Cherry G80-1800 with blacks: I get "ss" when I press "s"

[Urbi]

Hi!
I have a Raptor Gaming K1 which, practically speaking, is a Cherry G80-1800 with Cherry MX Blacks and 6key-rollover. It well over 8 years now and was in use the whole time. A lot of use! Thousands hours of gaming, dozens of papers for school, my academy studies and as of late for my first job. It survived four PCs and it worked absolutely flawlessly until about a week ago when I first noticed that I sometimes get "ss" although I pressed "s" only once. It isn't reproduce-able at all. But it happened twice since i started writing this post so it definitely is there.

What is the reason for this? Corrosion on the contacts of the switch? Wear on the stem? Wear on the spring? I already performed my annual keyboard cleaning routine. It didn't help.

Do you think i could fix it by changing the stem and spring of the switch? I have a spare Cherry MX Black switch for plate mounted keyboards here. AFAIK those parts are the same on both kinds of switches (pcb mounted and plate mounted) and I could change them without desoldering like shown here:

I would really appreciate your help.

[CPTBadAss]

You could try swapping the internals but my suspicion is you'll have to desolder the switch and replace it.

[saturnotaku]

You could try testing the keyboard with this software. If the switch is "chattering" you'll probably need to do as CPT said and replace it.

[IvanIvanovich]

Usually caused by wear on the contact leaf inside, which is the part that sends the signal. Best to replace it when it's worn.

[Urbi]

Usually caused by wear on the contact leaf inside, which is the part that sends the signal. Best to replace it when it's worn.

Tried it out with 30, 20 and 10 ms as recommended there. Turns out it could detect chatters on all three settings though it took well over 100 key strokes to get one chatter.

I just ordered a PCB mount replacement key. As soon as it arrives I will try to clean the switch with compressed air, and see if it works. If the problem maintains I will open the switch and see if I find any dirt or damage on the contacts. Depending on what I find I might try to switch the spring and stem and if that doesn't work I will try to desolder and change the entire switch.

I am a little bit hesitant because my experiences with soldering aren't the best.
I tried to repair a Steelseries Xai once and was able to desolder the left mouse button micro switch and replaced it successfully but it turned out that I wasn't able to remove the right mouse button micro switch because it was somehow stuck in pcb hole. I really hope i won't **** up this time.

[Findecanor]

Usually caused by wear on the contact leaf inside, which is the part that sends the signal. Best to replace it when it's worn.

Yep. I have also managed to damage the contact leaf of a brand new switch when I have had the switch opened for lubrication.

Chattering could also be caused by a bad solder joint that has shaken loose, in which case just redoing the soldering could fix the problem. But if you replace the switch, then you would be redoing the soldering anyway.

I tried to repair a Steelseries Xai once and was able to desolder the left mouse button micro switch and replaced it successfully but it turned out that I wasn't able to remove the right mouse button micro switch because it was somehow stuck in pcb hole.

It has been like that for me too. Even if I use the solder-sucker and then the wick, there is sometimes still solder inside the hole that I can't reach easily. What I do then is to hold the iron on the solder joint while I try to wiggle the component out. That is something that you shouldn't do too often because you risk overheating the other components connected to those leads.

[davkol]

<insert a joke about Schutzstaffel>