Author Topic: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems  (Read 157790 times)

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Offline Rumblehotep

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #200 on: Wed, 08 August 2018, 20:49:09 »
Tried out the metal keycap method.  My only stainless steel cap is a SA R3 RAMA X cap.  Thankfully, he put the letters R A M A on the underside around the stem to let you know its orientation.
If I could magic wand one board to render box switches harmless it would be my revo one (I gather I was lucky to receive one with no issues) with box yellows so I chose that one.
Tried putting the RAMA cap on each switch in tandem, was fairly tight but not ridiculous, had to use the keypuller to get it off each time.
Then, since the horizonatal stems are the cause of the cracking issue I turned the cap sideways, which was much harder to put on and INSANELY hard to pull off, thought I was going to tear the switch housing apart before the cap would come free.  However after doing this, the cap slid on very easily again in normal orientation and indeed would fall off if I turned the board upside down.  I proceeded to do this to every switch on the board, satisified with the RAMA cap fallling off that the stem was squished enough.
Putting the gmk caps back on (Ocean Dolch) they definiitely are looser, I can pry them off easily by hand. 
I had soldered this board last year before to go with a pok3r case and didn't really know what to do with it before I got the Revo, so the switches are pretty old. 

Trying a switch on the royal hako board the RAMA cap fit a lot tighter in normal orientation, but doing the sideways method made it suffiiciently loose again imo. 
I'll do the whole board tomorrow though, my fingers and wrists really hurt like hell now.  Still less work than desoldering I suppose.
No real assurance that this method won't result in cracked caps in the future but I guess I'll never know for sure until it happens.

Offline ptiede

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #201 on: Wed, 08 August 2018, 22:08:43 »
Tried out the metal keycap method.  My only stainless steel cap is a SA R3 RAMA X cap.  Thankfully, he put the letters R A M A on the underside around the stem to let you know its orientation.
If I could magic wand one board to render box switches harmless it would be my revo one (I gather I was lucky to receive one with no issues) with box yellows so I chose that one.
Tried putting the RAMA cap on each switch in tandem, was fairly tight but not ridiculous, had to use the keypuller to get it off each time.
Then, since the horizonatal stems are the cause of the cracking issue I turned the cap sideways, which was much harder to put on and INSANELY hard to pull off, thought I was going to tear the switch housing apart before the cap would come free.  However after doing this, the cap slid on very easily again in normal orientation and indeed would fall off if I turned the board upside down.  I proceeded to do this to every switch on the board, satisified with the RAMA cap fallling off that the stem was squished enough.
Putting the gmk caps back on (Ocean Dolch) they definiitely are looser, I can pry them off easily by hand. 
I had soldered this board last year before to go with a pok3r case and didn't really know what to do with it before I got the Revo, so the switches are pretty old. 

Trying a switch on the royal hako board the RAMA cap fit a lot tighter in normal orientation, but doing the sideways method made it suffiiciently loose again imo. 
I'll do the whole board tomorrow though, my fingers and wrists really hurt like hell now.  Still less work than desoldering I suppose.
No real assurance that this method won't result in cracked caps in the future but I guess I'll never know for sure until it happens.

Somone on discord got a small 1.5mm chisel to shave off the nubs of the box switches. They said it ended up working pretty well. Plus it looked like it took way less time than the keycap method. The only difficulty they said was you had to be carful not the remove too much, oh and not cutting up your hand :p

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #202 on: Wed, 08 August 2018, 22:32:39 »
Maybe a small jewerly file may do the trick. I will try it when the MD order of KBS shows up.

Offline chuckdee

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #203 on: Wed, 08 August 2018, 22:54:26 »
Maybe a small jewerly file may do the trick. I will try it when the MD order of KBS shows up.

I thought that Mike said that the MD box keys would be the new ones in his statement.

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #204 on: Wed, 08 August 2018, 22:58:07 »
Maybe a small jewerly file may do the trick. I will try it when the MD order of KBS shows up.

I thought that Mike said that the MD box keys would be the new ones in his statement.


Right. That means their cross will be injection molded at 1.3 x-axis. Which may solve nothing, because that size may cause interference with some key caps. Mine are OG Cherry and GMK that have been reported to be sensitive to the cracking issue.

