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Author Topic: My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help  (Read 6080 times)

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Offline khriys

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My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help
« on: Sun, 19 January 2014, 09:26:00 »
Hi everyone!

Here's my first mechanical keyboard since childhood, a Unicomp Ultra Classic Model M 104:



Here's my leather-trim DIY key puller, if you like it I can share how I made it on another post:



And finally, my cry for help:

Many of the keys of my new model M come unset easily. Currently my spacebar, right alt, keypad -, and a number of letters. When I pull them and reset them, sometimes they set, sometimes they don't, and sometimes a different key becomes disrupted.

Have I bought a lemon? Have I killed the Keyboard of Ages in less than a week? How do I fix it?

Please save me from this fate:



« Last Edit: Sun, 19 January 2014, 09:34:54 by khriys »
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Offline fohat.digs

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Re: My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help
« Reply #1 on: Sun, 19 January 2014, 10:32:09 »
When you say "set" remember that that there is a key stem and a key cap. The cap is just decoration, but the stem has to seat properly into the barrel (aka chimney).

I would recommend that you bend your puller square at the bottom, just barely one mm wider than the bottom flange of the key. You will want to grab corners, not edges.

Take the cap off the stem and get the stem right, you can put caps on later. Sometimes, I find that standing the keyboard upright on the front (spacebar) edge and letting the spring flop forward (down) enables me to install the stem easier. And yes, it can take several tries.
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"Starting in 2011, the deficits again started to shrink. During Obama’s term  the deficit was reduced by $900 Billion  before finally in 2015 the GOP managed to wrangle a “reconciliation” bill out of Obama where he again cut corporate taxes, as well as made permanent some of George W. Bush’s original tax cuts. This is the year everything reversed. Before this, under Clinton, Bush and Obama the deficit in almost every year was gradually decreasing. The balance we had of taxes and the economy was bringing the deficit down, the money coming in was slowly catching up with the money going out until 2015. Trump’s subsequent tax cut has continued the new trend even after the rest of Bush’s cuts have since expired. Obama had an average GDP of 2.3%, with 11.6 million jobs created and unemployment peaking at 10% in 2009, then falling to 4.3% in 2016. If we had continued on that downward deficit track, we would have again reached balance and another surplus in 2017-2018.
– Frank V Walton 2025-07-01

Offline minium

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  • Location: Southern California
Re: My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help
« Reply #2 on: Sun, 19 January 2014, 14:51:39 »
I wiggle the stem and spring before I push down and 'set' the stem. Before I started doing that, I managed to jam a spring down to the membrane. It was a tense minute or two with a mini-screwdriver to get it out.
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Offline khriys

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  • Posts: 4
Re: My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help
« Reply #3 on: Sun, 19 January 2014, 17:37:40 »
Thanks for the advice. I've attempted to implement it on the unset keys, without success as yet. I've noticed a pattern to them-here is an image of the problem keys removed:



Note they cluster at edges. Could this be a rivet issue?
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Offline jacobolus

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  • Location: San Francisco, CA
Re: My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help
« Reply #4 on: Mon, 20 January 2014, 00:50:04 »
Are you sure when you’re putting the keycaps on, you aren't getting the top loop of the spring caught above the little barrel? That’s happened to me from time to time when putting caps back on Model M/F, and causes the key not behave as expected. Luckily, removing the cap, freeing the spring, and replacing the cap again more carefully fixes that problem. Note: this especially happens for keys at the top because the whole plate is bent, so those springs have a tendency to flop forward more. Try tipping the keyboard backwards a bit when you put the caps back on.
« Last Edit: Mon, 20 January 2014, 00:51:35 by jacobolus »
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Offline fohat.digs

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Re: My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help
« Reply #5 on: Mon, 20 January 2014, 07:56:56 »
Turn a key stem upside-down and look at the top (bottom of the hole when upside-down) you will see a little circular dimple. The top of the spring needs to find its way into that dimple. If it is sitting off-center, and they seem to like to do that, then the spring will not buckle properly.
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"Starting in 2011, the deficits again started to shrink. During Obama’s term  the deficit was reduced by $900 Billion  before finally in 2015 the GOP managed to wrangle a “reconciliation” bill out of Obama where he again cut corporate taxes, as well as made permanent some of George W. Bush’s original tax cuts. This is the year everything reversed. Before this, under Clinton, Bush and Obama the deficit in almost every year was gradually decreasing. The balance we had of taxes and the economy was bringing the deficit down, the money coming in was slowly catching up with the money going out until 2015. Trump’s subsequent tax cut has continued the new trend even after the rest of Bush’s cuts have since expired. Obama had an average GDP of 2.3%, with 11.6 million jobs created and unemployment peaking at 10% in 2009, then falling to 4.3% in 2016. If we had continued on that downward deficit track, we would have again reached balance and another surplus in 2017-2018.
– Frank V Walton 2025-07-01

Offline khriys

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  • Posts: 4
Re: My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help
« Reply #6 on: Tue, 21 January 2014, 22:22:25 »
All fixed! The issue was cat hair. Strong incentive to keep it clean.
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Offline daerid

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Re: My first mechanical keyboard, DIY key puller, and a cry for help
« Reply #7 on: Tue, 21 January 2014, 23:11:17 »
Only downside to mechanical keyboards I've found so far: they are extremely sensitive to dust and hair.
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