Ideas to Improve the Bottom Up Action of Costar'd Spacebars

[KHAANNN]

Well, I really like costar stabs, as you're practically using stabilised keys as smooth as non-stabilised keys, however on the large spacebar, especially a D/SA one, this results in a bad bottom up sound
It's pretty much like the last sound a ping-pong ball produces before it stops, a shaking sound, not as severe though :)

Comparatively, cherry stabs are stiffer, yet on the spacebar that stiffness prevents the issue I'm talking about, so I'm also considering using a cherry stab just for the spacebar, although the costar is preferred, as it's more robust and easy to integrate, and better looking :)

I remember reading about a switch top modification, to prevent the bottom up sound, however I'm not sure whether such a modification will help in this case, as it's the spacebar shaking that causes the clumsiness

Adding weights to the spacebar might even be a better option

Let me gather the ideas:

KHAANNN: increase the keycap bulk strategically with hot glue
njbair: bend the wire to shift the stress points and alter the behaviour to the desired one
tp4tissue: lube
Hyde: lube with the tested EK lube
dante: (deducted) only stabilize one side of the keycap to eliminate the rattle

[njbair]

I've managed to significantly reduce stabilizer rattle on Model M spacebars by slightly bending the long middle section so that only the corners make contact with the plate when the key is resting. It turns out a lot of the rattle comes from the stabilizer bar settling into place.

[tp4tissue]

use a thicker grease..

[KHAANNN]

Both great ideas!

njbair, indeed I've noticed in the past that some wires are better than others, generally one side of the wire is higher than the other, the higher side should be on the side that one presses the spacebar most, one side or the other has to wiggle, this determines which side, so playing around with the wire is a good idea, I have spare wires, yet I haven't experimented with this idea yet

tp4tissue, indeed even the thick looking WASD lube moves down quick, a very very very thick silicone grease would fix the issue, by actually dampening the movement, do you have any suggestions?

[tp4tissue]

Use a higher viscosity lube ontop of swapping out the space bar for a heavier spring.

[KHAANNN]

Might use a tactile grey spring, however it might take away from the usage experience and I'm not sure whether the increased force will reduce the spacebar shaking, or just amplify it, I guess I should try it at one point

I resisted extending my silicone lube collection, max viscosity I have is 5000 and the higher viscosity WASD lube, but I guess I should explore 100.000+ cst lubes too, they are generally sold as rc equipments

[Hyde]

I lubed both my Filco MX Red and Das MX Brown with this:  http://elitekeyboards.com/products.php?sub=access,misc&pid=mechlube

Best feeling ever it's like sooooooooooo smooth.  Makes me wonder why I didn't do it sooner.

Also I've used DSA set before didn't notice too much shaking, I've even used other thick PBT sets and didn't notice the shaking either.

If anything I find heavier spacebar makes it more stable.  Though it might be different from keyboard to keyboard.

Try the thick grease method first and see what happens. 

[KHAANNN]

DSA ABS spacebar is pretty light, also with the costar stab, it has a lot of wiggle room, I haven't tested a DSA PBT spacebar on the same setup yet tho (I might do it soon)

I tested a DSA PBT spacebar that I bought while ago on the V60's Cherry stab, it was stiff all right, but it was scratching to the enclosure, I certainly didn't expect anything like that to happen, so my test was partially inconclusive

I guess I'm going to keep on using costar stabs but improve the spacebar sound one way or the other, the spacebar is always the odd one out in terms of the sound

[dante]

I read somewhere that someone solved their space bar rattles not with grease but with scotch tape.  They wrapped enough tape around the metal bars until the rattle went away.  I had hoped for a youtube video demonstrating it but it never materialized.

[KHAANNN]

I read somewhere that someone solved their space bar rattles not with grease but with scotch tape.  They wrapped enough tape around the metal bars until the rattle went away.  I had hoped for a youtube video demonstrating it but it never materialized.

That's very very interesting

I'm guessing they are bulking up the part that goes into the costar stab insert, that would make sense, but if that is the case, the tape would come off, so it might be the middle part that they are taping

[dante]

Here is the video.

Comments:

Can you make a guide how to fix spacebar on this KB? Actually, what you do with tapes? How they looks? Where i can get it? Photoes? Thanks.

