Keyboard

Preface It was my birthday yesterday! But it was a workday, so I couldn’t hung out with my friends. Instead I met up with my friends today. The agenda was simple: Attempt tempest tape mod on an one year old Rexus Legionnaire MX9 that I had laying around. Open up my laptop to do some deep cleaning Have dinner (this part is not interesting so I won’t say anything about this) Part 1: Tempest tape mod epic failure For those who are not in the know about what tempest tape mod is, it is applying masking / non sticky tape to the back part of your keyboard’s PCB to dampen the sound. I wanted to try this on my main board, but I am a bit afraid of breaking my (pretty expensive) board… I had an old keyboard laying around that has removable outemu switches, but they are not compatible with gateron switches. Since the switches are removable, it means I can get to the PCB without desoldering. Sadly I didn’t document the keyboard teardown, but it was very stressful due to the sole fact that it is really hard to remove the switches from the socket. I don’t know if this is because it’s my first time removing the switch from the keyboard (not loose at all), or simply because the keyboard was cheap, therefore making it hard to remove the switches. With some force, I managed to remove all of the switches (not without breaking some parts of the clear plastic, rest in peace 2 outemu reds 🙏). After loosening 13 screws on the board, I finally got to the PCB. All that is left is to apply the masking tape to the back of the PCB and reassemble the keyboard. Except I was really stupid and didn’t make holes in the parts where I needed to make a hole, which are the screw holes of the keyboard (if I could take a picture I would, but I really don’t want to remove ~80 switches again just to take a picture of the case). While making holes for where the screw holes should go, I might have bent the PCB too hard. Why did I say that? Because after reassembling, some keys are messed up. It is not a case of bent pins, because: ...

Today was a Good Friday, so I don’t have any work today. I planned this ahead of time by buying a compressed air canister, EVA foam, and denture tablets. The purpose was to clean my keyboard and apply foam to the bottom of the PCB. The foam I bought can be used between the PCB and the plate, but cutting out individual squares for each key seems too much of a hassle for me. ...