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geekhack Community => Keyboard Keycaps => Topic started by: AugustCanaille on Sun, 20 May 2018, 19:17:00

Title: Taking keycaps on and off: does it contribute to key wobble?
Post by: AugustCanaille on Sun, 20 May 2018, 19:17:00

I got one of those Kailh BOX Switch testers, with the nine main types. Without the caps I used my fingers and they felt smooth, much smoother than Cherry or any other MX clone. In playing around with these, I took my sample pack of R1 keycaps from WASD and tried to match every color of BOX switch to every keycap. As I did this over and over (probably 5-7 times for each keycap) I noticed that there was more key wobble. I looked underneath: the female cross-stem had visible signs of wear and tear, and even had faded a bit, from when plastic is strained. Now, the original keycaps that came with the tester were R3 clears, and VERY hard to pull off.

So I'm wondering: when I get my final board, or at least a set of switches and caps I know will be my endgame, should I put them one once and NEVER take them off, at least until maintenance or replacement? I really do think that the keys wobble a lot more, and this may not matter to a lot of enthusiasts, but this is pretty much the main thing I care about. I want my fingers to feel like they are resting on stone columns, not Jenga blocks.

(Any tips to mitigate wobble would be much appreciated.)

Title: Re: Taking keycaps on and off: does it contribute to key wobble?
Post by: Tactile on Sun, 20 May 2018, 21:30:07

There's a trick that's used on loose stabilizer inserts but I don't see any reason you couldn't do the same (https://www.themoderncoder.com/how-to-fix-loose-sa-keycap-stabilizer-inserts/) on any keycap you feel is loose.

Title: Re: Taking keycaps on and off: does it contribute to key wobble?
Post by: AugustCanaille on Mon, 21 May 2018, 00:54:34

Interesting. I was thinking of trying this, but specifically with cling wrap or shrink wrap.

Title: Re: Taking keycaps on and off: does it contribute to key wobble?
Post by: Coreda on Mon, 21 May 2018, 01:38:44

Is this a common problem with these switches? I couldn't imagine not removing keycaps periodically for cleaning reasons.

Title: Re: Taking keycaps on and off: does it contribute to key wobble?
Post by: AugustCanaille on Mon, 21 May 2018, 12:49:18

True, especially with BOX switches. But some people like to color-code them, move them for DVORAK prgramming, perhaps just fool around with designs. Now that I know this, I'm not going to. Maybe WASD keycaps are ****, but the cross-stems underneath are definitely showing signs of stress wear. So, yeah, cleaning is superfluous for Kailh BOX...at least periodically. Maybe once every few years?

Title: Re: Taking keycaps on and off: does it contribute to key wobble?
Post by: DirtyMonkey43 on Wed, 06 June 2018, 22:43:59

I havnt thought about this much. Just built a board with BOX and will be testing it out some

Title: Re: Taking keycaps on and off: does it contribute to key wobble?
Post by: Astrasa on Thu, 07 June 2018, 02:26:03

Not that I have box switches to answer your question (sorry) but is key wobble in general a bad thing or could wobble lead to switch damage? I change my keycaps fairly often just to shake up the look of my board but maybe I shouldn't be doing that...

Title: Re: Taking keycaps on and off: does it contribute to key wobble?
Post by: nimblejacks on Sat, 09 June 2018, 08:48:48

Would love a definitive answer on this topic since I am such a sucker for switching up my keycaps  :-[