Now i have another way to fix it, just use some small pieces of soft paper, and place on the [ + ] of the right(only right one, not left one) of the backspace keycap  (i don't know what is it called, if you can understand me) on the keycap, and then put the sub switch on that, make sure it's not fit at all, keep it like that and you can feel the different, if you still don't get that, i will email you a picture because i can't express very good in English

use two small tapes that have the same size with the stabilizer of the spacebar, then put them into the big size of the stabilizer! Sr for my bad English, but first, you must open the spacebar

[KHAANNN]

I haven't watched the video, but after reading his description, it seems, instead of fastening 2 costar stab inserts, he only fastens one

Logically, fastening the one on the opposite side of the usual keypress area makes sense, it would definitely improve things, however this practically renders the key as stabilised from only one side, pressing on the other side would unlevel the key, still very interesting tho

So it's the usual scotch/paper insertion method with a gist, a very interesting one at that :)

[KHAANNN]

By the way, after a lot of thinking and inspection, I noticed the source of this issue/clumsiness

The costar stabiliser insert has a hole that is probably around 1.5mm's in height, while the wire height is ~1mm's - therefore, with the long spacebar, that 0.5mm difference causes the wobble

One side of the spacebar has to sit on the wire, therefore result in an optimal click experience, while the other side of the spacebar stays usually in mid-air, when you click, the wire leans to the top and causes this clinking sound and wobbling, it seems inevitable - only a very very thick lube might prevent it, even in that case, likely the constant movement of the spacebar will require re-lubrication frequently

One solution is to manufacture an insert that has a much lower hole height

I think the only practical thing to do is to configure the wire, so the most use side of the spacebar gets the optimal click behaviour

I personally use the right side most, so I have to bend my next wire every so slight so the right side of the wire stays slightly longer than the left side, leaving the left side with the unoptiomal behaviour

[Oobly]

Just switch to Cherry stabs. Less hassle when changing caps, less rattle, same or better feel, no problems with any types of caps (Costar stab wires can rub the inside of thick caps). Lubed (for smoothness, loosens up any "stiffness") and clipped (removes "mushy" bottom out) I don't think there could be a better stabiliser.

[KHAANNN]

Just switch to Cherry stabs. Less hassle when changing caps, less rattle, same or better feel, no problems with any types of caps (Costar stab wires can rub the inside of thick caps). Lubed (for smoothness, loosens up any "stiffness") and clipped (removes "mushy" bottom out) I don't think there could be a better stabiliser.

I'm regularly experimenting with cherry/costar stabs, each time I test a cherry stab, I conclude that I would rather use costar stabs even though the spacebar clinks when you gently touch, this is pretty much the only issue with the costar stab, smaller keys don't experience this issue, only the spacebar

By my comparisons, cherry stabs are harder to calibrate, when not calibrated, their friction is enough to prevent the click of blues/greens and suppress the tactility of browns/clears/grays - with costar stabs this is almost never an issue

I very recently tested a plate mount cherry stab I bought from ortholinear keyboards on a cherry+costar cutout, it was a hellish experience, the setup was SO stiff that the blue switch turned into a black one, and when I tried to remove the keycap, I almost had to rip off everything, everything came off including the switch

So my experience with cherry stabs is MUCH MUCH worse, comparatively, if cherry stabs is hell, costar is heaven, the cherry stabs are also unusable with DSA's in my opinion, I only enjoyed cherry stabs on one setup, on a stock Leopold numpad with SA keycaps, even in that setup, if there was a spacebar involved, same issues might have been observed

So, don't get me wrong, but, when someone suggests me to use cherry stabs, I either assume they have been extremely lucky so far, or they are really good at optimisations, or they don't have enough capacity to detect stiffness and related issues

[KHAANNN]

Quest: My quest was to find a pure keypress experience for the spacebar, cherry stabs are stiff, not easy to mod, not easy to replace, not easy to find, while costar provides a purer keypress experience, on the surface that is, I noticed the clinks when I got my first mechanical keyboard, since it had Cherry MX Red's it was easy to notice, I moved onto Cherry MX Green's so the stabiliser sounds merge into the switch sounds, and they did, however it still remained as an unsolved problem, after recently diving into the stabiliser dynamics more, I saw that it's futile to superficially try to solve the issue, since the wire is horizontal, it's either going to hit the stabiliser insert one way or another, so one side of the spacebar gets an optimal keypress, while the other side always gets a wire-to-plastic sound, as during the keypress, one side of the wire leans to the insert-top, the other side of the wire has to lean to the insert-bottom of the other side, it's how it works

The Solution: Well the solution is obvious after this analysis, it's close to njbair's suggestion but a lot more specific, since it's impossible to solve the issue with an horizontal wire, the solution is to bend the wire so it's no longer fully horizontal

(When I mention the "wire", I mean the wire-ends, the parts that go into the slider inserts)

The Experiments: I tried bending the wire downwards, it makes more sense, when bended downwards, the smooth surface of the wire rubs the insert, it would last a lifetime that way, however I quickly noticed that when the wire-ends are bended downwards, the wire touches the plate at keypresses, so that didn't work, however, if I made this analysis before building my keyboards, I would put an empty area there that the wire could enter, it would make things perfect (I just realised that I could drill the plastic plate I have to put those empty areas, but I would rather keep on using this wire and see how it goes for now, it's perfect, I hope it lasts a long time)

