I have one of those solder sucker spring loaded pumps. Works okay, maybe have to take two goes at it but just wait a second let the joint cool and then try again.
Solder braid or wick can also be useful. It is a braid of small copper wires that you put between the solder joint and the iron tip. You hear through it and melt the solder and then it wicks into the copper braid clearing the hole.
Yeah, I had a smaller spring loaded pump but it just wasnât cutting it for this. Even the sucker with heat applied took many attempts to get anywhere. I discovered a technique where I would attempt to wiggle the post a bit while sucking the solder which seemed to get most of it but still difficult.
I tried the copper wick but I couldnât get it down in the joint with the holes being so small, even my fairly pointy iron tip had trouble really heating up the pad.
The keyboard is a Coolermaster Quickfire Rapid, the slightly newer model without the branding above the arrow keys. The switches are just cherry mx brown.
The whole bottom row flipped helps because of the angle my arms are at, with them facing the normal direction the edge digs into my hands. My whole setup is a bit janky and flipping the bottom row is easier than fixing everything else lol.
Edit:
I donât even bottom out the keys while typing⌠Hopefully this is just a faulty set.
My Anne Pro arrived today. Quite happy with it so far. I had initially bought Brown switches but got an email soon after buying saying that the switches has failed Quality Control, which I was rather pleased to see actually considering it was cheap and from China. I would not have been surprised if they had just sent it on anyway but they asked instead if I wanted to swap it for another before they sent it out or wait. I swapped it for Blues as I am going to change the switches anyway in a while and figured I would try the Blues as I have a lot of extra stock of linears as it is.
I must say, I was not expecting to like these quite as much as I am. However I still do not like the extra noise and still intend to change the switches anyway, but at least I do not hate these switches and will happily use them for the time being.
The board is really quite nice quality wise too, I believe they are PBT caps as standard but I will have to check that to be sure. I have ordered the two tone caps that @DehydratedSlugs has unfortunately had issues with, I hope mine do not end up the same but time will have to tell on that one, they still are not here but my other items ordered around the same time are arriving now so not long to find out hopefully. The only downside with the board right now is that it is loud and sounds a little hollow. These things will be fixed when I am swapping the switches, a little foam in the bottom should go a long way.
The RGB (yes I know but meh) looks all right. The colours are not super accurate but not bad really. It is the lighter colours that suffer the most but that is okay, I may or may not use the backlighting and it is at least very easy to turn on and off when I want to with built in macros. On the subject, the board apparently has programmable macros too which I had read but completely forgot about till I poked around its app. I am not sure if they are stored on the board of the app yet. It has quite a few built in from the start for various on board functions which I will have to make a cheat sheet for and carry around but that is fine, this is intended to go with my Mini PC and that will have a doc on it for that, I might also print one up and pop it in the box for the PC. I can happily say the Bluetooth works great so far messing around with it on my phone and I am happy to see they include a dongle for PCs that donât have native Bluetooth, and also a rather nice flat USB cable.
It is by far the best cheap mechanical board I have ever used, packed with features and really very nice.
I have shaved down the sharp edges of my Anne Pro and begun its sticker bombing and customising.
The bottom sticker is hard to see in real life too, but it says âGoSk8â it was a place I worked and keep the sticker around. Filled in the letters one this too with nail varnish, let it dry and razor balded off the excess with a little scraping like I did to shave the sharp edges.
Just upgraded the keycaps on my Corsair K90 to some Tai-Hao PBT keys and they feel so much better.
I didnât realise the spacebar on the K90 is not the standard size, itâs 7u not 6.25. Because of this the spacebar in the Tai-Hao set didnât fit and the whole bottom row is a bit messed up.
I am going to replace the Macro keys on the left with something cool, not sure what yet though. And I would like to replace the Windows/Super keys with Tux/Linux ones.
Does anyone know were to find a 7u PBT spacebar that ships to the UK?
Woo may Tux caps arrived finally.
They looks super good on the board. I was originally thinking of dying them like my Hyperion 1 and Qirex/Decepticon boards but seeing them on the baord I think I am going to leave them white, just looks right.
@DehydratedSlugs I see why there have been issues with the stems breaking. The stems are very thin on the sides and quite a tight fit. I was extra careful putting them on my board not applying too much pressure and doing ti straight down rather than any angle at all so it would reduce the chance of them breaking. I also did not put them fully on (except for the Esc) so they are a little raised at the moment. I am going to take them off later on and make sure they are okay, but give them the time to adjust to the switches for now and hopefully not break when I put them on finally. I might lube them a little to help slide them on easier.