Offline tofu-water

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #205 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 01:18:18 »
Damn, just bought a board from someone with box blacks. Thankfully I don't own any expensive caps to ruin.. hopefully it wont be an issue. Should I worry? Sounds like some people haven't experienced the  stretching so maybe the tooling is hit and miss. I do have switches I could swap out, I just would rather not desolder.
Current daily driver: Atreus62 w/ vintage blacks and Zealios with QMX clips. Acrylic is bae.

Offline Giorgio

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #206 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 02:44:59 »
Damn, just bought a board from someone with box blacks. Thankfully I don't own any expensive caps to ruin.. hopefully it wont be an issue. Should I worry? Sounds like some people haven't experienced the  stretching so maybe the tooling is hit and miss. I do have switches I could swap out, I just would rather not desolder.

It destroys all kinds of keycaps. There are some people that try to show original "thoughts" by saying that modern keycaps are tighter, when there are many damaged OG Cherry sets from twenty years ago.

Offline Geroximo

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #207 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 09:01:08 »
I can confirm the problem. Cracked stems on my GMK HADapter set which was mounted on Kailh BOX blacks.

This is horrendous. I don't even want to know how much damage has been done by this. All the expensive custom boards and expensive GMK sets rendered useless. This is absolutly insane.

Kailh needs to go out of business for this. Please don't buy from them anymore, I for sure won't.

Offline chuckdee

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #208 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 10:10:24 »
Their reasoning is also suspect because of the differing results people are getting.  If all of them were to the specs provided by DAREU, they should uniformly be deforming/cracking stems.  As they are not, it seems that there is an additional problem of QC and manufacturing, which makes their efforts to fix the problems suspect, IMO.

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #209 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 10:38:08 »
Their reasoning is also suspect because of the differing results people are getting.  If all of them were to the specs provided by DAREU, they should uniformly be deforming/cracking stems.  As they are not, it seems that there is an additional problem of QC and manufacturing, which makes their efforts to fix the problems suspect, IMO.


The specification is only half of the problem. The other is the actual parts sizes, or process variability and capability. In this case there are problems with both. The specification was wrongly defined and the variability of the process may be out of specs as well.  :(

Offline Giorgio

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #210 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 12:32:53 »
I can confirm the problem. Cracked stems on my GMK HADapter set which was mounted on Kailh BOX blacks.

This is horrendous. I don't even want to know how much damage has been done by this. All the expensive custom boards and expensive GMK sets rendered useless. This is absolutly insane.

Kailh needs to go out of business for this. Please don't buy from them anymore, I for sure won't.

Really sorry for this. They should apologize. Again and again.

Offline grizzly_teddy

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #211 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 13:27:54 »
Can fine sandpaper fix this?
> The way GH looks now, to a regular person, it screams, "Oh dang, this is one of **those** sites for really devoted and weird people".

Offline portbaron

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #212 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 15:00:08 »
Maybe a small jewerly file may do the trick. I will try it when the MD order of KBS shows up.
I filed down the crosses on a 60% with box whites. It takes a lot of time (hours).
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Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #213 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 16:24:46 »
Maybe a small jewerly file may do the trick. I will try it when the MD order of KBS shows up.
I filed down the crosses on a 60% with box whites. It takes a lot of time (hours).


What results did you get?

Offline Rumblehotep

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #214 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 16:54:25 »
Is it the thickness of the cross stems that is the issue, or the length of the arms?

Offline Photoelectric

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #215 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 17:13:47 »
Some close-up photos of BOX stems.  I'm also working through my keyboard's worth of installed switches with a very tight aluminum HolyOOPs cap to shave the protruding parts along the X-axis of the + stem (work-in-progress pics below as well):




Clockwise from top left: Cherry MX Clear, Kailh Speed Bronze, Gateron Green, Hako True, Cherry MX Brown




Clockwise from top left: Kailh BOX (Hako True) with stem "shaved" a bit, stock Kailh BOX, Cherry MX Brown, Kailh Speed Bronze.


"Shaved" stem in progress on the left, stock on the right
« Last Edit: Thu, 09 August 2018, 18:52:31 by Photoelectric »
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Offline Paopawdecarabao

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #216 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 18:52:08 »
I'm building a board with box blacks from flashquark. Should I abort and just get silent blacks or tealios?

