Removing ISO enter key

[Phaedrus2129]

Anyone have any advice on removing a Cherry-stabilized, ISO form enter key? My keypuller won't fit it (ring style).

I'm doing the dental band mod on my G80 and I've got all of the alphanumerical group done but the enter key.

For the record, it does make the keyboard slightly quieter, but I don't know if the effect is the worth the $10 it cost me.

[Mr. Perfect]

Unbent paperclips is what I used. Custom wire puller!

[JBert]

Doing it the MacGyver way I take a piece of string and make a key pulling rig by tying a multi-loop knot.
Since this doesn't need any fancy knot, you can actually do this by tying an overhand loop, then pulling one of the ends through the loop and back up. You should now have 2 loops.

Once you got a string with two loops in it, take two popsicle sticks. Place one loop in the gap between backspace and the enter key and push it down with the popsicle stick. Pull the loop to the bottom edge of the keyboard so it will hook under the key and make sure it can't come back up the gap by pushing the stick to the bottom.
Take the second stick and push the second loop between the enter and right shift. Pull the loop to the top edge and keep it in place with the stick.

Now the rig should be stuck under the key. Pull the ends up whilst making a circular motion to wiggle the stabilizer and key stems.



EDIT: This works great on spacebars too, even those with really tough vanilla G80-3000 keycaps - forget about two wire key pullers when you can do it cheap and sound!

[The Solutor]

That key is pretty big.

 
Mine was damn tightly fitted, came off with the whole stem.

[The Solutor]

On a Cherry MX G80?  That would be pretty unusual but I'm sure it happens.

 
Brand new G80 board, white switch donor.

BTW, the stem came off with the upper part of the switch housing. ( One step less in this long work :laugh:)

[JBert]

On a Cherry MX G80?  That would be pretty unusual but I'm sure it happens.

Actually, the original Cherry caps my G80 came with were a pain to remove without a wire keypuller. I've tried, and each of the stabilized keycaps would open up like The Solutor said.

Hence why I switched to the rope key puller.

[Phaedrus2129]

The string idea sounds pretty good, but I don't have any string. Keeping with the dental theme I could use some dental floss... But that sounds painful on the hands.

I'll search around the house and see what we've got.

I may also try double banding the main alphanumeric section to see if I can get it even quieter.

[The Solutor]

This is what happens with the brute force approach (nothing broken, just dismantled)

[The Solutor]

Hmm.... sounds like I need to redo my MX Keypulling guide a bit and no longer call the Cherry MX G99 stabilizers "foolproof".

It's as if the metal bar caught the prongs or something and pulled the top off.

 
Now I did it  purposely, just to take a photo, the first time the stabilizer remained in place.

Simply the key crossed hole are tighter than the ones present on the other large keys, and tool or not if the stem is "glued" to the keycap there's little one can do to extract it cleanly.

Maybe just a batch of enter keys with too large tolerances.

[The Solutor]

Actually in physics terms it's because of the three structural members in a close array.  Like molecules.

Yes but there are 4 of them on the kb...

In porn terms it's because you have three members...

In porn term, I think that the enter key is just more "innocent", likely the brown stem also matters :laugh:

[Phaedrus2129]

I've tried experimenting a little bit. I tried using two bands on one key. I've found that that tends to increase the force required, and perhaps slightly decreases travel. It doesn't have much impact on noise. I'm not a fan of the effect. However, I've found that it does still decrease noise when done to stabilized keys for some reason, and the increase in force generally isn't as noticeable.

[gilgam]

same thing when i removed an iso enter key on a new cherry white/clear. the top stabilizer came with the keycap ...

It was very easy to clip it back, more fear than real damage