I tried buffing to smooth scratchy retooled black stems:
It’s too risky. Buffing with cotton wheel on Dremel for a second with little or no pressure just eats through POM, grinding most of the stem legs away. RPM wasn’t very high either. I think temperature from the friction was high enough to make POM brittle.
(ಥ﹏ಥ)
UPDATE: So, I’m now looking at other ways to ‘vintagize’ switches. push pull solenoids are the obvious way but I think the most effective way may be to have roller-balls rotating over rings of keys fast, fast enough to press each key 1M times within 24 hours. Pressing 10 times per second would do it. Not sure if heat from rapid presses will become a limiting factor.
I’m not sure if I’ll actually build it but it’s fun thinking about this kind of stuff. Tech porn.
UPDATE 2: I now suspect < 50K presses or so will be enough so the ‘vintager’ wheel can rotate a much lower speed.
Nah. I’ve been mindlessly rolling a heavy hand exercise ball over my ‘break-in’ board past couple of hours while reading and it’s already much less scratchy.
To scale up, I just need more balls, shish kebab skewers, and a large motor then arrange keyboards around it before starting the ‘break-in’ merry go-around.
After a few days of excessive breaking-in of retooled blacks, finally lubed (205g0) and filmed them before placing them in a hotswap PCB (Instant60). Plate I chose for this build is polycarbonate half-plate because Instant60 sounds real nice as-is. Half-plate was carved out of a full polycarb plate from KBDfans.
I lubed only the stem but rather thickly all over, including the legs. Result is still, um, scratchy but in a fine white noise-like way which can be felt with ABS Cherry keycaps but not with thicker SA keycaps, PBT, POM or PPS. I went with PPS. The idea is to dull the feel to hide the scratchiness.
Final build feels about as smooth as Cream and sounds just as nice without the hollowness which I like but some may not.
UPDATE: Original plan to use these retooled blacks on MasterKey Pro S I had around unused is still on. I just need to find the time to desolder the thing. I hate desoldering.
I have my Sirius (POM case w/ POM plate) ready to build and am kind of not regretting getting a hot swap PCB for this one. Do you think it will sound better with creams with or without a foam between the board and plate?
I’m using mkultra plate foam in my Cream+POM plate board and it sounds real nice. IIRC, volume of sound and reverb without the foam was a bit much for the combo although I’m not sure what the impact of using POM case instead of aluminum one I use is.
Relubed my Telios V2 board, originally lubed w/3204, with 205g0. Feels much better.
I don’t know why but going straight to 205g0 feels less good than first lubing with 3204 then, after awhile, relubing with 205g0. I don’t do much cleaning except wiping the stem with paper tissue before the relube.
I won’t be doing the same with Creams because there isn’t much difference in feel and sound, Cream’s best feature, gets dampened. I think Inks are more like Tealios than Cream so, when retooled Inks become available, I’ll lube first with 3204 then relube with 205g0 later.
It’s because you are basically making a thick mix by going over the 3204 with 205 G0, you can achieve the same effect by mixing GPL 205 G0 with some GPL 105/6/7 or VPF1514.
While I’ve successfully eased into enjoying linear switches, I now can’t stand using Holy Panda for more than 30 minutes. It’s just too tactile.
But it’s nice having more variety. Instead of trying to eek variations out of one and only true tactile by mixing different plate, lube, and case, I now have several top quality linear switches and even more hybrid linear switch combos.
When I joined Polaris GB, my plan was to put HP on them. Instead, I’m going to put Tealios on the full brass plated PCB and decide later what to put on the FR4 half-plated PCB. Current candidates are:
Inks lubed w/205g0
retooled Blacks with UHMWPE stems
Creams with UHMWPE stems
I’m going to try all three on hot-swap boards before deciding. I can live with later two’s scratchiness on hotswap boards but having to solder them into PCB is making me extra picky.
Just wanted to say I’ve really been enjoying reading this thread and following your journey down the linear rabit hole! I’ve also been transitioning from tactiles to linears in the past few months, and just starting to get the hang of lubing with 205g0. Thanks for sharing all this!
I think relatively quiet switches like Telios make silent switches irrelevant when combined with 205g0, brass plate, foams, and a decent case. It’s as quiet as silent switches while being smoother. Ready for use at work with a huge smile.
I would mostly agree with this. I have a board build the same way with tealios, and one I threw together with silent inks and no foam, I’d say the sound level is about the same, but more satisfying with the tealios and foam. However, if you just want to put something together quickly without having to think about it much I think the silent switches are still a good option.
Not always but, in general, yes. Feels softer too while remaining firm. As to why not always, I suspect it’s the range of sound that matters. With Tealios, brass plate feels firm but softens bottom out sound. Note that presence of plate and case foam dampens reverb, further softening and reducing the typing noise. Without them, you’ll get more clack which, in office setting, will turn heads unintentionally.
