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Alright. I’ve got some results!
Short story short, they all work as they should.
I expected at least the Gateron brown to work with maybe a few causing issues, but at least with the stems I’ve tried, they’re all good to go with standard Gateron Yellow housings. Even the Speed Copper retained syncing activation with clearing its early bump.
So - @mwb; I’m thinking there’s a chance you were dealing with loose leafs, iffy contacts, or possibly contamination. Do you happen to remember what tactile stems you tried? It’s also possible they aren’t compatible like the ones I tried are.
hrmm…
There are a few possibilities. I might have just been remembering the initial housing I used. I do know that the most recent attempt I made was with Laserons. I would think that these were a Gat Yellow recolor but maybe not. For those I’m pretty sure I used Halo and Zealio R2 stems and got chatter with both.
I guess I should record these things better. It’s likely that I didn’t test with Gat Yellows if you had no issues across that test set.
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I dug up my Laserons for this. I’m going to put some halo and zealio stems in them (hopefully tonight) and see if I can recreate what I was seeing before.
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better then all the memes on r/mk
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UHMWPE Boba
- aeboard UHMWPE tactile stem
- U4T housing
- 55g TX long spring
I lubed the switch with 3203 on the slider, 205g0 on the top housing and 107 for springs. Filmed with TX clear thin film.
The choice of 55g is because higher weight spring will reduce the tactility. Using long spring for the same reason, more tactility. The normal spring just don’t do the job.
The shape of the tactile event is similar to SP star purple but not as heavy. The initial force is similar to cherry browns.
The sound of it is deep due to the U4T housing and the UHMWPE stems if there is any chance I will try and do a sound test with my phone.
I really enjoy typing on them as it is light but give enough tactile feedback. However there are few problems with them
- stem wobble on the E/W directions
- Some stem will fail to function due to too much wobble and actuate the switch
Low tolerance in UHMWPE stems is the main cause. However you do get 140 of them which you should able to get a full working set out of them. For me at least 4 out of 51 didn’t work.
But overall the switch is nice is just more work need to be done for a complete set.
9 Likes
I got some NK Blueberry switches that I ended up putting some linear stems in the housings and tossed the stems into the trash-drawer for the foreseeable future until the other night. I wanted to make them work somehow, so I gathered up other spare parts I had laying around, tossed them in some silk bottom housings with a gateron top (the silk tops compressed them too much I guess? They were really sluggish) and some 55g springs.
The result is actually a lot of fun, the extended pole made a really loud sound and the feel overall was drastically improved from the stock Blueberry experience. What you get with a lighter spring is a massive pre-travel that leads to a bump that goes all the way to the bottom out, similar enough to an ergo clear but with a very snappy bump similar to zealios. I’m not the biggest fan of huge tactile events, and this seemed to hit a sweet spot of having some leverage at the start with the pretravel into a fun and snappy bump.
I ran into some issues when I threw them into a keyboard tho, they wouldn’t actuate like at all. Some peeps helped me out and said the long stem was an issue, so I took some clippers and cut off the noticeable nub from the stempole, and they started working as they should have.
Anyways this was a lot of fun, I’m a huge fan of awkward tactiles and making use of the miscellaneous resources I have available. If anyone did what I did and ended up using the cream housings these stems came with for linears, try them out with a light spring in another linear housing.
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I’m gonna finally do some Frankenswitching =D Just ordered some U4T stems from Gazzew (because I really like my U4Ts).
I saw a suggestion to put them in Cherry Brown housings, and I happen to have a couple old boards with those to harvest from. I’m excited… Hoping they ship fast in time for some fun over the weekend. =D
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Thanks for sharing! If you’re on reddit, post this on the r/switchmodders sub - someone there has been looking for a “b” shaped tactile and this sounds like it might fit the bill.
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Oooohh I love using blue ink housings to make tactiles. Something about the leaf is unique which is really interesting compared to the rest of the lineup. My favorite so far was a simple cherry clear stem with the ink blue spring; I prefer a bit of pretravel and it’s so much more refined and smooth than making ergo clears in cherry housings, while still being around there feel-wise. Have you tried any other stems you like in the housings?
