After a lot of time spent typing on my PVT Model 01 (including replacing two switches that had too much lube), I’ve gotten to the point where I just can’t use a normal keyboard anymore. Every time I consider a new mech keyboard I realize that the layout will never be as good as what Jesse and Kaia c…

I have a desoldering gun with a built in vacuum pump so removing the switches from the Model 01 was a breeze, but a lot of the switches in my AEK had bent leads which made things more difficult. My wife enjoys soldering, so I only had to do the harvesting. All told it took two evenings.

Interesting! I’ve cannibalized one of my old Kinesis Evolutions to make a chair mount for a Model 01, so I guess I could harvest the ALPS switches from it as well. I don’t know at the moment whether I want to do this, though — I’m actually halfway through a Matias Quiet Linear conversion, and I th…

Hey, could you please elaborate on which soldering gun you have? I have a Hakko FX-888D and tried to desolder my M01’s switches but found the PCB’s holes to be too small to work with. I have a bunch of NOS yellow Alps that I would love to swap my Matias linear switches for. :slight_smile:

My Hakko came with maybe 5 different sizes tips…

The FX-888D is a great iron, but to desolder with it you’ll at least want a vacuum pump . Using a wick for something like this is a huge pain. My desoldering gun is the FR-300 . It combines the iron and an electric pump into one package. It’s super effective, but probably not worth the money over an …

Hello Jesse, I am cautious of damaging the lining inside of the solder joints. I suppose the experience that sparked my precautions was once when I tried an orange alps keyboard 3 times and ended up throwing out three PCBs. Later on I realized that the majority of my orange alps switches were actual…

Hello numist, thank you for your recommendation. I thought you were using some kind of expensive hot air rework station or something but now I see that I should be able to tackle this job with what I have (I own both wick and a vacuum pump).

Hello everyone! I have desoldered all of my Matias Linear switches and soldered NOS yellow SKCL Alps switches in their place. It took many hours but when I did the key tests before putting the case back together, all the switches registered. Overall, I am happy I made the switch. I really prefer th…

Yeah I’ve been having the same experience wrt damping. Lubing won’t help, but I experimented with swapping in damped white sliders from an AEK II that I have lying around and it worked pretty well. I guess next month’s project is to top-mod all my orange switches with damped cream sliders (bought o…

Keyswitch swapping a Model 01 with Alps SKCMs

Hardware hacking

tjkirch (Tom) November 13, 2018, 8:45pm 2

Neat! What was it like to swap the switches? I’ve come to realize I don’t like the switches either.

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Keyswitch swapping a Model 01 with Alps SKCMs

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