Has anyone successfully cleaned Monterey "Clicky" Blues (Alps Mount)?

[codemonkeymike]

I bought some to try out a while back and they are quite nice other then being full of crud. I took some apart but I have no idea how they would go back together. Has anyone successfully taken apart Monterey Blues and put them back together...and had them work? If yes how did you do it?

[Chyros]

THey are a fucking pain in the posterior to put back together. I took one apart for a video but I'm not sure I managed to reassemble it. Shame, they're such great switches!

[seebart]

I bought some to try out a while back and they are quite nice other then being full of crud. I took some apart but I have no idea how they would go back together. Has anyone successfully taken apart Monterey Blues and put them back together...and had them work? If yes how did you do it?

Exactly because of this I have never attempted it, my Monterey K110 could use a full service but I don't dare. Sorry I can't help you.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

THey are a fucking pain in the posterior to put back together.

$itsJustMe--;

[emdude]

I've managed to disassemble and reassemble a few of the tactile variants of the switches.

The trick is to put all of the components into their respective slots on the top housing (upside down of course) and then very, very, very carefully lower the bottom housing until the switch latches together. I do not recommend taking it apart if you can help it because it is very easy to damage the contact leaf during reassembly.

[loki154]

I have some tactile whites that need cleaning from an old apple desktop bus. I may skip it all together if they're that bad.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Not just that, but some of them are extremely hard to get open, too. The orange linear Cherry MX mount one I took apart came open easily, but I tried getting a white clicky Cherry MX mount one open and I gave up — it's NOS, but it's as good as glued shut. They're not maintenance friendly!

I have a whole keyboard of one of the tactile types and it feels pretty out of condition, which is a shame.

[codemonkeymike]

Update! I was able to open and reassemble quite easily a Monterey Blue. On the advice of emdude I removed all the solder from the contacts using a solder wick then zapped everything in the ultrasonic bath then put everything in the top housing and pushed it together. It is quite a bit smoother but not perfect, the plastic on the slider seems to be pretty soft and scratches easy. I will be doing a full writeup soon

[codemonkeymike]

Following up I found Monterey Blues make heavy use of thick lube on the "switchplate" enough to have a 1mm size ball of it on the "switchplate hammer". This could explain why they feel so great when new and so crummy when they get dirty. I will be purchasing some thick lube to perform some experiments.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

What switchplate? They don't have one. They have bare contacts (tinfoil and baling wire).

[codemonkeymike]

I don't know the name of it, the flat contact with the bump that the gold wire contact that goes over.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

There are two contacts. Normally, one moves and one does not. That's the movable contact and stationary contact. In a few cases (Hi-Tek high profile, Hi-Tek Series 725, Philips keyswitch and others) both contacts are movable, typically facing each other, and typically the same shape up to but not always including the contact points. (The fingers in Hi-Tek switches are different on each contact, while Philips and Stackpole switches have identical contacts.)

If the two contacts are just pressed into the shell, that's a bare contact switch. Sometimes, the contacts are assembled into a self-contained, rigid module that is placed into the switch. This has no name, but if it's an Alps switch it's called a switchplate for no good reason. No-one seems to have any idea what the scope of that term is and where we can and can't use it, which is frustrating.

To make things more confusing, the switch will also have at least two solder terminals (like +ve and −ve except that the current can go either way unless it's got an integrated diode, like RAFI RS 76 M with diode). In some cases, the contacts and terminals are different (e.g. Futaba MD, MR and ML series), but in many cases the terminals and contacts are the same. With SMK Alps mount ("Monterey") the stationary contact is wire which has a bit of natural rigidity so it's used as-is as a terminal, while the movable contact, which is made intentionally out of bendy metal, has a V-shaped fold in the portion that serves as a terminal. The terminals are still flimsy — some switches (Futaba MD/MR/ML and MEI T-5 for example) have hefty solid metal terminals that won't bend.

[Jan Pospisil]

Sorry for the necro!

Just want to confirm - is it possible to open up Monterey/SMK switches while they're in a keyboard?
(= not desoldered)

[jsheradin]

Sorry for the necro!

Just want to confirm - is it possible to open up Monterey/SMK switches while they're in a keyboard?
(= not desoldered)

Not really. Even if you could get the clips apart there wouldn't be a good way to align stuff when reassembling. The contacts would stay with the bottom housing too.

[hellothere]

Also note that the SMK switches aren't the same size as Alps (not the slider; the bottom housing that connects to the PCB), so if you destroy the switch, you'd need to swap it out with another SMK. IIRC, there's one person selling single or a pack of SMK switches on ebay right now, but they're inverse cross mount.

[Jan Pospisil]

Ok, I thought so. I have an alps mount keyboard where most keys are quite smooth, but unstabilized modifiers noticeably bind.
I can't solder so I guess I'm not cleaning them any time soon.