geekhack

geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: bhchiang on Thu, 09 September 2021, 23:35:28

Title: How do silenced Topres work?
Post by: bhchiang on Thu, 09 September 2021, 23:35:28

I'm new to the community. I recently bought my first Topre board (Realforce R2 PFU Limited), which is silenced (I also tried the regular, non-silenced R2 with variable weighting).

I'm curious about how the silencing mechanism works - what is physically different about the switches that results in the silencing?

Any links / thoughts would be appreciated.

One link I saw: https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?t=16610.

Title: Re: How do silenced Topres work?
Post by: Tactile on Fri, 10 September 2021, 00:26:20

There's a ring of soft material added to the slider so that on the upstroke this softer material makes contact instead of a hard plastic-to-plastic impact. In this illustration this softer material is shown in green.
[attach=1]

Title: Re: How do silenced Topres work?
Post by: didjamatic on Fri, 10 September 2021, 11:20:04

Quietly. :)

Title: Re: How do silenced Topres work?
Post by: sublyme on Tue, 14 September 2021, 20:30:18

While the silencing rings make it nicer to type on its not really what I would call silenced. Not close to anything like what you would get with mx slient blacks.

Title: Re: How do silenced Topres work?
Post by: Riverman on Wed, 15 September 2021, 00:57:44

I have both silent Topre and silent MX black keyboards, and they're pretty similar, although the MX black is probably a little quieter.  Neither one is exactly silent, but for mechanical keyboards, they're both pretty quiet.