Buckling spring silencing

[cookie]

... I have not tried topre - but it being rubber domes I expect it to SUCK...

And yeah, loud engines also suck. There's nothing glorious in the sound of the metal (and your ears, too) being raped.

[nevin]

Not positive what the base of Shoe Goo is, but i am very familiar with it. It will definitely be harder/stiffer than silicone caulk/sealant. Shoe Goo probably will not silence near as much as the silicone. Picture it somewhere between silicone & epoxy putty. Shoe Goo will adhere to just about anything & stay put. I used to use it to repair body post holes in lexan/polycarbonate r/c bodies when the body posts had busted through the body/shell. The stuff worked fantastic for that. Hard enough to keep the posts from busting through again but flexible enough not to peel off from all the flexing of the thin lexan/polycarbonate body.

You'd probably have a very hard time if you ever wanted to remove the Shoe Goo from the barrel. You'd probably have to shave it off with an exacto.

Just wanted to advise/warn about one of the materials suggested in this thread.

[rsbseb]

Shoo Goo is basically synthetic rubber and it is a strong adhesive and continues to harden over time.

[wcass]

Try heat shrink tubing over the spring maybe (not heated-shrunk).
If on an F, maybe add something like the rubber sheet used in the M ...
Thera-Band (6" wide latex rubber) can be found on ebay sold by the foot.

Tan - 4 mil
Yellow - 6 mil
Red - 8 mil
Green - 10 mil
Blue - 12 mil
Black - 15 mil
Silver - 22 mil
Gold - 25 mil

[Ellipse]

Someone sent me a description and comparison videos of an interesting grease-style Model F/M mod that seems to eliminate the plate/spring reverberation/tizz but keep much of the click sound. For those who don't like ping but like the click in their buckling spring keyboards. I have not tried this out myself and it is probably irreversible.

He "put a tiny amount of Synco Superlube on the inside of the spring with a metal probe...just enough to dampen the vibration."

#1 - His comparison of both keyboards: https://youtu.be/Kha_cvhZBp8

#2 - typing demo of the unmodified F: https://youtu.be/d1j1g-xLF6k

#3 - typing demo of the fully spring lubed F: https://youtu.be/yqvr-U9CEuY

[DMA]

If my idea of the hole plus optional rubber or silicone plug works to dampen the rebound of the flipper, it seems a similar hole and plug could be made in the side of the barrel. I hope lot_lizard is watching this thread--there are a lot of experimentation opportunities here for prototyping.

Sorry for necrothreading - but the spring never hits the barrel. When the key is pressed, the spring lays firmly on the spring guide inside the key, and there's a decent gap between the edge of the spring and the barrel. How do I know, you ask? That's how

[gianni]

Ah! So where does most of the noise come from?

[DMA]

Ah! So where does most of the noise come from?

The community, of course.
Just kidding.

In fact, I'm 1/3 into recording the sound of "normal keypress", "very slow keypress" and "fast tap" with 5 flipper types in 3 barrel types right now.
This supposed to end the "what part makes what kind of noise" discussion once and for all.

Oh, who am I kidding... of course it won't - but at least we'll have some (hopefully) decently clean, reasonably high-quality (48ksps/24bit) recordings of the model F switch in different configurations, which can be meaningfully compared to each other (because I took reasonable efforts to control environment (including echo and microphone positioning), test procedure (as much as humanly possible), and use a decent-ish condenser measurement microphone).