Clicker: a semi-mechanical Alps wannabe

Daniel Beardsmore · 21 Aug 2013, 01:51

I think it's gone on a keyboard tour of western Europe … There'll be some bunch of Dutchmen playing with them at the moment. I had a similar problem sending a package to Germany.

If it's any of the keyboards above (or nathanscribe's keyboard, in the topic linked), I'm not taking any pictures of it for the wiki — the existing photos are better than anything I could shoot, and they all need to go straight onto the wiki already. (Still not a single Poker photo on the wiki either (or anything written about it at all) despite there being a whole photo thread devoted to circle-jerking/fetishising it …)

Ascaii · 22 Aug 2013, 18:05

Nope, its nothing like those above.

Daniel Beardsmore · 23 Aug 2013, 20:13

Ascaii wrote:Nope, its nothing like those above.

Liar.

Anyway, it's a lot more interesting than it appears. There are two types of membrane (sub-slider) spring, for no reason — most are flared, but some are cylindrical. There are also two slider colours in the one from Ascaii, which roughly correspond with a bizarre variable weighting scheme where space, return, tab, left/right/down (but NOT up) arrow, numpad 0/./+/enter, and the modifier keys, are all significantly higher force (taller under-keycap springs).

Also, left shift and \ are in an ISO module: a snap-in panel that can be replaced with one with only the one slider shaft for JIS and ANSI:

: OK-100M ISO module.jpg (170.9 KiB) Viewed 4015 times

Not much in the way of photos as my camera battery died within minutes; I forgot to charge it :(

More photos when I'm back in the office next week. Since mine is virtually NIB (it may have already been disassembled, as some internal screws are missing, and the rest are loose) I'll see if I can take a whole set of photos, but they won't be all that great.

It's probably not a significant enough keyboard to want to preserve it intact for someone who can take decent pics of it, and it's all Alps mount doubleshot, so I may scrap it and save the keycaps for someone.

Daniel Beardsmore · 23 Aug 2013, 22:24

Curses. I didn't get chance to take a photo of the box, and that had all the different model numbers on it. (Also in the box, is the specification sheet.)

Daniel Beardsmore · 26 Aug 2013, 22:08

Similar design case, from Key Mouse (but completely different inside):

http://kbtalking.cool3c.com/article/6180

This has also been suggested to be a Chicony OEM product; Key Mouse are still around, so I've asked them — I doubt I'll get a response, though. I can't find any evidence of the Chicony KB-2001 that a defunct website claimed it was.

The Key Mouse RB-2001-1 has a Focus-style LED legend sticker …

Daniel Beardsmore · 31 Aug 2013, 18:57

[wiki]Oriental Tech OK-100 series[/wiki]

There, a load more crappy photos. I hope you're happy.

The keycaps are going on my AT102W.

Muirium · 31 Aug 2013, 19:10

Nice legends. Topre should take note.

Better use of Helvetica than on a Realforce. Well, besides the outsized asterisk.

Daniel Beardsmore · 31 Aug 2013, 22:08

That's why I'm keeping the keycaps — they're actually decent quality (though obviously not all of them will fit my Dell — ctrl, alt, backspace and enter are all the wrong shape and size). I wonder if they're from Taiwan Tai-Hao? How many companies in the Far East were making doubleshot keycaps anyway?

Muirium · 31 Aug 2013, 22:47

I wonder how common doubleshot injection moulding is anywhere, quite beyond keyboards. Could be that doubleshot caps were once easier to make if the equipment was more widespread 20 years ago. We could be seeing a mere side effect of something else.

Sound the baseless speculation siren…

stratokaster · 17 Feb 2015, 17:30

I actually found one of those APC keyboards in my own closet! It's DTK-branded and its FCC ID is GOGAPC21. It uses the "Type II" switches (with one wide and one narrow click-leaf).

