My Mechanical Keyboard Odyssey #3
The second half of my first attempt at modification
I’m sorry it took me over a week to write this followup. If you haven’t read the first part, or if you need a refresher, feel free read it here.
So, we got the thing open, and separated all the pieces. What now?
Again, I wanted to work on the acoustics of the board, and I knew beforehand that putting sound dampening foam between the mounting plate and the PCB would produce a more desirable sound. So I grabbed some foam I’d bought and went to town with my hobby knife.
The idea here is of course to fill as much empty space in the keyboard as possible, but I will admit this part was very tedious and time consuming. I can’t even imagine doing this for a larger board, but knowing myself I probably will do it anyway. It would have been easier with a proper cutting board and a metal ruler, but that’s an investment for another time.
As for whether it did anything, I’m pretty sure it had an effect, but since I would have to remove and reattach all the switches again just to take the foam back out I’m not about to test that anytime soon.
One last acoustics mod I wanted to do was the band-aid mod. This involves taking a small piece of the sticky part of a band-aid and place it on the PCB where the stabilizers are mounted. This supposedly makes the tolerances for the stabilizers tighter to reduce rattle, as well as dampens any impact on the PCB.
This part feels a little silly, but it does do a lot for the sound of the bigger keys.
I forgot to take pictures of how I modified the stabilizers themselves though. I had to clip the feet and lube them, and I greased the wires to minimize rattle. I also made sure to test them before putting the board back together, of course. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I just put everything back together and the stabs still sounded like crap.
And then comes the real work; The lubing of the switches!
Switches are made up of several different parts. There’s the housing which has a top and a bottom part, there’s the stem, and there’s the metal spring and the electrical contact leaf. All these parts combine to make the mechanical action of a keyboard switch. In order for switches to sound and feel their best, they should be lubed in certain places to minimize “scratchiness” (the sound of the plastics rubbing together), and “spring ping” (the resonance of the spring).
Each individual switch must be opened, and the spring and the stem must be removed. Then, you carefully lube the insides of the switch housing, the sides of the stem, and the spring, with a brush and a lube of your choosing. Then you put it all back together, and repeat the process for however many switches happen to be needed in your board.
Most people who are into this hobby claim that this is their least favorite part of a build, and I can understand why. It’s very time consuming, and because it’s so repetitive I can imagine it gets boring fast. Some switches don’t even benefit all that much from it so many people simply don’t bother. I however, find this part very relaxing and enjoyable. At least for now.
A finished set of fifteen switches took me about 30-45 minutes to do. Or at least I think it did. I honestly wasn’t keeping the time.
After all the switches are lubed, the final step is of course putting it all back together again. It was time to start soldering the switches back onto the board.
I actually think I did a decent job putting this back together. Most of the joints came out very nice (please ignore the one on the right).
Putting the keycaps back on after working on a board like this feels really satisfying, and my fingers were just itching to start typing on it. I actually felt like I had completed quite a daunting and intricate task, and that I was about to reap the reward for my hard work.
So, after all this work, how does it sound?
For easy comparison; Here’s BEFORE, and here’s AFTER. Remember to boost your sound a little, as I didn’t use a dedicated mic for these videos. Also, take note that the angle brackets key (the one next to Z) is unmodded, so you can easily hear the difference between an unlubed switch and a lubed one.
What do you think?
Being the perfectionist that I am, I’m not completely satisfied with it. The biggest problem is of course that I ended up with a broken board. The B and L keys no longer work because of my shitty desoldering, and I lost the LEDs in two or three places. I also feel like the stabilizers are a bit mushy, so the next time I do something similar I might lube them a bit differently, and I will definitely use less grease.
The hollowness and spring ping is almost completely gone, which is great, but the switches still sound a bit scratchy to me. I should probably have oiled the springs instead of lubing them.
Overall though, I’d say this modified version sounds pretty damn good for a cheap $50 generic gaming keyboard.
When the time comes, I will revisit this board and see if I can try to fix the broken keys. Lord knows I’ve invested enough time and energy into it already only to not be able to use it in its current state. For now, I feel confident enough to keep exploring this hobby and build my own board from scratch in the not very distant future, and maybe even mod a few more. 🙂