How do the stabilizers on the spacebar work? Do you need to remove those from the original HHKB? I’ve found that to be extremely challenging and haven’t personally ever succeeded at removing them.
You just need a flat-head screwdriver. You use it to pop the wire out of the clips on the stabilized keys and then those sliders pull right out.
The spacebar is also easy; the spacebar stabilizer housings are held into the plate by little clips on them, which can also be released by pressing gently with a screwdriver.
I’ll make a video on the install process likely before the GB ends so you know what you’re in for. 
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I’ve taken the housings out of my fc660c using a flat-head screwdriver. Just be careful, I actually punctured one of the housings with the screwdriver. I started using Norbauer’s spludger that was included in the latest run of the Norbaforces and they work wonderfully.
This keyboard is the accumulation of almost a decade of modding mentality and I love it. I love it so much I made a video about this journey for the holy grail known as the heavy grail
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Wow, that was a rather in-depth analysis! Thanks for making this and sharing it, Huey. You may not remember this, but the idea for making an HHKB was something I actually started to take seriously during a TopClack interview. So you can take some credit for the inception of this project.
I’m seriously looking into doing plates in pink now btw.
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F yeah
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What?! How did I miss this?! Would you say there is more than a 50% chance of Topre keycaps actually happening? Even if it doesn’t happen, really cool someone is trying!
I would definitely say that. Though it might be more precise to say Topre-compatible keycaps.
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Well already have the norbatouch and force, so now I gotta get in on this.
Now I’m fantasizing Norbauer + Modern Model F… It will be my dream board…
Hum…
A full size Realforce case made by @norbauer would be my dream 
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Hi Profile I hope? 
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Would it be possible for an option for the plate to be drilled by the factory for mx compatibility enter and shift? I have drill my hhkb and I’m not satisfied with final result. It works but it is really ugly. I would want the holes to be like the novatouch 2u housing looks sleek. Would be pretty sad if I spoil look on the heavy grail plate just cause I want mx sliders on it.
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Was wondering the same thing
If you’re talking about HiPro caps with hybrid stems, that’s a license to print money
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Since this thread is back on the plate discussion, wanted to follow-up with my findings from the Rev A slider stuff-
So it does appear that, if you wanted to go this route in the future, you could actually offer a Type-S plate that worked with the stock HHKB sliders and likely wouldn’t require too much work on your part to change the mold.
The OG Topre slider/housing configuration for 1u keycaps was actually a stock slider (with the “tongue” on the base cut off of it) that used the standard ~0.5mm foam disc that they still use today, and then the housing itself was reconfigured to account for it-
You can see that what they did was take ~0.5mm from the barrel guide (marked ‘A’) from the stock, and then used the additional space to increase the “ceiling” (marked ‘B’) of the Type S slider by the same amount. This afforded the space for the 0.5mm foam disc to fit without reducing tactility and keeping the keycap resting height consistent across stock/silenced.
One thing to also note is they appeared to make the barrel guide more of a complete circle (instead of semi-circles) to help reduce (the likely now-worsened) keycap wobble, so that is something you could potentially apply to any slider housing in the future (note that this makes it more difficult to push sliders thru that still have the “nub” on the barrel). Pic example here (new user limitations are dumb): imgur / IusmQsO.jpg
So for you to offer your own Type-S plate, you’d basically just need to make the additional mold (and I’m sure your bank account just leapt out the window), and then partner up with someone like Deskeys to include their 0.5mm silencing rings in the sale of the Heavy Grail Type-S.
I did also look at the stabilizers, and it’s a little more iffy on ease-of-implementation in a Type-S plate. The 2.25u sliders actually have the same overall thickness and barrel length as a stock slider (and this was consistent with both the Rev A and Rev B Type-S Realforce sliders), it’s just they increase the height of the “ceiling” on the housing by ~1mm, drop a ~1mm thick ring on the slider, and then cut off a piece of each end of the actual stabilizer portion of the slider so that it fits better in the taller/angled ceiling.
So you could include the taller housings, but sourcing 1mm rings (and doubling 0.5mm rings results in terrible silencing if you do it the wrong direction, I tried all 4 configs and only 1 sounded properly silenced) and then still having to deal with the corners on the slider hitting the angled walls in the “ceiling” when the keycap is pressed at an angle might make that offering less appealing.
Saying all of this, obviously if you’ve already achieved the impossible feat of creating your own plate that’s capable of mass-production, and have custom keycaps in the works, then the technical challenge of creating your own Type-S sliders (comparable to the current Rev B purple sliders) to work with the standard Norbauer plate seems like it would be pretty trivial for you (and I imagine it would cost much less to mold/manufacture as well), so that may be a better approach to take if you would like to give us noise-conscious clackers an option down the road.
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Will Norbauer’s current plate design not work with Type S HHKBs?
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it does, but you’re looking at 3.8mm in key travel by using the HHKB Type-S sliders/rings (silencing comes at a cost with them).
Interesting. Does the stock Type S plate compensate for that to make it 4mm?
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negative, afaik every hhkb type-s (including the current hybrid type-s) has spec’d out the key travel as 3.8mm. it’s one of the main reasons why i never cared to try one.