Soldering fun

[Grendel]

Got my new soldering station today, a BK3000LF (added three tips for SMD work: 0.2mm conical, 1mm chisel, 2mm flow type -- should cover most scenarios.) Tested it by de-soldering the switches from a CM Storm Quickfire Rapid (MX Brown, eew) and soldering new ones in. Took about 2hrs overall.



I like heavier switches w/ a click, these are MX Green (Space w/ a MX Tactile Grey spring), MX White, and MX Blue Ghosts (MX Clear springs.) Waiting for some Granite caps now

Notes: the original soldering of the board was actually very good (unlike the solder job on the XT boards I have..) Single sided PCB's are a breeze to desolder -- a good sucker will do just fine, no need for braided copper at all. Not looking forward redoing the FC660M I'm getting next week..

[Madhias]

Nice work! It's fun to do. I also did almost the same with my Filco a view days ago, the desoldering took about 1h, and was easy to do with a sucker. I'm waiting for my MX Greens to arrive, and a replacement controller.

Because this thread is posted in the pictures section, here's my 'soldering fun' image:

[pyrelink]

I did this to a QFR a little while back as well. I was using my soldering station, with a solder sucker. Desoldering took the longest for me, and was really freaking annoying. I now bought a "desoldering iron", with a pump attachment built in, so hopefully future projects aren't so tedious. For my QFR, the whole project took me somewhere close to 12 hours to do. Desoldered all the switches, 62g springs, lubed, stickers, and then soldered them all back together. Still one of my favorite keyboards to use...

[Grendel]

Same thing w/ a Rosewill RK-9000 this time:

Fresh out of the box:





Desoldering the black switches:



Soldering in new switches:



Putting it back together:



Waiting for The Black Petal and DSA Dolch/Granite sets now..

Notes: the original soldering of the board was ok, the USB connector was sketchy tho. The new switches in the partially loaded pic are different from the stock white ones. The greens are obvious (except the ESC switch, has a MX clear spring), the whites have MX clear springs (except SPC, loaded w/ a MX grey spring.)

[Grendel]

Whoa, controller came in the mail today. That was exceptionally quick:



Besides a bug in sorting out the column bits the software worked "out-of-the-box" (not bad for writing it dry w/o debugging ;P)

Features in a nutshell:

- USB 2.0 full speed, 1ms USB poll rate
- USB suspend, wakeup and boot protocol support
- 14 key roll-over (+ 7 modifiers)
- matrix scan rate of 2kHz, individual 2ms-stable key debounce
- two function layers
- consumer control (eg. multimedia keys) and system control (eg. Power down) function keys
- WIN key lock, local NUM lock
- up to eight macros
- LED brightness control and demo mode
- 1-255min programmable timer
- Teensy compatible bootloader

Next up: DSA Dolch caps.

[Compgeke]

Woo hoo! Someone else with a Black petal! I was feeling a bit lonely here. Watch out with magnets on top of the case if you need to trip the reed switch to program - any dust or whatnot will scratch the case without much effort.

[Grendel]

Thanks for the tip. I got a tiny neodymium magnet I just have to point in the general direction of the reed switch Only needed to do it once so far, the firmware has a hotkey to start the bootloader.

Replaced the dim blue LED's w/ seriously green ones that are way brighter for more dynamic range since the BP drives them via high-speed PWM (and I really don't like blue LED's.. )

Caps are scheduled to show up tomorrow !

[Grendel]

And here is the result:



Probably going to swap them out w/ a Granite set once they arrive.