Here's what I did to it:
- Painted the shell and put a couple of coats of clear PlastiDip on it
- Painted the switch plate
- Swapped the switches for MX Clears
- Swapped the springs for 62g and 65g Korean springs
- Stickered the switches
The plate was a PITA to prep. I didn't realize it was powder coated and spent forever sanding it down. I should have just found a solvent that strips it. I then primed it with some self-etching primer, sprayed it with the same Montana Gold, and sealed it with some Rusto. In retrospect, I should have gone to my kind of nearby hacker space and powder coated it instead of painting it, but what's done is done.
The switch work took forever. I bought a bunch of used MX Clears off of Taobao for dirt cheap, tested them all, then got started with the time intensive and finger hurting part. To pop the tops off the switch, I used a binder clip and, when necessary, a flathead screwdriver. I then switched the bottom half of the housing with the Reds that the keyboard had used before so I didn't have to cut 200+ supports and remove 100+ diodes. Following that, I added a sticker to the lower half of the housing. Stickers seem kind of gimmicky to me, but I figured I might as well try them and see if they actually do anything. Then I lubed the base, swapped in the springs, lubed the stem, and closed it up. The longest part of all of this was actually waiting for the springs since it took about three weeks to actually be able to buy something from Sherryton. In the future I'll find better ways of buying springs or keep the springs I have.
Then came the quick and easy part, soldering. In all, the soldering of the board took less than an hour, even with the work around on two lands. I put it all back together, tested it, and found it all worked great.
So, was it worth it? I'm not sure. The project was a lot of fun to do, even if it did hurt my back, but the switch is still taking some getting used too. I love how the switch is far more tactile than Browns, but at the same time, it's almost too tactile. Part of me wishes that Cherry introduced a switch that was in between a Clear and Brown in tactility and in actuation force. If they ever did that, I'd be all over it in a heartbeat. Considering that I spent a grand total of ~$100 for the keyboard and all the supplies for modding it, I can't complain at all.
Also, in retrospect, I wish that I had done 65g springs on all the switches. 62g is okay, but the 65g switches feel pretty much perfect.
Future plans are to add a blank PBT key set. I'm leaning toward blue or red, but the funds just aren't there for it right now.
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Here's the RK-9000 as it came to me Reddit's /r/hardwareswap for cheap. Before I bought it, I was informed that the backspace key didn't always register. When I desoldered the switches, I found out why. One of the lands for the switch had broken and separated from the PCB trace and I found another problematic land on the PCB for one of the letters.
Fortunately, it's an easy fix and I just soldered wire between the leg that was supposed to connect to the land and the switch before and after it in the trace. I could have done a "proper" fix with an Exacto knife, but it would have been more work for the same results.
The switches and plate before painting and the swap.
Here's the painted plate, painted shell, and new switches.
If you look closely, you can see the stickers that I put in the switches.
Here it is now with the original key caps. Hopefully I'll get some more spending money soon and can swap the key caps out.