Offline Rumblehotep

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #217 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 19:09:46 »
I'm building a board with box blacks from flashquark. Should I abort and just get silent blacks or tealios?
At this point I would say yes, frankly both of those feel better than box blacks imo
I've crushed crosses on three boards so far and my fingernails feel like they want to come off, going to wait a few days for the next
« Last Edit: Thu, 09 August 2018, 19:11:25 by Rumblehotep »

Offline Starius

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #218 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 20:20:56 »
Tried out the metal keycap method.  My only stainless steel cap is a SA R3 RAMA X cap.  Thankfully, he put the letters R A M A on the underside around the stem to let you know its orientation.
If I could magic wand one board to render box switches harmless it would be my revo one (I gather I was lucky to receive one with no issues) with box yellows so I chose that one.
Tried putting the RAMA cap on each switch in tandem, was fairly tight but not ridiculous, had to use the keypuller to get it off each time.
Then, since the horizonatal stems are the cause of the cracking issue I turned the cap sideways, which was much harder to put on and INSANELY hard to pull off, thought I was going to tear the switch housing apart before the cap would come free.  However after doing this, the cap slid on very easily again in normal orientation and indeed would fall off if I turned the board upside down.  I proceeded to do this to every switch on the board, satisified with the RAMA cap fallling off that the stem was squished enough.
Putting the gmk caps back on (Ocean Dolch) they definiitely are looser, I can pry them off easily by hand. 
I had soldered this board last year before to go with a pok3r case and didn't really know what to do with it before I got the Revo, so the switches are pretty old. 

Trying a switch on the royal hako board the RAMA cap fit a lot tighter in normal orientation, but doing the sideways method made it suffiiciently loose again imo. 
I'll do the whole board tomorrow though, my fingers and wrists really hurt like hell now.  Still less work than desoldering I suppose.
No real assurance that this method won't result in cracked caps in the future but I guess I'll never know for sure until it happens.

Thanks for posting your results with the metal keycap method.  I know I've been wanting to hear more about how it's been working out for people....

Offline tofu-water

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #219 on: Thu, 09 August 2018, 22:45:45 »
Damn, just bought a board from someone with box blacks. Thankfully I don't own any expensive caps to ruin.. hopefully it wont be an issue. Should I worry? Sounds like some people haven't experienced the  stretching so maybe the tooling is hit and miss. I do have switches I could swap out, I just would rather not desolder.

It destroys all kinds of keycaps. There are some people that try to show original "thoughts" by saying that modern keycaps are tighter, when there are many damaged OG Cherry sets from twenty years ago.

Ahh, thats unfortunate. I guess at least I have vintage blacks to swap them out with. Only time I experienced tighter modern caps was some cheap aliexpress ones. They went on tight on cherry clears, went on totally fine on browns.
Current daily driver: Atreus62 w/ vintage blacks and Zealios with QMX clips. Acrylic is bae.

Offline Kavik

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #220 on: Fri, 10 August 2018, 17:00:43 »
Some close-up photos of BOX stems.  I'm also working through my keyboard's worth of installed switches with a very tight aluminum HolyOOPs cap to shave the protruding parts along the X-axis of the + stem (work-in-progress pics below as well):

Show Image


Show Image

Clockwise from top left: Cherry MX Clear, Kailh Speed Bronze, Gateron Green, Hako True, Cherry MX Brown

Show Image


Show Image

Clockwise from top left: Kailh BOX (Hako True) with stem "shaved" a bit, stock Kailh BOX, Cherry MX Brown, Kailh Speed Bronze.

Show Image

"Shaved" stem in progress on the left, stock on the right

Interesting, one can actually see the extra bit of plastic on the x-axis that appears to be there just to add thickness.

Also, FWIW, I also heard the stems' cracking when I put my Maxkey SA set on my BOX Navies. I just didn't realize what it was at the time; I thought I'd accidentally hit the box instead of the cross, causing a noise, but, in retrospect, it was definitely the cracking. I haven't inspected my entire set of SP SA 1965 that I have on BOX Royals yet, but the few random caps I inspected didn't appear damaged.

