Help with hot swap sockets

[bigern302]

Hello,

I bought a really well used stacked acrylic board with Kailh hot swap sockets.  The sockets are so loose that if you turn the board upside sown and jiggle, half a dozen switches fall right out.  The plate doesn't retain the switches at all.  Is it mental to just solder the switches into the sockets? (I don't care about hot swap, really) I'm pretty new to the hobby, but i'd rather not just dump a problem child on someone else.   Thanks in advance.

[lakeboredom]

Hmm, if you use pcb mount switches they should stay in.

[bigern302]

They do not.  I'd guess this board has been bought/sold/traded a dozen times, maybe? it's seen lots of switches. The bottom acrylic is BEAT.

[jbrandona119]

If you want to solder them on I don't see why there would be an issue other than losing hotswap functionality...if anything you can solder one switch, test it and then do the rest of the board.

[Leslieann]

You have a few options.

You can replace the sockets, not super difficult but also not super easy to do without tearing off a pad, this is best done with a hot air system. Amazon has some or pretty darn cheap. This is your most expensive fix but will return it to almost good as new. I say almost because the plate is still worn, but there's a fix for that too. See below. One issue is finding them, major vendors are sold out and shipping form China is a joke at the moment. If you are in the US, I managed to get a bunch from Little Keyboards just recently, fast shipping too. One place in California also claims to have them, pay attention to ship times, they were drop shipping from China with a 40+ day ship time. Little Keyboards was one of a select few who claimed to have them and one of the only ones in the US I could verify was actually in stock ready to go when I ordered.

The other option is you can heat up one side at a time, this may get the clips to relax and go back to original shape, if not you can shove a thin object into it to bend it back from the backside (also while heating that side). To do the later though I highly recommend a temp controlled iron so as not to overheat the board. Keep in mind this will weaken the socket and the problem will re-appear faster and faster each time.

The last option is solder them in permanent.
While it's better in almost every way it obviously leaves you without the hot swap ability.


For the plate, a bit of electrical tape here may be of use to increase the friction. If it's not enough you could try fabric bandages, but more layers of e-tape would probably be best.