Got a couple questions for you guys more experienced with ALPS switches & this PCB than me. It's gonna take a little backstory though, sorry. So I recently did a ALPS64 build in the AEK layout for a friend. He bought a custom ALPS64 build (Kinda HHKB style but with a long space bar) with brown ALPS, but did not like the layout. So he then bought a unused ALPS64 PCB & plate combo from somebody on r/mechmarket & asked me to harvest the browns from the old build & put them on the new PCB/plate combo.. When I received all that stuff I de-soldered the HHKBesque build to get all the switches loose to go on the new PCB. I then soldered all the diodes on to the new ALPS64 PCB & got to testing it, that's where I ran into my 1st issue. I made to sure properly solder all the diodes in (black bar facing the square pad) & triple checked that I didn't mess any up, but the PCB has two columns that are just not functioning at all. Here is pics of the PCB with diodes soldered in & a pic of KBtester.com to show which keys are not working.
Some bloby looking joints on a few of the diodes but I made sure they flashed before removing the iron so they didn't end up being cold joints. Those ones were from when I did too many joints in a row & had too much solder on my tip.
Pic of the front of the PCB showing solder flowed all the way through all the joints for the diodes.
The keys/columns that are not working.
Is there anything somebody can see that I'm missing as to why this PCB is not working? At this point my buddy is calling it a wash on this PCB because I put the build back together with the PCB that the HHKBesque build came on, got it all together & working so he didn't have to wait for me to figure out what is wrong with the new PCB. The only that sucks is I had to jump one switch on the old PCB since the original owner drilled it for the misaligned ALT keys of his layout (jumped it to it's diode). Although all the keys worked & I saw no problems during testing or when I used it for a night just to confirm there was no issues after completing the build. Which leads into my second issue & question.
Now that he has the build & been using it for a about a week, one key (the K key I believe he said) is experiencing weird behavior. Only that key though, the others have been working fine. Thing is the K key goes from working perfectly fine for a time, to chattering sometimes, then to not registering at all sometimes randomly!? My initial thoughts is to open the switch & blow it out with compressed air, as I've read a lot that ALPS switches are super sensitive to any contamination of the inside of the switch, or that it could just be a bad switch. Also (not trying to sound smug here so please don't take it that way) I am very confident in my soldering skills & triple checked that all the joints were done properly on this build as it was for someone else. The only thing that nags me is having to jump the R ALT/Option key, could that be involved in the K key's issues? I jumped it to it's diode so I doubt that could be involved but I figure asking can't hurt.
Any input on these issues would greatly appreciated! If I can get the broken PCB to work I will be able to build my own ALPS64 build which I would really love to do. Then I would really like to avoid having my buddy need to send me back the build to swap in a different switch to get rid of the wonky one. He lives literally across the country & has already spent a ton on this build, I feel really bad if he had to spend even more sending it from WA to PA a second time. I am gonna walk him through opening the wonky switch & blowing it out with compressed air later today so fingers crossed that works! Anyways thanks in advance for any replies!