Btw, this is the most popular topic I've started on GH. I wish it were about something happier :\
Maybe they're waiting for gasmasks and latex to get sexy again.

The world has become a weird place.

Offline portbaron

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #221 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 00:20:37 »
Maybe a small jewerly file may do the trick. I will try it when the MD order of KBS shows up.
I filed down the crosses on a 60% with box whites. It takes a lot of time (hours).


What results did you get?
Looser gmk fit, so probably fine. It was as tedious as desoldering though, maybe more.
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Offline Photoelectric

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #222 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 00:50:46 »
Btw, this is the most popular topic I've started on GH. I wish it were about something happier :\

It was a useful topic to make, as all the attention has resulted in retooling of the future stems. 
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Offline Starius

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #223 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 07:59:59 »
@Rumblehotep,
The metal keycaps you used.... did the backs look like this?

Offline Rumblehotep

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #224 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 13:06:56 »
It's this one.
201857-0

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #225 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 15:12:17 »
It seems that RAMA's is machined and sandblasted and the others are diecasted due to its ejerctor pin's marks. The last should be more rigid, due to the high preassure die casting process.

Offline Starius

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #226 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 15:25:52 »
I did wonder if those 4 prongs would be prone to spread, rather than hold their rigidity.  Hmmm.

Offline Rumblehotep

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #227 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 15:59:11 »
oh snap so I should get a diecast cap? I could be spreding the legs even though it's stainless steel?

Offline Starius

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #228 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 16:54:28 »
oh snap so I should get a diecast cap? I could be spreding the legs even though it's stainless steel?

This is new territory being explored, brave keyboardnauts.

That is to say, I do not know... 
And perhaps if there is any spread, it might be flex that returns to original state?   

Offline Photoelectric

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #229 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 19:38:42 »
I've tried Zinc caps (diecast) and they were too loose and too rounded.  The machined aluminum HolyOOPs cap I used has sharp edges on the stem and literally shaves the stem protrusions (as you can see in my photos above).  So I vote for machined aluminum.  I've gone over my 65% keyboard twice so far with the aluminum cap, and so far it's still tight and doesn't seem to have "loosened up" from the stem "shaving".  I don't think you want to temporarily compress the stem, you want to actually remove some of the thickness.
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Offline pixelpusher

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #230 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 19:57:10 »
I ordered a chisel as recommended here:
https://www.keebtalk.com/t/kailh-box-switch-stem-measurements-and-possible-problems/2926/109

It should be delivered tomorrow so we’ll see

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #231 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 20:01:54 »
Kailh should develop a rework tooling for fast and accurate cross shaving. They owe it to the community. I can only imagine how frustrated could be those that broke their expensive sets with KBS. It sucks.
« Last Edit: Sat, 11 August 2018, 20:04:24 by ideus »

Offline Rumblehotep

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #232 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 20:44:19 »
Went over my royal hako board with the cap method, for some reason it was a lot harder than my previous two, I could see the little bits of horizontal stem being shaved off.
Kept reapplying the cap horizontally on each stem, testing vertically, reapplying, testing again, etc until the cap would fall off effortlessly to gravity or catapulting off from the hako clear springs. 
Putting caps back on, I went to check them once again, one at a time with a bright light as I did so.  Now that I knew what to look for after seeing my cracked novelty, I found that
201877-0
Every. Single. Cap. was cracked or had stressmarks. Fug.
201879-1
Since the switches were freshly "shaved" I took accents off and tried a monotone look using caps I had never used before.
201881-2
Checking them NOT MORE THAN THIRTY SECONDS LATER, I can see the beginnings of stress points. And these are switches I had reworked until they were "loose" with the stainless steel RAMA cap.
So in short DON'T PUT CAPS ON ANY BOX STEMS!.  I can't trust this shaving method will make them "safe" any longer.  Maybe I did it wrong, maybe the filing method will work better but at this point I'm just going to desolder everything.
I really liked this quirky layout too.
201883-3
Maybe I'll try building this with different switches but oh yeah, my caps are all cracked!

