Leef's Keebspace

This build took well over a year to actually get it to it's current state and it's technically not done yet, considering I still have to tune and lube the stock stabilizers.

Issue number 1 before everything else was getting the cherry mx brown switches out of the old PCB to be able to remove the plate because I didn't want to order a custom plate or go plateless. The solder used on the original PCB has a stupid melting point so not only did I have to dilute the solder with my own that melts at roughly 320°c, but my soldering iron was set to 410°c (or more for specific spots, more on that later). A good chunk of the extracted switches were simply not usable anymore afterwards from being slightly molten. The plate has a few hooks and the PCB has holes for them to hook into, one of which is a PTH (plated through hole) hole that goes to the PCB's ground and the corresponding hook lacks paint and is soldered into this hole. This cursed and damned hook was the reason for a lot of frustration as it took quite literally half an hour (maybe more) to de-solder at 435°c while constantly adding and removing solder to slowly chip away at this literal mountain of solder they used.

My next problem was simply getting the new PCB(s). Back then I was a bit tight on money from expenses out of my other hobbies and various mundane things I needed, so it took a month or two to be able to finally order them. Except JLCPCB, the service that was recommended for this PCB by this keebtalk thread, ran out of the MCUs I needed, so I researched if they had any alternatives, but by the time I read enough of the documentation of various alternatives and found one, that one ended up being out of stock as well. So another couple of months passed basically just waiting.

After ordering, an engineer of JLCPCB contacted me because some of the NPTH (non-plated through hole) holes were too close to each other and would be at risk of breaking while drilling and the best option seemed to be just making them PTH holes, because the hook holes aren't connected to anything and the plate's paint makes it non-conductive anyways so it should be fine. Right?

FORESHADOWING IS A LITERARY DEVI-

I eventually get the new PCBs and of course immediately scratch one of the 5 I ordered (it still works), tested 2 of them and went to work. Across a couple months (I was preoccupied, blah blah lazy excuses) I slowly chipped away at soldering in the MillMax sockets.

Couldn't have 4 minutes without problems though, now can we? Trying to install the switches and PCB didn't work because the MillMax sockets add roughly a millimeter of distance between PCB and plate and you can already guess that this doesn't play nice with the plate's hooks. I trimmed off the hooks but left them as little poles for aligning the PCB and so everything would be alright. Right?

I assemble the keyboard fully and plug it in to see... it not working. I assumed due to the extra millimeter from the hotswap sockets messing with the tolerances, there may be a short to the daughter board, so I took it apart again and taped any contacts and it still didn't work after reassembly. Now I was getting quite annoyed so I took off the top of the casing and tested it like that and surprisingly it worked. Kinda.

As soon as I snapped the top of the case back on, or pressed down on the plate in the bottom left corner, the keyboard would fire A bunch of keys at the same time.

Seeing this set of keys led me to the right path. I double checked this side of the PCB and saw that the hole for the PCB hook next to caps was PTH rather than NPTH and connected to one of the contacts for caps. Remember when I said one of the hooks was connected straight to ground? Or how I had to remove part of the plate hooks, thus removing the paint that prevents it from conducting electricity? Yeah. One strip of tape later and everything is fixed and works perfectly fine.

While they are sold as different switches, they differ mainly in their colorway, spring weight, and tactility, particularly the purple, pink and blue melody switches being lighter than the blue, green and yellow runners in weight and tactility.

Aflion is known by some in the community for their excellent factory lube job on the tropical waters switches, and they've certainly hit the nail on the head with this pair of switches as well. You buy 'em, get 'em in the mail, pop 'em in and enjoy. Smooth as butter.

The housings fit well and don't need films, and stem wobble is limited mostly to some very slight east/west directional wobble, so a good choice for people who really dislike or are sensitive to wobbly switches.

Another thing that's to be noted is that these do sound as nice as they look and feel. With a rich, rather deep tone on bottom out and a mellow reset, these are a joy to use.

Looking on the inside you can see a healthy amount of lube on the stems, as well as some grease on the bottom of the springs, similar to how Gazzew does the springs on their switches, to prevent pinging and crunching. Though I suppose in hindsight it's a little hard to see the lube on those pictures, but blame my camera for that.

With that out of the way, let's dive a little deeper into the specifics of the BBN Linears starting with their rough specs:

63.6g two-stage gold-plated spring

Nylon top housing

Polycarbonate bottom housing

POM long-pole stem

Manufactured by Tecsee

Now, these are fairly common materials that are being used here, but what I find particularly interesting is the deviation from the norm of using using transparent polycarbonate as the material for the bottom housing when it's usually used for the top housing. This makes me want to toy around with different plate and keycap materials to see what sounds I can get out of them.

When I got them, considering I got them as part of what's essentially a switch lootbox, I didn't know what the specs of these were, nor if they came factory lubed or dry and from initial playing around with them I was sure they were very lightly factory lubed from the rather slick push feel and lack of any pinging from the leaf and spring. Now imagine my surprise when I opened them up to a completely dry stem and spring!

The stem tolerances are fairly tight with a slight bit of wobble and the housing fits really tightly into the alu plate of the Ciel65, so much so that my thumbs are a little sore from trying to get them into the board.