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You need to choose the right caps to use. It causes interference with GMK sets when using U4T with cherry housing
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Poor Man’s Inks
- Cherry MX Housing
- Gateron Yellow stem and spring
In between Gateron Yellows and a Gateron Inks in terms of feel, sound, and price
Details:
Get closer to ink feel without paying ink prices
Keep in mind that I’m doing these comparisons with the switches unlubed and unfilmed.
One of the biggest complaints of Gateron Yellows is that they don’t sound that good, at least compared to other switches. The Poor Man’s Inks aim to try to fix that. The result is… they sound like your average Cherry MX switch. Arguably still better sounding than stock Gateron Yellows though, and Cherry housings can sound really good, especially with mods and use over time(Cherry housings are underrated IMO). Compared to Inks they’re louder and slightly higher pitched, however compared to stock Yellows they sound much deeper and are more clear and defined, they definitely thock.
The wobble is actually really good. In fact it seems like it’s tighter than the Inks and stock Cherries. Apparently Gateron stems are slightly oversized compared to other switches from what I saw when someone else put Yellow stems in a Cherry housing.
As for the smoothness, it’s… complicated. There’s actually a very slight tactile bump towards the bottom of the keystroke, around the 1mm mark. It’s because almost every linear switch has a ledge at the top of the leg, and most linear switches actually completely disconnect from the leaf, probably in an effort to be more smooth. Usually you don’t feel the ledge in most linear switches because the leaf and leg disconnect before the ledge, however in the poor man’s inks the leg and leaf disconnect at the ledge, and you get that small tactility. You only really feel it when you press real slow though, and is barely noticeable when typing fast, however there is the possibility of spring ping on a full board, especially unlubed. Other than that it’s pretty smooth. It’s not as smooth as Inks by a long shot but it definitely feels smoother than stock yellows. Basically, as smooth as a Cherry housing can get.
And finally, the cost. The namesake of the switch. The price of Gateron Yellows are $0.24 per switch. Your average Cherry MX switch are $0.35 per switch. In total the price to make these switches are $0.59 per switch. I’m sure you can get better and smoother switches for a similar price, however the point of these switches is how they compare to ink switches, which in general are $0.75 per switch. Cheaper than Inks = Poor Man’s Inks. On top of that there’s a probably a chance that you have Cherry housings laying around, lowering the cost (From what I know basically all Cherry housings are the same, though I’m not 100% sure).
Summary:
So in a nutshell, Poor Man’s Inks are in between Gateron Yellows and Gateron Inks in terms of price and switch feel. They are smoother than yellows, but not quite as smooth as Inks; The same can be said about the sound. They have less wobble than Inks and even stock Cherry’s. They cost $0.59 per switch to make compared to the $0.75 per switch for Inks. On top of that they use Yellow springs, which are highly regarded and what makes Gateron Yellows so popular. I’m thinking about putting these in my next board but I want to see what others think first.
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Thanks for your recap
I wonder how it is, compared to just replacing Gat Yellow top with Cherry top housing. From what I read, Cherry bottom housing is …not that good vs Gat Yellow’s
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Looks like KS-3 variant of Gateron Yellow which has all vinyl housing and is supposed to be the best sounding variant.
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Why didn’t I think of that… anyways I tried it and the results are actually pretty similar. The Gateron bottoms are higher pitched than the Cherry bottoms, but it’s not as bad as I thought it was. As for smoothness, the Gateron are slightly more smooth than Cherry bottoms, but I’m not the best at discerning smoothness and I’d barely notice the difference anyways. The best thing about this frankenswitch is that you could choose which bottom housings to use since it’s only two switches. You could choose either better smoothness or (subjectively) better sound. That’s pretty neat.
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Hi, I’ve never frankenswitched before so maybe this is a stupid idea, but has anyone tried to take a NK Cream stem and put it into a Durock POM housing (maybe even lubed and filmed)? If so, I would love to hear your thoughts. I can’t find any videos or articles on this, so thought this would be a good place to ask.
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I haven’t done this, but I would assume the affects would be minimal? since your exchanging one POM housing for another, my knowledge about this (I have creams and JWK switches) would lead me to think that the durock/JWK POM housings would need films and the creams would not.
There you go. They’re probably a bit smoother.
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I saw this video, I don’t think they were using the Durock housings though. But yeah I was thinking they would be smoother since I commonly hear the creams are scratchy.
From what I get is that the nk_cream is scratchy cuz of POM on POM so it would likely be the same in a JWK-POM. But I’m curious to.
3 Likes