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #233 on: Sat, 11 August 2018, 22:07:34 »
Went over my royal hako board with the cap method, for some reason it was a lot harder than my previous two, I could see the little bits of horizontal stem being shaved off.
Kept reapplying the cap horizontally on each stem, testing vertically, reapplying, testing again, etc until the cap would fall off effortlessly to gravity or catapulting off from the hako clear springs. 
Putting caps back on, I went to check them once again, one at a time with a bright light as I did so.  Now that I knew what to look for after seeing my cracked novelty, I found that
(Attachment Link)
Every. Single. Cap. was cracked or had stressmarks. Fug.
(Attachment Link)
Since the switches were freshly "shaved" I took accents off and tried a monotone look using caps I had never used before.
(Attachment Link)
Checking them NOT MORE THAN THIRTY SECONDS LATER, I can see the beginnings of stress points. And these are switches I had reworked until they were "loose" with the stainless steel RAMA cap.
So in short DON'T PUT CAPS ON ANY BOX STEMS!.  I can't trust this shaving method will make them "safe" any longer.  Maybe I did it wrong, maybe the filing method will work better but at this point I'm just going to desolder everything.
I really liked this quirky layout too.
(Attachment Link)
Maybe I'll try building this with different switches but oh yeah, my caps are all cracked!


I feel sorry for those nice key caps broken. Thank you very much for sharing your findings. Those KBS suck. Period. Pure trash.

Offline ReverbSlush

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #234 on: Mon, 13 August 2018, 07:56:45 »
Just got a refund on my recent Box Royal order.  Pretty bummed as I was looking forward to trying out those keycaps.

The only board I have box switches right now is my daily driver M65-A... it has hako trues and I'm not sure what to do with it now. I have SA Chocolatier on it.. I guess I'll have to just buy some cheap keycaps that I don't care about the stems getting stressed and use those.  The layout and feel and everything is *finally* how I like it, and then this happens :(

Offline Valff

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #235 on: Mon, 13 August 2018, 09:06:51 »
I used PPS/EnjoyPBT on my kailh box keyboards (red and white) for a few months. Hopefully, there are no cracks on my keycaps.

Offline Glod

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #236 on: Mon, 13 August 2018, 09:15:00 »
i am going to man up and admit when I am wrong, forget everything I have said before, I have to live with that. I was a ****

this is real
i was wrong!

i just checked my Hyperfuse GMK on BOX Brown and Laser GMK on Hako Trues and I would say 90% have stress of some sort, over 50% look like they have an actual crack. None of them are broken to the point of unusable  but this pretty much guarantees no resale! and that continued use could be dangerous!! they will now always be a little loose when i use them again.

I did not see stress cracks on my enjoy PBT caps (i checked everyone) or the caps that come with the K-Type. I am going to switch back to my crap pile G81 cherry double-shots.

WHAT A ****ING DISASTER! look what they did to my precious Hypefuse!



Where the hell can i even buy Halo Trues then? the closest thing to Hakos.
« Last Edit: Mon, 13 August 2018, 09:20:22 by Glod »

Offline pixelpusher

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #237 on: Mon, 13 August 2018, 09:27:57 »
i am going to man up and admit when I am wrong, forget everything I have said before, I have to live with that. I was a ****

this is real
i was wrong!

i just checked my Hyperfuse GMK on BOX Brown and Laser GMK on Hako Trues and I would say 90% have stress of some sort, over 50% look like they have an actual crack. None of them are broken to the point of unusable  but this pretty much guarantees no resale! and that continued use could be dangerous!! they will now always be a little loose when i use them again.

I did not see stress cracks on my enjoy PBT caps (i checked everyone) or the caps that come with the K-Type. I am going to switch back to my crap pile G81 cherry double-shots.

WHAT A ****ING DISASTER! look what they did to my precious Hypefuse!

Show Image


Where the hell can i even buy Halo Trues then? the closest thing to Hakos.

I feel ya, man.  My OG hyperfuse and my Nautilus set both met the box switch graveyard.  RIP

On the plus side, I really like Hyperfuse origins, and now I have an excuse to go pick up a set!  Woop woop!  we all cray cray, man.

