Alright, since so many people are asking questions like...
- "How do I know is my spacebar R1 or R2?"
- "Is it good or is it crooked"
- "Is it in fact an alien egg in my house waiting to hatch if I spill water on it?"
...here is a little tutorial on how to tell them apart.
As far as I know, there a currently six versions of Topre spacebars on the market, and these are:
- factory default Realforce ABS spacebars (black, white, blue, green, red, yellow and orange)
- factory default HHKB2 ABS spacebars (black and white)
- factory default Leopold ABS spacebar (black, white and grey)
- Massdrop round 1 PBT spacebars (black, white, blue and red)
- Massdrop round 2 PBT spacebars (black, white, blue, red, green and orange)
- Aliexpress PBT spacebars (white, black, blue, red and pink)
Generally speaking, factory spacebars have the best construction quality of all of them. Every single one of them is perfect in shape and size, every one of them is straight and it looks like it fell straight out of AutoCAD on your desk. You can't even see typical mold injection points on those. But the problem is - they are made from ABS.
So why is that, you ask yourself?
Well, PBT is not really meant to be used in production of longer keys. It is just too unreliable in a way that during the cooling process it bends and warps in very unpredictable ways. Since we're speaking about grand scale production, consistency of quality is very important, and you can't really achieve that if you have tens of thousands different keys, every one of them little bit mentally retarded in its own way.
I had the chance to try on my Realforce both the original ABS spacebar and HHKB2 (original) one. Although they seem to be very similar (probably from the same factory) they still have some very minute difference. Realforce spacebar just worked better, had better thock and it wasn't as loud as HHKB one. I can't be sure why is that. Maybe there are some differences in technical specifications, but it could be just an accidental difference between the two specimens of the same thing.
But none of that was good enough, people still wanted to get their high quality PBT keys, so they decided to make them themselves, since that was the only choice. First one of those attempts was Massdrop round 1. These are generally regarded as top dogs, the best of the best when it comes to PBT spacebars, but they are hard to find on the market these days. They are the thickest of all PBT variations, give the best Topre thock sound, have a very rough upper surface (some may not like that), and smooth shiny front and back sides. Injection points are very noticeable. Most of them are not warped.
I don't have any of the round 2 spacebars so I can't tell much about those (I canceled my order), but judging from people's commentaries, most of them have considerably lower quality than round 1. They are produced in different molds and have different injection points. Most of them is warped, and they have different kind of grain on the upper surface. Most of them have melted edges. They also tend to have thinner stem holders than R1 or ABS. However, it is still possible to find good samples here and there, and they are your only option if you want some specific colors - like orange.
Aliexpress PBT spacebars are sold on Aliexpress, but also on eBay from different Chinese and Hong Kong sellers, and seem to be much like Massdrop round 2 spacebars, but again, they use different, their own molds. You can easily recognize those as they have fine grain surfaces on all sides, not just on top. I had one for a few days and it seemed rather OK. It was certainly not as good as round 1, it was slightly warped, but it did work quite well. It had no melted edges, but it wasn't pretty as R1 either as it had somewhat visible stem protrusion in the center of the upper surface. It's not bad, but it's not for OCD guys.
Time for some pictures now.
First, let's take a look at three different versions.
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Do you see the differences? Look at the injection points.
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Here are some more pictures. The upper one is MD R1, ABS is on the bottom of the picture.
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More pictures. These are all MD R2, except for the white one which is HHKB ABS.
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So in the end, little FAQ.
- "What if I have warped edges? Should I kill myself right now or there is still some hope for me to have a good quality life after chemotherapy?"
You can actually fix that yourself. Take two straight surfaces, like two pieces of glass or wood or whatever. take a hair dryer and heat your spacebar as hot as you can. Then put it on flat surfaces (don't break the stem, leave it loose in-between two surfaces) and press it with something heavy like few books. Leave it to cool down. Repeat if needed.
- "What if I have melted edges? Will people avoid me on the streets? Can I still ever have any friends?"
You can fix that too. Take some fine grain sand paper and just grind away that shiny part of the spacebar.
