Alps Wax Mod

[Lynx_Carpathica]

So after my successes, I open this new topic, different from the main alps lube, as it is contravertial, and is not related to the original lube chemically. But hey, if it works (certainly does for me).

[RobinsonW]

Been meaning to register to post in the other thread (Alps Lubricant Found) but it does seem like this did need its own topic.

I thought I'd chime in as I'm a long-term suffer of medium to good-ish quality Alps, knowing they're my favourite kind of switch but not being able to fully unlock the true goodness (and not having the patience or money to seek out some proper NOS or better condition ones). I've gained a huge amount of invaluable information from this forum and wiki in terms of sourcing and maintaining Alps switches, so am very grateful for that!

Well, I can say I've tried the waxboiling method on some Orange, Salmon and Pine White Alps and it's been a real success in all cases.

I would add the caveat that this is in comparison to my previous method of cleaning with alcohol swabs and lubricating with PTFE spray (and, for one board, with Krytox 3203, which I've gathered isn't a good idea long-term due to attracting dirt, but I did it as an experiment and it did work well). I know this makes it a bit less scientific as I haven't had tried a set of boiled-only switches. But I was pretty thorough in my cleaning before.

My experience before with that was that the alcohol swab cleaning made some of the switches feel okay, but it certainly didn't improve my bad Oranges much, which I felt were probably 6/10, that much. PTFE spray didn't make that much of a noticeable difference.

I've used the method on two sets of Oranges, a set of Salmons and a set of Pine Whites now. My hand-wired M0116 with Oranges is now back where it should be as my main daily driver and it's a dream - can report smoothness very much maintained after over a month of very solid use for work and gaming. That board was the one with my better quality Oranges which I'd previously lubed with Krytox 3203, so it was pretty smooth already, but there was just a niggling inconsistency that used to always make me get tired of using it after a while - that's completely gone now.

My other Salmon and Orange boards were also improved a lot in terms of consistency and removing binding. The Salmons were in the least good condition originally of all of them (maybe 5/10), and while they're not perfect still in terms of smoothness, they still feel great to me and very consistent. I've just made a new custom build with them and it's a candidate for a new daily driver in fact. The Pine Whites I haven't tested loads as they're just being used on the non-alpha keys on one of my boards, but they feel very good.

Some observations from the overall process:

- The wax deposits do tend to look uneven between switches to the eye, but this doesn't translate to keyfeel inconsistency.
- When I used a bit too much wax, I found it necessary to scrape out the gunked up bits from the crevices of the slider rails with a cocktail stick. This especially made a difference on the least good condition switches I have, the set of Salmons.
- I also waxed the top housings on those not-so-good Salmons. It made maybe a slight bit of difference but not much on the first attempt. But I then scraped the excess from the crevices with a cocktail stick along with the sliders and that improved things a lot.
- On each try, the keyfeel was pretty bad at first after re-assembling the switches. They just took a bit of key mashing to break them in and start feeling smoother.
- Bamboo top housings definitely warp badly when boiled - I accidentally left a single White Dampened switch in with a batch. The slider was fine, though I'd already taken off the rubber dampers so not sure if they would have melted.
- I didn't experience any of the trouble with springs not fitting that others have reported.

For reference I followed the process from Kuritakey's video and written guide, with the additional steps of scraping the tactile leaf sides with a guitar pick and scraping the slider rail crevices with a cocktail stick as mentioned above. I did about 60 switches a time in one big mug, using maybe a heaped teaspoon worth of tealight wax shavings, though that was probably too much, hence the gunk.

[Bjerrk]

I've tried the waxboiling method on some Orange, Salmon and Pine White Alps and it's been a real success in all cases.

Some observations from the overall process:

- The wax deposits do tend to look uneven between switches to the eye, but this doesn't translate to keyfeel inconsistency.
- When I used a bit too much wax, I found it necessary to scrape out the gunked up bits from the crevices of the slider rails with a cocktail stick.
[...]
- I didn't experience any of the trouble with springs not fitting that others have reported.

[...] with the additional steps of scraping the tactile leaf sides with a guitar pick and scraping the slider rail crevices with a cocktail stick as mentioned above.

I did about 60 switches a time in one big mug, using maybe a heaped teaspoon worth of tealight wax shavings, though that was probably too much, hence the gunk.

Good to hear that you had great results!
Most of the caveats you mention sound like the boil down to (heh...) using too much wax (or at least more than necessary).

You mentioned using a heaped teaspoon worth for 60 switches. Personally I used only a couple of nail-scratches(*) worth for a whole keyboard.

(1 small tea light is equivalent to 35 nail scratches, scientifically)

[SK-8K]

The original lube was supposedly paraffin based, so it is somewhat similar.

[Lynx_Carpathica]

The original lube was supposedly paraffin based, so it is somewhat similar.

