Looking for low travel clicky switch type

Judgment

07 May 2017, 19:30

Hi all, I'm quite new to the mechanical keyboard world. Having used the Cherry MX Blue's for couple years now and being being a proud owner of a freshly obtained IBM model M I started to wonder - is there such thing as low travel clicky switch? :P

Looking at MX Blue's specs (2mm to actuation, 4mm to bottom, Actuation Force: 50g) I'd be very interested to try something with 1,5mm actucation, 3mm to bottom, actuation force: 40g. Does such switch type or anything close exist?

jellybelly

07 May 2017, 20:21

First one that came to mind is the Cherry ML switch but that one is tactile.

__red__

07 May 2017, 20:32

I'm not going to judge you for wanting a low travel switch (okay, I am) - but jellybelly is right ML (if you want keycaps off the shelf)

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Techno Trousers
100,000,000 actuations

07 May 2017, 21:58

You could try black Space Invaders. They are low travel, but I don't know the exact specs.

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Daniel Beardsmore

07 May 2017, 22:16

Low-profile clicky switches are coming to market, but as is so typical, nobody wants to give away any details. Most Chinese switch manufacturers are useless about letting anyone know what their products are. The only confirmed specs are from Kaihua, for PG1350 series, for which I don't know of any confirmed customers:

http://www.kailh.com/gb/Productdetail.a ... uctid=1584

I didn't bother trying to decipher the forces (it was enough trouble trying to transcribe any text at all, as it's all scrunched-up text in an image that you can't copy and paste) but the figures are 50 g and 60 g.

As for the other types, whatever they are, you'll have to wait for someone to actually bother publishing details. Tesoro are using some other brand that's alleged to be Gateron or Greetech or whatever it was. Gateron I guess, as Greetech GT04 series is a different design:

http://www.greetech.com/en/showproducts.asp?id=501

The specs on those are pretty useless. The page says GT02 but GT02 is the MX clone; these are GT04 according to the keyboard switches navigation panel. They're also only 2.5 mm travel (as noted in the navigation panel but also based on the keystem height).

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THATGUY69

08 May 2017, 00:33

I think the Model M has a travel of 3.5MM with activation at 2.5mm(They actuate closer to the bottom of the travel compared to Mx blues) and I think the pressure is much higher(I think around 70g). I can tell the difference in travel between mx blues and buckling springs.

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