Offline Glod

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #238 on: Mon, 13 August 2018, 09:33:00 »
So i am lucky enough to not have them break to the point of unusable yet, i just got an idea to use clear nail polish or some sort of clear paint to seal up the micro-cracks and allow me to continue to use them worry free (though probably never sell them)
« Last Edit: Mon, 13 August 2018, 09:35:06 by Glod »

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #239 on: Mon, 13 August 2018, 13:59:19 »
Has someone been able to get a refund on the recent MD drop of KBS? I was told they are aware and preparing to fix them down to 1.3, that I feel will still cause issues. But they seemed not open to refund.

Offline heyitsqi

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #240 on: Mon, 13 August 2018, 16:11:25 »
Seeing all these damaged keysets breaks my heart. There's no way there's any possible suitable compensation. Hell, I'm even paranoid about my standard cherry MX clears which are pretty tight on my keycaps :(

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #241 on: Mon, 13 August 2018, 18:00:08 »
Seeing all these damaged keysets breaks my heart. There's no way there's any possible suitable compensation. Hell, I'm even paranoid about my standard cherry MX clears which are pretty tight on my keycaps :(


Those stems has an small projection that fits the key caps more thightly than the other Cherry SW. It is nothing to be concern about. They have worked as that for eons.

Offline Starius

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #242 on: Tue, 14 August 2018, 20:03:26 »
Well, I just tried a small one day test and I already have discouraging results.

You guys familiar with the WASD 6 cherry MX switch tester, that comes with the clear keycaps?
Yesterday I put those clear keycaps on 6 different kailh switches.
Box Yellow, Box Burnt Orange, Box Navy, Box White, Box Jade, and a non-box Sage. 
I clicked each one a few times, but then pretty much forgot about them until tonight.

I took them off to inspect each one, not really expecting to find anything... but because the keycaps are completely transparent, I saw some surprises.
Just after one day, 3 of the keycap/switches showed signs of stress.
The Box White and Box Jade switch both caused stress lines down two opposing sides of the cross on the keycaps.
The Box Navy seemed to cause the most stress, with each side of the cross showing stress lines in the clear plastic.

The Box Yellow and Box Burnt Orange showed no signs of stress yet, and unsurprisingly neither did the Sage switch. (My control switch I guess?)

I don't know about you, but I'm rather surprised to discover this. Particularly the Box White, because I've had 2 people reply to me on youtube just yesterday saying they've had no trouble with their Box Whites.    Granted, these clear keycaps from a switch tester are probably not great in terms of quality - but wow. 

Offline Glod

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #243 on: Wed, 15 August 2018, 14:09:44 »
I think the consensus right now is if you have ABS caps, don't put them on BOX switches unless you don't care about them? GMK is just worth too much to risk.

I haven't seen any problems with PBT caps but I can't confirm others. I am using EnjoyPBT on one keyboard with BOX.

Honestly I can not quit Hako Trues on my Daily Driver, i just cant do it, they are such a good switch. BOX switches are amazing; they were a game changer. Just don't put anything you care about on them, GMK have clearly fragile made specific to spec stems. I have 2 bins of key caps so this wasn't a problem to just put some OG Cherry Doubleshots on there and continue to use Hako True goodness.

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #244 on: Wed, 15 August 2018, 14:25:43 »
I think the consensus right now is if you have ABS caps, don't put them on BOX switches unless you don't care about them? GMK is just worth too much to risk.

I haven't seen any problems with PBT caps but I can't confirm others. I am using EnjoyPBT on one keyboard with BOX.

Honestly I can not quit Hako Trues on my Daily Driver, i just cant do it, they are such a good switch. BOX switches are amazing; they were a game changer. Just don't put anything you care about on them, GMK have clearly fragile made specific to spec stems. I have 2 bins of key caps so this wasn't a problem to just put some OG Cherry Doubleshots on there and continue to use Hako True goodness.


Are you saying that OG Cherry does not have any issues with KBS?

Offline Glod

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #245 on: Wed, 15 August 2018, 15:49:13 »
I think the consensus right now is if you have ABS caps, don't put them on BOX switches unless you don't care about them? GMK is just worth too much to risk.

I haven't seen any problems with PBT caps but I can't confirm others. I am using EnjoyPBT on one keyboard with BOX.

Honestly I can not quit Hako Trues on my Daily Driver, i just cant do it, they are such a good switch. BOX switches are amazing; they were a game changer. Just don't put anything you care about on them, GMK have clearly fragile made specific to spec stems. I have 2 bins of key caps so this wasn't a problem to just put some OG Cherry Doubleshots on there and continue to use Hako True goodness.


