[Interest Check] Silencing Rings for Topre RF or HHKB

Hypersphere · 16 Sep 2015, 22:32

Thanks for the recommendation for the Finish Line grease. I will give it a try. I got myself quite confused by reading about Krytox blends and not knowing which numbers of Krytox to use and in which proportions.

XMIT · 16 Sep 2015, 23:09

From what I've gathered: Krytox 100 series are oils and Krytox 200 series are greases. Finish Line Extreme Fluoro is a grease. On plastics you hardly need any. 1mm^3 is enough for several switches. Try to apply it and then wipe it off with a wooden toothpick. That will be plenty.

It's a bargain at about $15-$20 for about 20 grams.

Hypersphere · 17 Sep 2015, 15:17

Has anyone here tested the Silencing Rings in the HiPro keyboard? If not, based on what you know about the design, would you expect the rings to work?

UPDATE: I checked the Deskthority Wiki, where there is an image of a standard slider next to a HiPro slider. They are the same height, but the design of the base in the HiPro differs from that of the standard Topre slider. Unfortunately, the base design in the HiPro looks similar to that of the Left Control in the RF87U, and I have determined that a Silencing Ring cannot be used on this particular slider. Based on this, I think that the rings might not work in the HiPro, but this has not been tested directly as far as I know.

Raft · 17 Sep 2015, 16:05

that was me who messaged you on the EEB's; bummer
does this mean any silencing ring will not work with the HIpro?

: hiprocompare1000b_th0x0.jpg (96.61 KiB) Viewed 12299 times

Hypersphere · 17 Sep 2015, 16:12

Raft wrote: ↑that was me who messaged you on the EEB's; bummer
does this mean any silencing ring will not work with the HIpro?
[img]
http://www.elitekeyboards.com/proddata/ ... _th0x0.png[/img]

I had just sent a reply for you to "Mrs. Hypersphere", who handles all the eBay transactions.

Yes, unfortunately, it appears that the rings might not work on the HiPro. Here is the pic from the DT wiki:

: Topre_Sliders_-_Hi-Pro_(left)_and_Standard_(right).jpg (248.48 KiB) Viewed 12297 times

The design of the base on the HiPro slider looks similar to that of the slider in the Left Control switch of the RF87U keyboard, and I have found that a Silencing Ring cannot be used on that particular switch.

I haven't tested a HiPro directly, and I am unaware of anyone else testing one with Silencing Rings. If you like, I could send you a few rings for you to test. If you were willing to do this, it would be valuable information to share, regardless of how it turns out. Please send me a PM if you are interested in pursuing this.

Muirium · 17 Sep 2015, 16:37

The problem in the 87U's left Control key is the switch housing, rather than the altered slider. I reckon there's still a good chance the rings will work fine on a HiPro. But it definitely remains a guess until someone tries!

XMIT · 17 Sep 2015, 16:54

I've got a HiPro and am curious to know the answer to this.

I'm also curious to see how much they help. The trouble with the HiPro is that the underside of the key caps hit the slider housing before the switch bottoms out. The bottom out hard! Ow! Most Topre are naturally damped at the bottom of the stroke on account of the "cup rubber" but not the HiPro! It needs soft landing pads as much as anything.

Hypersphere · 17 Sep 2015, 17:11

XMIT wrote: ↑I've got a HiPro and am curious to know the answer to this.

I'm also curious to see how much they help. The trouble with the HiPro is that the underside of the key caps hit the slider housing before the switch bottoms out. The bottom out hard! Ow! Most Topre are naturally damped at the bottom of the stroke on account of the "cup rubber" but not the HiPro! It needs soft landing pads as much as anything.

Would you like to have a few rings to test on your HiPro? If so, please let me know. There are now at least a few people who would like to know if the rings will work on this particular model of Topre keyboard.

It's interesting what you say about the bottoming-out problem. This sounds like the issue I have had with Leopold and Cherry profile caps on the Novatouch. The solution in this case was a higher-profile keycap set (OEM).

Could you show us on the HiPro switch diagram where the keycap is hitting the switch housing?

XMIT · 17 Sep 2015, 17:49

Well, I have 3 extra rings from the pack of 90 I bought for my Novatouch (or, 2 rather; I damaged one). What I don't have is time.

Working at my fastest I found that installing rings in a Novatouch takes an hour. When you factor in removing dental bands and having to re-seat all springs and the rubber membrane due to a misaligned spring that bumps to 90 minutes.

On the switch diagram above, the bottoming out is the underside of the yellow "keycap" hitting the top of the brown "housing". This is a result of the "housing" being so much taller on a HiPro.

There is a small chance that these rings would help if placed at the position I just described. However IIRC the "plunger" does not protrude from the "housing" enough to keep the rings centered.

Hypersphere · 17 Sep 2015, 18:20

XMIT wrote: ↑Well, I have 3 extra rings from the pack of 90 I bought for my Novatouch (or, 2 rather; I damaged one). What I don't have is time.

