I tried lubing my switches with Krytox 205g0 and now my spacebar feels like mush

Spent last Saturday night meticulously lubing 70 Cherry MX Browns with Krytox 205g0, thinking I was being smart. Put everything back together on my Ducky One 2 Mini, and my spacebar just sits there with zero bounce back. Turns out I went way too heavy on the lube and probably got some on the stabilizer wire. Has anyone else managed to fix over-lubed stabs without fully desoldering everything?

2 comments

2 Comments

rowan_hunt816d ago

Yeah "mush" is actually a pretty good word for that feeling. You probably didn't just get lube on the wire, you might have gotten some inside the stab housing itself where the slider goes. That's what kills the bounce. A quick fix without desoldering is to take a paper towel folded up really thin, slide it under the spacebar between the keycap and the plate, and press down a few times to soak out the extra lube from the stab. If that doesn't help, you can try using a syringe with a blunt needle to flush the stab housing with isopropyl alcohol and then blow it out with compressed air. Just be careful not to dump alcohol all over your PCB.

mary61416d ago

Jump right in and try that paper towel trick first, it's honestly saved me a few times. Not just with keyboards either. I've noticed this whole thing with "too much of a good thing" happens ALL the time in life, not just with lube. You know how people put TOO much hot sauce on tacos and ruin the whole bite? Same idea. You add something to make it better, but go overboard and it gets all sloppy and wrong. The stab housing is a lot like that. You think you're helping by slathering lube everywhere, but then the slider gets bogged down and you lose that nice, crisp snap. It's like watering a plant too much. The root system, that's the slider, just drowns and stops working right. So yeah, patience with lube is a lesson I keep learning the hard way.