Are you saying that OG Cherry does not have any issues with KBS?

Oh i am sure it has issues, i just have like 5 sets of them, I just don't care about them.

Offline ideus

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #246 on: Wed, 15 August 2018, 15:55:24 »
I think the consensus right now is if you have ABS caps, don't put them on BOX switches unless you don't care about them? GMK is just worth too much to risk.

I haven't seen any problems with PBT caps but I can't confirm others. I am using EnjoyPBT on one keyboard with BOX.

Honestly I can not quit Hako Trues on my Daily Driver, i just cant do it, they are such a good switch. BOX switches are amazing; they were a game changer. Just don't put anything you care about on them, GMK have clearly fragile made specific to spec stems. I have 2 bins of key caps so this wasn't a problem to just put some OG Cherry Doubleshots on there and continue to use Hako True goodness.


Are you saying that OG Cherry does not have any issues with KBS?

Oh i am sure it has issues, i just have like 5 sets of them, I just don't care about them.


If you do not need them and they are beige ones we may talk.  ;)

Offline Glod

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #247 on: Wed, 15 August 2018, 16:06:55 »
I think the consensus right now is if you have ABS caps, don't put them on BOX switches unless you don't care about them? GMK is just worth too much to risk.

I haven't seen any problems with PBT caps but I can't confirm others. I am using EnjoyPBT on one keyboard with BOX.

Honestly I can not quit Hako Trues on my Daily Driver, i just cant do it, they are such a good switch. BOX switches are amazing; they were a game changer. Just don't put anything you care about on them, GMK have clearly fragile made specific to spec stems. I have 2 bins of key caps so this wasn't a problem to just put some OG Cherry Doubleshots on there and continue to use Hako True goodness.


Are you saying that OG Cherry does not have any issues with KBS?

Oh i am sure it has issues, i just have like 5 sets of them, I just don't care about them.


If you do not need them and they are beige ones we may talk.  ;)

so i can confirm OG cherry's also crack under BOX, its hard to photograph because they are shiny black, but its there on the first key i picked off


Offline Starius

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #248 on: Wed, 15 August 2018, 18:03:57 »
Well, I just tried a small one day test and I already have discouraging results.

You guys familiar with the WASD 6 cherry MX switch tester, that comes with the clear keycaps?
Yesterday I put those clear keycaps on 6 different kailh switches.
Box Yellow, Box Burnt Orange, Box Navy, Box White, Box Jade, and a non-box Sage. 
I clicked each one a few times, but then pretty much forgot about them until tonight.

I took them off to inspect each one, not really expecting to find anything... but because the keycaps are completely transparent, I saw some surprises.
Just after one day, 3 of the keycap/switches showed signs of stress.
The Box White and Box Jade switch both caused stress lines down two opposing sides of the cross on the keycaps.
The Box Navy seemed to cause the most stress, with each side of the cross showing stress lines in the clear plastic.

The Box Yellow and Box Burnt Orange showed no signs of stress yet, and unsurprisingly neither did the Sage switch. (My control switch I guess?)

I don't know about you, but I'm rather surprised to discover this. Particularly the Box White, because I've had 2 people reply to me on youtube just yesterday saying they've had no trouble with their Box Whites.    Granted, these clear keycaps from a switch tester are probably not great in terms of quality - but wow.

Day two of my little test.
The the cap on the Box Yellow switch is now showing stress marks, and Box Orange is only just barely starting to show a stress mark on one side. 
I guess that's all I need to know from that test.   :(

Offline ReverbSlush

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Re: Kailh BOX Switches Crack and Stress Keycap Stems
« Reply #249 on: Wed, 15 August 2018, 21:24:06 »
Looking for recommendations of a US vendor that can sell me blank keycaps for my custom layout. 

I just need some cheap keycaps (preferably a muted color) so I'm not sacrificing my nice sets that I have right now and I can still use this keyboard.

edit: I'm not married to a specific profile... so doesn't have to be SA or anything.

This is my layout:
« Last Edit: Wed, 15 August 2018, 21:25:42 by ReverbSlush »