Working at my fastest I found that installing rings in a Novatouch takes an hour. When you factor in removing dental bands and having to re-seat all springs and the rubber membrane due to a misaligned spring that bumps to 90 minutes.

On the switch diagram above, the bottoming out is the underside of the yellow "keycap" hitting the top of the brown "housing". This is a result of the "housing" being so much taller on a HiPro.

There is a small chance that these rings would help if placed at the position I just described. However IIRC the "plunger" does not protrude from the "housing" enough to keep the rings centered.

If you are willing to invest the time, you would be able to use your 2 extra rings to find out if they are going to work in the HiPro.

Regarding the bottoming-out noise in the HiPro, it looks like it might work to put a conventional rubber O-ring on the stem of the keycap. This is something you could readily test if you have some standard O-rings. I don't think the Silencing Rings would help with the bottoming-out issue.

If you try either or both of these things, please let us know the results. Thanks.

XMIT · 17 Sep 2015, 19:44

I'll let you know, thanks.

I'm never quite sure what to do with the HiPro. Use it? Sell it? Convert it to 55g? Use it to build a TKL HiPro? Too many choices! I find that they key tops are an odd shape too: cupped, but not spherical - more like inverse pyramidal, with varying curvature. It's no beam spring, that's for sure.

Hypersphere · 17 Sep 2015, 22:17

XMIT wrote: ↑I'll let you know, thanks.

I'm never quite sure what to do with the HiPro. Use it? Sell it? Convert it to 55g? Use it to build a TKL HiPro? Too many choices! I find that they key tops are an odd shape too: cupped, but not spherical - more like inverse pyramidal, with varying curvature. It's no beam spring, that's for sure.

If the main reason you don't use the HiPro much is that you don't like the keycaps, this would seem to rule out converting it to 55g and/or using it to build a TKL HiPro. Similarly, if you don't like the caps, it wouldn't do to sacrifice the HiPro board to put the caps on a RF87U. Looks like maybe you should sell the board. And get a beam spring!

XMIT · 17 Sep 2015, 22:40

I'll have a good basis for comparison when I put SA Retro on my (now dampened) Novatouch.

I already have a beam spring!

I need to open it up and finish removing the degraded foam. It likes to break apart and contaminate the pad card resulting in an unusable keyboard. I really wish xwhatsit allowed setting per-switch capsense values instead of enforcing one value across the board! Maybe I need to hack it to enable just that. Something like, an array of signed offset values per matrix position, that are added to the global capsense value to enable per-switch corrections.

I don't know if you've ever had the fun of trying to run xwhatsit's GUI tool on a keyboard that is spitting out spurious key codes, e.g. Ctrl and Alt and Del together. I run the xwhatsit GUI tool in a bare X server and SSH in to control it to minimize the damage done.

But back on topic. My idea was to put a silencing ring where you proposed an O-ring. Or I might try a dental band.

I have some experimentation to do for sure. If someone else beats me to checking out the silencing rings in a HiPro I won't be hurt. I probably won't get to it for another month.

roboticus · 18 Sep 2015, 07:38

Just purchased two 107 sets. thanks a lot hyper for making this happen.

pretty happy, now i just need to find some PBT spacebars. so gutted i missed out on that GB

AdamVIP · 18 Sep 2015, 16:30

Wow. The difference is amazing. I put these in last night and I am in love with this board. The upstroke sounds just like the down stroke. I'm still getting some noise out of the stabilized keys and the space bar though. I'm not sure if the stabilized keys are the actual stabilizer wire or if a larger more rectangular pad would work better. I'm going to try to grease things up and see where that puts me. I didn't see any grease in the stabilizers from the factory on mine. The space I fear is a tolerance thing with the bar it self. If i tap it along its edge I get the plastic to plastic sound so I think that may need some tweaking as well.

Overall these rings are great. If you're on the fence get them. The install really isn't too hard. I've never taken apart a Topre before and I spent about an hour and a half on this install and that included a good clean up of the under key area and a wipe down of each key before reassembly.

Hypersphere · 18 Sep 2015, 16:44

@AdamVIP: Glad to know the rings worked well for you. Regarding residual noise from the stabilized keys and spacebar, I've found that lubing the stabilizers wherever wire is articulated with plastic is helpful. In addition, I put two small squares of 1-mm thick self-adhesive rubber foam on the case on each side of the spacebar switch so that the spacebar struts hit the foam on the downstroke. On the Novatouch, the spacebar that worked best for me was from a Ducky PBT set in OEM profile. Hitting the spacebar now results in a dull thud with no rattle.

roboticus · 20 Sep 2015, 05:54

@Hypersphere i know this is basic question but how exactly should you lube the stabilizers? where do you put the lubricant?
when i pull my board apart i want to try to kill as much noise as possible and the space bar is the main offender.
is the self adhesive rubber available online? i dont suppose you took a picture of where you installed it?