Overall it's a nice quality keyboard, it clicks nicely, but some of the keys are sticky for no apparent reason. Maybe some silicon grease will solve this problem. Also one of the keycaps is missing (no problem since I have at least 2 other keyboards with Alps-mount keys), but a piece of the missing keycap is stuck inside the slider — and THAT is the problem. Is there any chance that I will be able to get that piece out without destroying the slider?

scottc · 17 Feb 2015, 19:21

Are you by any chance selling it on Allegro.pl? If so, I've been thinking of buying it for a while now.

stratokaster · 17 Feb 2015, 22:51

scottc wrote: Are you by any chance selling it on Allegro.pl? If so, I've been thinking of buying it for a while now.

I'm not selling it, and I don't recommend buying it. My second impression is really not that favourable.

It seems my sample of the keyboard is well past its prime. There are two click-leaves inside each switch. The bigger one provides resistance and return action, and the smaller one provides both tactility and "clickiness." What I have found is that in some of the switches (the most commonly used ones: spacebar, return, arrows, A, E, etc) the click-leaves are heavily bent, and in one (under the spacebar) the smaller click-leaf actually snapped in two. It's possible to restore some tactility and "clickiness" by bending the click-leaves into their initial shapes, but I doubt that they will last much longer.

BTW, the switch seems to work with only the bigger click-leaf, but it turns into a silent linear switch that way.

Oh, and the controller board is GLUED to both the case and the membrane sheet. So if you disassemble the keyboard, chances are that it will never work again.

scottc · 17 Feb 2015, 23:01

Eugh! I would have only been buying the Allegro board for the doubleshot keycaps, but you've just confirmed my suspicions about the awful feel and quality. I think I'll skip it and wait for something nicer to come up.

stratokaster · 17 Feb 2015, 23:29

scottc wrote: Eugh! I would have only been buying the Allegro board for the doubleshot keycaps, but you've just confirmed my suspicions about the awful feel and quality. I think I'll skip it and wait for something nicer to come up.

It's not all bad, you know. As I said, I'm pretty new to all this mechanical stuff, and I have only tried two mechanical keyboards: Razer Blackwidow 2014 (with green Razer switches) and Tesoro Excalibur with Kaihl Brown. The APC keyboard in question feels better than both of them (the keys that still work, that is). And the keycaps are indeed double-shot (except for Windows and Applications keys).

Daniel Beardsmore · 17 Feb 2015, 23:34

stratokaster wrote: BTW, the switch seems to work with only the bigger click-leaf, but it turns into a silent linear switch that way.

I had wondered about how they actually worked. I still don't :)

stratokaster wrote: Oh, and the controller board is GLUED to both the case and the membrane sheet. So if you disassemble the keyboard, chances are that it will never work again.

I found that with my Acer 6312-TW :(

scottc wrote: Eugh! I would have only been buying the Allegro board for the doubleshot keycaps, but you've just confirmed my suspicions about the awful feel and quality. I think I'll skip it and wait for something nicer to come up.

It's a tough call, as they're good keycaps. The down side with Tai-Hao Alps keycaps is that 2 u backspace in particular is fairly rare on throwaway keyboards.

scottc · 18 Feb 2015, 00:11

Daniel Beardsmore wrote:
scottc wrote: Eugh! I would have only been buying the Allegro board for the doubleshot keycaps, but you've just confirmed my suspicions about the awful feel and quality. I think I'll skip it and wait for something nicer to come up.
It's a tough call, as they're good keycaps. The down side with Tai-Hao Alps keycaps is that 2 u backspace in particular is fairly rare on throwaway keyboards.

Yeah. It's a real pain because I just passed up a different board with white Alps switches and the same set of Tai-Hao doubleshots. I've sourced some other reasonably nice Alps keycaps from an Apple Design keyboard and an Alps-branded AT101-AT102 (both rubber domes). I'm unsure of the material of the AT101-102 keycaps, but it's possible that the keycaps are dye-sublimated PBT because both the case and the spacebar were horribly yellowed, yet the keycaps remain reasonably nicely-coloured. They're definitely not the same as my Dell AT102W keycaps. I thought that I could supplement the doubleshots with the ISO enter, 2 u backspace, etc from this keyboard even if they're of worse quality.

Daniel Beardsmore · 18 Feb 2015, 00:27

Alps AT101-AT102 keycaps were dye-sublimated PBT as far as I understand. Production moved to Silitek and that's when they changed to laser-charred ABS, before the Windows key change was made.