There is another reason to take them off. The original caps were shine through and translucent white on the underside of the cap. This helps disperse the light from them LEDs evenly, the new caps are just black underneath so when I take them off I am going to paint the undersides white to help restore that. I always have the original caps on hand anyway.
@BigBlueHouse Check on /r/mechmarket and the buyers guide wiki on /r/MechanicalKeyboards for local stores that might be able to help. I know the spacebars exist, I have a few from other sets, and at this stage anywhere in the world will ship to UK it is just a question of time and money.
Does anybody here have a Model M and a wooden wrist rest? Kinda wanna how both look together.
Exchanged my GK2 with Outemu blacks for a terminal Model M today, good times!
Got my email confirmation of shipment for my Zilent tactile silent zealio switches for my Anne Pro. I got the while nail polish for the caps undersides, so RGB should be looking nice soon. Still need more stickers.
Since I will have the iron out anyway I will also be spring swapping my Filco with reds up to 80g springs. Lube the stabs and possibly change the LED colour for the scroll lock and caps lock indicators.
My CPSQ also needs a quick touch up on the underglow LED solder. That has a new white vinyl base to look forward to. So look great now. If the Anne while cap paint test works out I might do it to the CPSQ too.
Just picked up two CoolerMaster MasterKeys Pro M RGBâs - one for home and one for work. I LOVE the âmediumâ form factor - a full numpad with the size of a TKL. highly recommend.
ZealPC Zilent switches arrives along with thick lube. So I have been busy prepping them to go into the Obins Anne Pro board. Spring had to be swapped from the stick 67g to 80g and while I was there put a dab of lube on the top and bottom of the springs to stop any pinging later on. 61 Switches taken apart, swapped ,lubed and reassembled. I also did some nail polish customising on some things as well. Differentiating my Steam Controllers with the Pink and Blue used on the MiamiForce 68 logo and the back of the Anne Pro, so now the controller battery plates and their USB dongles have matching colours for each controller so i can tell them apart at a glance.
Also at some stage a while ago I commented that @Prenihilityâs phone camera was better than my HTC one M7, it is not great but I gave it the best chance possible with these pictures. I also took the same pictures with my much older Samsung Note 2 for comparison because I think it looks a lot better.
You only need to look at one of these albums.
Note 2:
One M7:
Not pictured, I also lubed the stabilisers on the CPSQ and the Anne Pro to make them nice and quiet. The CPSQ was also very tight because I assembled the a bit wrong the lube made them a lot better.
Thinking of selling my SA 1965 keycaps (Alpha + TKL). Whatâs a good price to sell these for?
Whatâs it like selling stuff on reddit? Never sold anything online before (other than ebay) so how would I prevent myself from getting scammed?
I meant more just for a price check, if you want to sell there they have a whole set up, they keep track of scammers and do not allow them on their subreddit. I have never sold on there but i have bought. Very pleasant experience.
So a buddy is going to give me a restored Apple Extended Keyboard II soon⌠Iâm trying to decide what to do with it. I would really like to use it as a daily driver. My choices appear to be:
Option 3 seems sacrilegious but would result in a keyboard with full N-Key rollover support and any/all features I could want. Option 1 and 2 would keep the keyboard stock or looking stock but would also keep its idiosyncrasies with ghosting issues and many of the modifiers not being recognized (left vs right, num pad etc.)
Anyone have any thoughts that might help me decide?
If its in good shape, clean it up and keep it as is. If it is damaged or in any way not working right, salvage and make something cool. I have wanted a 60% Alps board with the AEK II caps.
Anne Pro stickerbombing update.
Got 2 more stickers and put them on and have also bought 200 random stickers from ebay. I am thinking of expanding the original scope of this stickerbombing. I have also seen quite a few sets of stickers I like the look of on AliExpress too. So I might end up with about 400-600 stickers. Since it is for the mobile keyboard, I am also stickering the mobile tablet screen (yes I got one the Ultra Tablet PC is back!) and maybe also the plain extra top for the Intel Nuc.
For now here is the pic of the update:
Also my work on painting the caps for LED reflection was a success and has not interfered with the switches or stems.