So the remaining option is to bend the wire-ends upwards, it requires a lot of experimentation to find a wire dynamic that gets the spacebar stabilised when pressed on both ends, but re-bending+testing the wire like 10 times produces the wanted results, along the way, sometimes the wire presses on the insert, the keypress experience with that state of the wire is pretty similar to a cherry stab

Here is a photo of the bended wire, in this photo it's bended downwards, but in my end result I find the perfect dynamic using an upwards bended wire, forgot to take a photo, but it's similarly bended



If anyone is going to attempt this, make sure you have 5-6 spare wires, I probably wasted 2 wires, as tools, I used 2 pliers that are wrapped with painter's tape so they don't damage the wires, I also sanded the wire-ends a bit afterwards, in hopes that the wire-end doesn't carve the insert too quickly

It's also important to note that I built 2 keyboards, one with tactiles and one with clicky switches, the clicky switched one uses the default wire and although I tested it a lot, I couldn't find anything wrong with it, which is great, so this is more of an issue with tactile and linear switches, as you tend to hear even the slightest of imbalance related clinks (they occur on fast bottom-downs, with clicky switches, fast bottom-downs have a click sound, so the sounds blend in most of the time)

[njbair]

Interesting. Are you sure the bend is going to cause wear on the inserts or is that just a guess?

BTW, is that OG Dolch or GMK? Looks really cool on that Infinity.

[KHAANNN]

Interesting. Are you sure the bend is going to cause wear on the inserts or is that just a guess?

BTW, is that OG Dolch or GMK? Looks really cool on that Infinity.

Thanks, it's GMK, they were very hard to get used to after using DSA's for so long, it was certainly a painful 24 hours in terms of muscle memories, second-thoughts and stuff, however I really enjoy them now, sanded the stabilised keys significantly to make them costar compatible by the way, going to update my results from the keycaps thread soon

The upwards bend is definitely going to wear down the insert top slowly, likely carve itself a path there, I'm guessing when that path grows, the keycap should start clinking again, at that time, I decided to drill the inwards sides of the costar cutouts to open a place for a downwards bended wire to go, on the downwards bended wire, the abrasive end of the wire doesn't touch anything, currently both of them are constantly touching the switch tops

Another possibility of failure is the paper tighteners that I put in between the insert and the keycap giving up and the insert becoming loose

I'm hoping none of these would happen tho :)

[njbair]

Interesting. Are you sure the bend is going to cause wear on the inserts or is that just a guess?

BTW, is that OG Dolch or GMK? Looks really cool on that Infinity.

Thanks, it's GMK, they were very hard to get used to after using DSA's for so long, it was certainly a painful 24 hours in terms of muscle memories, second-thoughts and stuff, however I really enjoy them now, sanded the stabilised keys significantly to make them costar compatible by the way, going to update my results from the keycaps thread soon

The upwards bend is definitely going to wear down the insert top slowly, likely carve itself a path there, I'm guessing when that path grows, the keycap should start clinking again, at that time, I decided to drill the inwards sides of the costar cutouts to open a place for a downwards bended wire to go, on the downwards bended wire, the abrasive end of the wire doesn't touch anything, currently both of them are constantly touching the switch tops

Another possibility of failure is the paper tighteners that I put in between the insert and the keycap giving up and the insert becoming loose

I'm hoping none of these would happen tho

OK I think with that explanation I understand better why the downwards bend wouldn't work in the first place.

BTW, did you give up on the idea of wrapping something soft around the wires at the contact points? I'm not sure how much wiggle room you have, but even something like a dab of glue or plasti-dip over the ends might act as a bumper of sorts.

[KHAANNN]

I considered it, but the wire slides over the plastic part, so anything that goes in there would likely make things mushy and likely rub off after several keypresses
(As the wire-ends slide horizontally during the vertical keypress action)

Before this modification, over-lubed it with Krytox GPL207, but fast keypresses still produced the plastic sound no matter what I did (fast keypresses to the un-balanced side that is)

For example, no matter how much lube you cram in there, when you remove the keycap, all that lube is gone/dispersed after several keypresses

2u/2.25u keys also suffer from the same issue, but it's not* easily noticeable with them, luckily my Enter, Backspace leans on the left and my Shift leans on the right, so I dodged 3 bullets there, even if they leaned to the wrong sides, generally the 2u ones don't throw me off during usage, but the spacebar is annoying beyond imagination

I decided to print some test plates to perfect my downward bending with