Chemically, they are different. Paraffin-based does not mean that it's paraffin wax. Chyros has explained it very well, even tho his attempt at waxing was admitedly half-assed at best, his chemical explaination was good.
I'd just like to say it's a happy coincidence that it has worked out.

[hellothere]

First, I'm not into the full wax-boil thing yet. I'm still very, very happy using ceramic wax lube, which has paraffin and some other good stuffs, like boron and a fluoropolymer that's either simular to or is PTFE.

However, I can say that using hotter temps to ultrasonic switch parts is a definite yes. I had mentioned that my ultrasonic tops out at about 50C. I just did a set of really average green Alps, but I used a few cups of microwaved water in my ultrasonic and got up to 60C to 70C. Standard Efferdent tabs. Cleaned both the sliders and top housings. Ceramic wax lube for the switch-side of the slider and the slider rails in the top housing. Waited for 24 hours and reassembled ("I can do this all daaaaaayyy!!"). They're now amazing green Alps and I don't even particularly care for greens!

[TheInverseKey]

Has anyone tried this PTFE wax before?

https://moltenspeedwax.com/collections/molten-speed-wax

[JP!]

Has anyone tried this PTFE wax before?

https://moltenspeedwax.com/collections/molten-speed-wax

I have a cheap mini crockpot dedicated to melting this sort of wax for my bicycle chains. Haven't had time to try it on any switches yet!

[Scarpia]

Following this thread now as I have some scratchy Alps boards in need of restoration. I have an ultrasonic cleaner and I can’t really see a reason why boiling would work any better than using the ultrasonic with 50-70 C water/cleaning solution, so that’s what I think I’ll use.

[CaesarAZealad]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... G_3250.mov
An AEK and an ASK. The ASK is waxed the AEK is not. Night and day to be honest, and the ASK was in arguably way worse condition when I got it (The switches didn't even feel tactile!)

[Maledicted]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... G_3250.mov
An AEK and an ASK. The ASK is waxed the AEK is not. Night and day to be honest, and the ASK was in arguably way worse condition when I got it (The switches didn't even feel tactile!)

Sounds great. Things like this tempt me ever more to try this wizardry.

[Scarpia]

I was experimenting with waxboiling Alps lately, and I have a few notes:

1. Make sure you get the right candle wax. I tried tea lights made with 100% candle wax and I got gummy results that had to be redone. This was partally due to overwaxing, but I tried some paraffin based tea lights next and achieved smooth switches with very little impact on keyfeel.

2. It takes waaaaaay less wax than you’d think. For 250ml of water and ~60 SKCM White Damped switch stems, I had great results using around a quarter of a 1/4 teaspoon measure (around 0.30 ml) of wax shavings.

3. If your switches aren’t filthy, you can totally skip the lengthy boiling-without-wax step and go straight to the wax part.

4. I don’t like the idea of cleaning wax residue off our nice kitchenware, so I bought a mason jar to use the shaking-vigorously method and it works well - but I found that if the water goes in too hot, the jar will get too hot to shake, and pressure will build up in the jar which MUST be released every few seconds. It’s much better to leave the boiled water to cool down for at least 30 seconds before putting the water in the jar. You don’t need boiling temperatures to melt the wax anyway.

5. I didn’t bother cleaning or waxing the top housings, still great results. I didn’t even remove the dampeners from the sliders.

6. I didn’t bother lubing the stems or housings post-waxboil either, still great resilts. I do think lubing with super lube (dielectric grease) would have improved the result that last little bit, but I didn’t have enough lube for the whole batch of switches and I didn’t want inconsistent results.

7. I did have to do a paper mod to get rid of upstroke click, but this was easy and you don’t need to be super exacting with the paper sizing.

I previously tried lubing some (no waxboil) with super lube, Nyogel 760 and OKS477, and my lazy waxboiling method gave similar or better results to the best cleaning and lubing job I did.

I got great and pretty consistent results on those ~60 damped white switches, took them from maybe a 7.5/10 on average to somewhere in the 8.5-9/10 range. Or put another way: pre-wax they were just noticably scratchy with no binding and very little friction, and post-wax there’s no noticable scratchiness, the tactile event feels cleaner than ever, and the main variance left is in ‘weight’, which will likely even out with the first week or two of break-in.

Would a less-lazy approach with pre-boiling or ultrasonic cleaning and post-wax lubing have elevated these to a consistent >9/10 result? Very possibly, but I was planning on selling these for cheap anyway and I wanted to see how far I could get with minimal effort. And they’re already now in a condition where I would personally be happy to use them in an endgame level board.

[CaesarAZealad]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUI2cTUIbXE
Just wax modded the AEK, sounds and types wonderfully.

[thefarside]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUI2cTUIbXE
Just wax modded the AEK, sounds and types wonderfully.

Says video is private.

[CaesarAZealad]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUI2cTUIbXE
Just wax modded the AEK, sounds and types wonderfully.

Says video is private.

Try it now, I had butterfingers when uploading it lol