Treeleaf's Alps restoration project/ guide ~

[treeleaf64]

Hello my friends at Geek hack


Today I will show you my M0116 that I am restoring. It has Salmon Alps.
With the help of my friend VR20X6 (he showed me how to restore), I will show you before and after photos.

I will also tell you VR's process to restore. Before, they were very scratchy and bound (what is the past tense of binding?) a little bit. Now they are smooth and do not bind .

Expect this process to take days of work.






That is before, you can see that the plate is dirty
The original owner told me they were 7.5 /10.

Unfortunately  you can see they are not 7/10 , but tactile Alps are my favorite switch with the exception of Cherry brown, so I wanted to take the time to restore them.

Now I will put pictures and a video of what it sounds like in the middle of  the restoration (without dry lube or ultrasonic clean)

I put the plastic case in the sun so it would become the original color.   I hope it doesn't smell like smoke, because the air quality is not great outside.

The restoration process for Alps switches:

• Take off the case
• Take off keycaps and disassemble switches with small flat head screwdrivers
• Put the top housing, stem and spring in a plastic bag
• Vacuum the plate to get rid of the big dust and then Blew out bottom housing with the power of my breath ~ make sure there's no mold on it  because you may breathe the spores in   
• Now that the bottom housing is clean, you can use Silicone oil or other wet lubricant. Make sure there's no dust on the top housing and the stem. If there is a lot of it, then I would do a manual clean first with isopropyl alcohol.
• When you are done cleaning the dust off then lube the rails of the top housing and all surfaces of the stem
• Then you can lube the ends of the spring. You can lube the metal leaf on the bottom housing if you want
• Now reassemble the switch
• This is the hard part - you must torque the switch  so that as much friction is created between the stem and the housing. You must do it in all directions. You should put a keycap on the assembled switch, and then "drag" the stem across the housing.
• You will have some binding at first, and then it will start to smoothen up. You will want to do the torque motions until that side of the switch does not experience any resistance when you torque it.
• Now you repeat this on all sides of the switch. I usually start by pushing the stem in the north direction, then the south, and then the east and west.
• After this you will see that your switches feel way better than the condition you got them in (unless you got them in excellent condition) 

Now that I have said the cleaning process, after you are done with the Torque and Break in of all the switches, you must disassemble them again and ultrasonic clean.  After they are done drying, you will use a dry lubricant and apply it to the stem, the switch leaf, and the top housing.
I am not on this stage yet, I am still torquing the switches.

VR said that he uses Coke lubricant. This is PTFE powder with alcohol that you must emulsify in order for it to stick to the switches.
I will use Molybdenum disulfide film lubricant because I don't want to  do all that.  You can also use PTFE dry film lubricant (Like Teflon dry film) if that is more accessible.

In conclusion , I am very happy with this restoration process. VR has used it on clicky and linear with success, and so far my experiments with tactile have yielded great success!
I don't like using numbers for condition because not everyone knows the difference, but I would say that they were maybe 4 or 5 out of 10, and now they are 8 or 9 /10.

Thanks for reading , my friends.

[treeleaf64]

The images are not working , I will try to fix them.

Ok, I have fixed them

[IMZO]

Hey tree, nice write up!

[MIGHTY CHICKEN]

very cool, tree should be writer

[bibobim]

I got one board of M0116 with salmon alps in a crappy condition with binding, dirt on the switches but I tried to restore by cleaning and lubed them with Finish Line dry lube on the stem + Krytox 105 on the spring. The result was extremely satisfying smooth tactile and I would rate them equal to my 8/10 orange board with a plus of eliminating the pinging noise of the spring.

Would highly recommend restoring this board

[treeleaf64]

I got one board of M0116 with salmon alps in a crappy condition with binding, dirt on the switches but I tried to restore by cleaning and lubed them with Finish Line dry lube on the stem + Krytox 105 on the spring. The result was extremely satisfying smooth tactile and I would rate them equal to my 8/10 orange board with a plus of eliminating the pinging noise of the spring.

Would highly recommend restoring this board

Thanks for telling me this. I like the aesthetic of this keyboard . Maybe I'll keep it , maybe I'll sell it. We'll see. ~

[treeleaf64]

Hi Geek hack friends ~

I finished it finally. Here's a typing video of it.

The switches are at least 8/10 after the restoration I would say. They are smooth and tactile. Nice paragraph feeling.

[uncleaner]

Really nice results. Personally I like lubed salmons even more than orange alps.
What exactly does torquing the switches do though? And to be sure you're just pushing them hard in the cardinal directions and not twisting them, right?

[treeleaf64]

Really nice results. Personally I like lubed salmons even more than orange alps.
What exactly does torquing the switches do though? And to be sure you're just pushing them hard in the cardinal directions and not twisting them, right?

 Basically when you have wet lube , the dust will stick to it and not come off. So the torquing is meant to catch all the dust when you apply friction to the sides.
You can do it if you see dust that doesn't come out easily.

The switch plate condition matters the most, if it is rusted or has dust on it, you want to take this out. Metal - plastic  friction is more than plastic - plastic  on these switches ^_^