So I was just thinking about O rings

[Owntrolf]

I realized I liked the clack better but I want to have distance reduction.

What if I bought a bunch of knex blue spacers and use them as really hard O rings to maintain the clacks

*knex spacers are expensive as heck to ship to Canada so I'm sort of looking for alternatives

[remdell]

What's the difference between the knex spacers and putting two hard o-rings together? 

I found that using hard o-rings produces louder sounds when you don't pound on your keys, but when you do pound away, they don't produce a distinct clack.

The soft landing pads and soft o-rings are quieter than the hard o-rings when you don't pound on your keys, but when you do pound, they product a quiet clack (overall sound louder than hard o-rings) similar to having no o-rings.


I feel as though much of the clack comes from the inside surface of the keycap hitting the switch housing. The soft o-rings/landing pads are so thin and soft that the inside surface of the keycap ends up hitting the switch housing at a reduced force on hard key presses.  Yet, the hard o-rings prevent the inside surface of the keycap from hitting the switch housing on hard key presses.  The only reason the hard o-rings are louder on soft key presses is because the same soft key presses on soft o-rings prevents the inside keycap surface from hitting the housing.  I may be wrong though.

[Oobly]

The K'nex spacer will do what you are hoping as long as it fits nicely, but the sound will be a little different from a switch without the spacer.

When you "bottom out" a Cherry switch, the slider hits the bottom casing (side parts in the case of tactile and linear types, pin in the case of clicky switches) and that makes the sound. Keycaps never impact switches unless there is a fault of some sort. If you add a hard ring, the ring will impact the top casing and make a sound, but since it's different parts impacting, the sound (and the feeling) will be different.

If you don't mind opening the switches, you could try using a hard piece of plastic in the little tube inside the spring. Add 0.8mm to the travel reduction you want (on tactile and linear types, on clicky types just use the amount of travel reduction desired) and that will give you the length of piece to insert. Less dependent on keycap profiles and won't rattle as much as loose rings on keycap stems. It should feel and sound more like "normal" unmodified switches on bottom out.

[KaLam1ty]

If you're strictly looking for distance reduction and still wish to have that 'steel plate' impact, I highly recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001D8BYJ4/ref=biss_dp_t_asn

70A is incredibly solid rubber and comes in EPDM so you won't get any squeakiness like Buna-N.
(In fact, it's the same material that the WASD o-rings come in. Only WASD use 40A and 50A, iirc -- which still
have some of that shock absorption). They are also hella thick.

That said, I feel like using ANY kind of spacer-like material will reduce some clack-factor though.
These o-rings definitely create more of a hard ass 'thud'.

But $6 for a pack of 100, you can't really go wrong.. (Hell, WASD charges about $18 for their o-ring packs. Talk about profit  )).