Cherry mx soft blues

[twilek]

Hey guys, I currently own a blue leopold for my first board (its awesome, however when I am about to click the order button for a new keyboard my wallet sobs, so Im gonna only have one at a time) but I have an idea for a switch. Basically you would take the top part of a cherrry mx white and place atop a blue,red, or brown spring. What that would do is make a tactile keyboard with a soft click. I'm thinkin of buyin whites from qwerkeys.com and I was wonderin what people know bout doing something like this.

[IvanIvanovich]

Buy from groupbuy source instead and save a lot of money. White is only .50EUR in DT switch buy here.
I am doing a board in just that way, it's a nice switch with a lighter spring.

[WhiteFireDragon]

The stems from mx white, blue, and green are all the same. Springs from mx red, blue, and brown are all the same. So if you took that mx white stem and paired it with your blue springs, you'll get the exact same thing lol.

[jabar]

The stems from mx white, blue, and green are all the same. Springs from mx red, blue, and brown are all the same. So if you took that mx white stem and paired it with your blue springs, you'll get the exact same thing lol.

It's been mentioned here that the stems of MX White and MX Green are different in that the former produces a much quieter click than the latter. The springs are likely the same.

But I do agree that taking a MX White stem with a lighter spring will result in the equivalent of a MX Blue. Stiffer springs lighten click sounds: my MX Blues are very loud compared to my MX Greens, and I believe if I were to switch to a lighter springs on MX Green it'd produce a louder click.

[IvanIvanovich]

No white don't have such a hard click like blue and green, so they are not exactly the same. The black piece is different than the clear piece. It have a different feeling. White and green do have the same spring, so the spring is not the big difference.
With a lighter spring I think it is much more pleasant, but retains the soft click.

[damorgue]

The stems from mx white, blue, and green are all the same. Springs from mx red, blue, and brown are almost the same. So if you took that mx white stem and paired it with your blue springs, you'll get the exact same thing lol.

There may not be any noticeable difference in feel between those springs, but I believe someone posted pics of them all side by side and they did have different free lengths, and thus different preloaded tensions in the springs when mounted and thus different force curves. They also had different colours I believe. Whether it is noticeable or not is another question.

Edit: No, I am not going to start an argument. I am agnostic. I will acknowledge that there is the possibility of a difference is all.

[WhiteFireDragon]

Last time I opened up a mx blue, green, and white, they had all the same stems. I'll check again.

[reverkiller]

Last time I opened up a mx blue, green, and white, they had all the same stems. I'll check again.

I think they have very very similar stems, but someone fascinated with keyboard science maintains their differences.

[WhiteFireDragon]

Ok you guys are absolutely right, they actually do feel different. When I opened these up several months ago to compare, they all looked the same but I didn't actually test how they felt. But now when I paired a white stem with a blue spring, the clicking is noticeably less sharp than a stock blue stem.



Here are comparison pics of all 3 I just took. Morphologically, they all look exactly the same except for color. So I had to find out what makes the white feel different than blue and green, and I'm almost certain it's because of the material of the moving part. The opaque white moving part from the blue/green stem seem to be made of POM or with some kind of ceramic mixed in, but the black moving part of the white stem seem to be made of a slightly softer plastic. If you hold the stems in the palm of your hands and rattle them around, the rattle noise from blue/green will resonate differently than the white stem.

[SmallFry]

Ripster has some nice macro shots, WFD. Just so you know:)

[WhiteFireDragon]

Where? Well I compared these in person so I personally don't need the pics but took them in case someone didn't have a green or white switch to look at.

[SmallFry]

Ripster.imgur.com

[BossBorot]

http://imgur.com/a/RJqM4#19

[SmallFry]

Or here! http://imgur.com/a/wuToY

[WhiteFireDragon]

Those are some great pics he took. Kinda hard to navigate his imgur to find relevant info and pics though. Two things that I don't agree with that are probably wrong:

1) The Cherry MX "click" is caused by the switch spring snapping the bottom half of stem upwards until it collides with the top

2) ...has a softer click due to longer tactile "leg"

1) For blues/green/whites, we're only interested in the click when you're pressing down on it. The click that you feel is caused by the bottom half snapping DOWNWARDS, not up. Yes there is an upwards snap when the stem is depressed to a certain point, but that's not relevant because when the stem is naturally inside the switch with the top housing on, it will never get depressed high enough for the upwards snap to occur.

2) These "legs" ripster is referring has the same length when I look at them, the mx white's don't have longer legs. If you rattle the blue and white switches, they should sound the same regardless if the leg's length are shorter or longer. But since they do sound different when you rattle them in your palm, it's more probable that it's the material.


It's too bad ripster was banned from both GH and DT. We can't even have a discussion with him anymore. Can someone verify what I said or at least tell me if I misunderstood anything in ripster's imgur? Hey ripster, since you have a smurf account on here, can you personally comment on this? I'm interested in getting to the bottom of this.

[TotalChaos]

It's too bad ripster was banned from both GH and DT.

I heard that Ripster ascended to that great big switch factory in the sky 

[Soarer]

WFD's 'different material theory' is far more plausible than any other I've heard - at least it has some reasonable logic behind why it results in a different click.

[IvanIvanovich]

Yeah, what I meant when I said it's different. I also have some vintage blue with a black clicker, I think it's same. Though the vintage blue feel smoother, it still don't have as soft of a click as white though. So there still might be a bit more to it.

[Potato]

You can talk to ripster in his subreddit(http://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/162xsk/somebody_tell_this_dude_about_reddit_its_only_one/) that he is a moderator of.