geekhack
geekhack Projects => Making Stuff Together! => Topic started by: eRadicatedZomBiE on Wed, 27 March 2013, 10:49:23
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On a switch, when they say 50 million press guarantee (or something along those lines).
What on the Switch actually fails?
I would assume compressing the spring over and over again, creates a wear on the spring sort of like bending a paperclip back and forth until it degrades and breaks off.
What if on the bottom of the switch where the Spring rests you have a mechanism like that on a click pen that rotates to have the tip out and then retracts. This would rotate the spring a little bit every time you pressed a key, relieving the same spot of having pressure on it and would make the spring last that much longer.
The only downside I see is, it maybe cheaper to just buy a new switch than to add another moving part to it.
If this has already been done or I'm way off of what breaks down in the switch compartment, I apologize.
EDIT: I may have posted in the wrong area...
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Only Rootwyrm can answer about the mechanics of infinite wear, but it has been my experience that switches fail in many different ways.
With the keyboards that I have owned, far more of the dead switches are due to electrical problems than mechanical parts wearing through.
After you have put in your 50 million strokes, just buy a new keyboard. At some point it isn't worth upgrading the parts.
I will certainly not live long enough to wear out the 4 Model Fs and half-dozen Model Ms that I own.
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I believe that the leaf spring inside the switch is likely to break before the coiled spring does.
I had the housing of a switch (the one in the middle) break apart. (Yes, I know the colours are weird. The blue switches look green)
(http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b345/DarthLars/Keyboard/brokenswitch2.jpg)