Good feeling of oneness with carbon-coated conductive rubber

[002]

So you mean that the outer wall of the upper well is 0.8 mm, while the outer wall of the lower well is only 0.325 mm?

Yep - although I was just being a smart-arse with the 0.325mm guess. I honestly have no idea how thick it is and I don't wanna destroy the dome to find out. It's really thin though - maybe even less than .325

z is the diameter of the holes in the bottom membrane, but for some reason I got mixed up between bottom and top.

Ahh I think I get you now. Are you talking about the holes that sit a bit out from the edge of the carbon pads and are joined with tracks to the next one, as seen here?:

Spoiler:

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Yes.

[002]

9mm for those holes

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I might look at it this weekend, we'll see. I've just completely stripped a Peerless (a Fujitsu FKB4700 that is completely unbranded inside and out) and I'm going to document that, as well as do the Alps dome-in-a-box springs so that I can ship off the Zenith keyboard to Muirium.

I seem to be the representer of the underdog switches: even if they suck (and Peerless is … interesting) they still need to be documented. The two aforementioned keyboards both provide me with extra pictures to help document the rubber dome page, so that people can actually know what really is inside such keyboards.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Oh, you asked about the [wiki]contact mechanism[/wiki] — I've given the membrane section a brief rewrite to be clearer and better linked. Plus I made up some new terms for it }:-)>

It might help you in terms of integrating your keyboard into the wiki.

It would be nice if hasu could post pics from his keyboard to the [wiki]rubber dome[/wiki] page considering that it genuinely uses carbon-coated/impregnated domes as a contact mechanism, whereas yours does not (though it could if it wanted :)

[002]

Awesome, thanks. Someone has to cover the not-so-glamorous switches so hats off to you for doing it
I have new articles to write for the MCRW-1000 and the NEC AV-X and I'll update the BKE-2011 article too...later.

By the way, I don't think hasu owns that Sony NEWS laptop, he just remembered the link for it when we were discussing the BKE on IRC. I've looked for more info on this laptop but can't really find anything. I'm asking a guy on youtube who posted a recent video of a Sony NEWS booting up about a catalogue that appears during the video but I don't think it's going to have any further info http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3V1fbKTlyY

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I remembered that the dome-in-a-box switches are, of course, conductive :)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

This is the most sense that I can make out of the photos and measurements. It doesn't look anything like the photos at all. ("Confirmed" dimensions are those taken from the photos, taking one of your measurements as the reference point, and ignoring perspective skew.)

Topre attempt 2.jpg (359.69 KiB) Viewed 3013 times

[002]

I might just send you one of the domes and you can check it out for yourself. I think what you've got looks pretty close.
I should still have you address so i'll pop it in the post next week.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Do you want it back when I'm done, or are you seeking to punish the keyboard for some misdemeanour?

I did desolder a switch from my nice SMK keyboard (although it was already one keycap short) and I don't envisage ever getting that back in. Then again, I removed Alt Gr, which is a useless key anyway.

[002]

I might ask for it back at some point but it won't be any time soon The board is still in pieces and I really couldn't be bothered putting it back together at the moment. As long as you don't cut it to bits then I don't mind. There's a good chance you will be able to get the measurements without doing that anyway.

[002]

So I took the Sony BKE-2010 apart today and found that the domes don't have conductive pads.

Spoiler:

Sony BKE-2010 - Domes Underside.JPG (466.01 KiB) Viewed 2772 times

So we appear to have:

Sony BKE-2010: Non-conductive domes, conductive membrane
Sony BKE-2011: Conductive domes, conductive membrane
Sony NWS-1200: Conductive domes, no membrane

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Topre doesn't yet qualify as having its own vortex yet, but maybe at this rate we'll start seeing the first telltale swirls …