Hypersphere · 20 Sep 2015, 14:58

@roboticus: The lubing of keyboards seems like a religion, and you will find varied advice on what type of lube to use for switches or stabilizers and how it ought to be applied. There is a guide for Cherry mx keyboards at the following site:

http://imgur.com/a/lhLqo

Although this is for Cherry mx, the same principles apply to other types of keyboards.

In general, I apply a small amount of a lubricant grease such as MechLube 2, Krytox GPL 205, or SuperLube grease to points of contact between the stabilizer wire and plastic -- wherever there is a potential point of friction.

For the foam strips, I use a product from a Carpenter Brothers hardware store (USA) called "Doit" Foam Strips, 1/2 x 2 3/8 inch, approximately 1 mm thick. They are self-adhesive. I cut 2 squares of the material about 3/8 inch on each edge. I found a very similar product (possibly identical, as it had the same part number as the material I used) listed online:

https://www.doitbest.com/products/anti- ... d?q=241059

I apply these under the space bar. On the HHKB, I put the squares on top of the rubber circles that are already under the space bar on each side of the center spacebar switch.

: hhkb-spacebar2.jpg (132.55 KiB) Viewed 12119 times

On other keyboards, I center each square about 2.5 cm from the center of the central spacebar switch.

roboticus · 21 Sep 2015, 02:42

@Hypersphere thanks that is very helpful to get started

Did you do anything to silence the left ctrl that can't fit a silencing ring?

Hypersphere · 21 Sep 2015, 15:24

roboticus wrote: ↑@Hypersphere thanks that is very helpful to get started
Did you do anything to silence the left ctrl that can't fit a silencing ring?

After discovering the Left Ctrl anomaly, I did not install a ring in this switch. I did apply lube to the friction points. In my RF87U at least, it is fortunate that this switch is one of the quieter ones. In addition, I hardly ever use this key, as I have remapped CapsLock as Left Ctrl, and I use Fn + Tab for CapsLock (but I hardly ever use CapsLock), so, fortunately, the problem with this key is not much of an issue for me.

andrewjoy · 21 Sep 2015, 16:12

Any packs of them left ?

Muirium · 21 Sep 2015, 16:14

I'll be running a Europe GB for them… if you can wait until January!

andrewjoy · 21 Sep 2015, 16:58

Thanks for PM , yes i can wait. I need to pay for my holidays , and i think i have also just fallen down the tipro rabbit hole as well so i will be spending some on that . Need many caps!

I think i may pick up the novatoch around the same time, or possibly a nice xmas gift.

Hmmm i think i will need some back on white round 5 goodness on the novatouch as well , should order me a set.

rnd · 23 Sep 2015, 02:44

Hey guys, some help please.

I opened up my Novatouch and installed these silencing rings. For most keys this helped a lot (other than the spacebar, as to be expected).

However, The Right Shift key and the Return key (ANSI) are both making a serious metal ping noise, even more pronounced than an MX Clear board. Left side seems fine so far.

What can I do about this? I opened the keyboard again and applied some thick lube to the metal part of those keys. It did not seem to help, unless I applied the lube incorrectly.

This is really bothersome.

XMIT · 23 Sep 2015, 03:04

Sounds to me like the metal stabilizer for the Shift key is not seated correctly. Open it up and try again.

Hypersphere · 23 Sep 2015, 13:55

@rnd: A silencing ring should also help to reduce return-stroke clack of the spacebar and other stabilized keys. Care must be taken when putting the sliders back in stabilized switches to be sure that everything is correctly in place and working smoothly. Be sure that the silencing ring is in place on the slider. You can check all this before putting the board back together.

JanitorJoe · 23 Sep 2015, 20:57

Just ordered my set! (I didn't realize they were back up

)

In America at the moment without any mechanical keyboards and having these without being able to use them is only going to make things worse.

skaloola · 24 Sep 2015, 14:39

Did I miss out on this or how can I place an order? I'm interested in one set..

Hypersphere · 24 Sep 2015, 17:46

skaloola wrote: ↑Did I miss out on this or how can I place an order? I'm interested in one set..

The Silencing Rings are available on eBay. Go to eBay and type "Silencing Rings" in the search box. This should take you to the various sets that are available for different sizes of Topre-switch keyboards. If you have any problems finding what you want, please let me know.

barkweed · 27 Sep 2015, 00:43

Being a total noob it took three hours to get the silencing rings into my Novatouch (thanks to CM making it a serious pain to get the case open, I wasted an hour on that alone). Was it worth it? Ooooooh yeah, oh me oh my oh boy, such a marvellous improvement!

The horribly annoying rattle & clack vanished, and it's now more silent than I could have ever hoped! These rings are the bee's knees, and I can now finally appreciate the greatness of the Topre switch.