Author Topic: Elecom HUGE - Partial Stripdown  (Read 34180 times)

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Offline sojourner

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Elecom HUGE - Partial Stripdown
« on: Mon, 17 August 2020, 00:49:00 »
After about a year and a half of being my daily driver, the left mouse button on my Elecom HUGE started to exhibit the dreaded double clicking issue, so I decided to replace them with the Kailh GM 4.0. Here are the pictures I took during the process (apologies for the potato quality), I couldn’t find many pictures over the internet when I was doing it, so I hope these can be useful for other HUGE owners looking to do the same thing.

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My HUGE has D2FC --- the notorious Chinese variant--- switches inside; a pity since it’s a great input device otherwise.

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Begins by removing the screws (Phillips, #0 I think) from the underside of the mouse, their approximate locations under the rubber pads are marked in the picture. The one in the middle is actually hidden under the model/serial number sticker, you can try to peel it off or just poke a hole through it with a screwdriver to get access to the screw.

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Push the trackball out and remove 2 more screws in the ball cup. You can now pry the mouse open with your nail/credit card/ guitar pick by running it in between the seam gap (where the shiny plastic meets the duller plastic) along the side of the mouse. This might require a bit of force since there seems to be many internal latches holding the mouse together, especially near where the usb cable comes out of the mouse.It is important though that you don’t yank the top part off too forcefully, if the top part is stuck, try to wiggle it from side to side rather than pulling it off vertically.

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With a bit of effort, the top cover should be able to separate. Inside, there are 2 ribbon cables joining the pcbs together. If you yank the top cover off too forcefully before, you might break these so be careful.

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Give yourself a bit more working room by disconnecting the ribbon cables; lift up the small latches at the connectors and slide the cables out.

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Now we have easy access to the pcb holding the right mouse and Fn3 switches. The pcb is held to the mouse with a single silver #1 screw.  Disconnect the molex (easier with a tweezer), unscrew the screw and replace the switches.

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Halfway done, here come the hard parts. If you removed all the screws from the underside of the mouse before, you should be able to pry the left mouse button/scroll wheel housing off. Disconnect the molex connecting this part to the main board. There are 5 silver screws holding the parts to the housing, so remove them. Unfortunately, it seems the pcb is glued to the housing and cannot be removed. So we need to take out the buttons to give us access to the top side of the pcb.

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The forward and back button can be removed by lifting the plastic latches under the screws that were not on the pcb. Just lift them up and slip them over the pins and the buttons should fall right off.

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The left mouse button is connected to the housing via latches and pins. Push the pins and wiggle the latches a bit and it should be able to come off. You now have (somewhat limited) access to the left mouse button switch (unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of what the housing looks like without the buttons).

When you are putting the mouse back together, make sure that the mouse DPI slider is in the correct place and you can move it from low to high without getting stuck before you snap the top plate back on/screw the underside, otherwise you will have to take the mouse apart again.

As for how to actually replace mouse switches, please refer to tp4tissue’s excellent guide here: https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=80628.0

Offline suicidal_orange

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Re: Elecom HUGE - Partial Stripdown
« Reply #1 on: Mon, 17 August 2020, 06:32:41 »
Thanks for the write up, and the warning about the switches (new huge owner here).  Good to know they are easy to replace when the time comes :thumb:
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Offline halifax89

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  • Location: Hungary
Re: Elecom HUGE - Partial Stripdown
« Reply #2 on: Wed, 04 August 2021, 14:26:48 »
I registered to this forum only to say thanks to the OP! It was a HUGE help in fixing the left button of my HUGE, which failed little short of 2 years of being my daily driver. I highly doubt these chinese switches can take 10 million clicks as they are advertised.

A few notes:

On the OP's second photo you can see the placement of the bottom screws. When I tried to find the top-right screw, I peeled off the rubber foot and found a recess, which was the size of a screw head. I thought, maybe I have a newer version which has no screw here. I was wrong. I should have peeled the rubber a little more to find the screw. Here is a photo of that, which also shows the position of the middle screw where you have to punch a hole in the label.

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What seems to be a real difference from the OP's description was that for me the PCB of the left button/scroll wheel was not glued to the housing. I only had to remove the 3 screws from the PCB and it came off. Then it was possible to solder all 5 switches on this PCB (left button, forward and back buttons and the two buttons of the scroll wheel). Here are two pictures, showing the PCB in the original and the removed position.

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