingers into thinking the landing is harsher than it is.