They supposedly make their own blanks now. Not sure if that means they lined up a new manufacturer that is to-date exclusive to them or if they’re just tight-lipped about who it is.
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Yes, they used to get blank caps from Gateron & just do the dye sub on them. Now they either produce the caps in house or have someone other than Gateron making the caps for them.
So I tried a bunch of different stabilized OG ePBT caps on these stabs & had no issues with them, not even a 7u spacebar that is very slightly warped. Although the 7u spacebars from my set of Tai-Hao Cubic are both warped pretty good & with GMK screw in stabs the one will work fine, with these C3 stabs they both bind pretty badly. So I’d say these are more sensitive to warped keys than GMK screw ins, but not by a huge margin.
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Got mine in today, I gotta say, packaging was pretty horrific. No reason these couldn’t have all gone in a small bubble mailer.
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The packaging is pretty over the top, but I appreciate the effort. The colors are pretty sick and i have my fingers crossed for beige or cream colored one!
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Lol, just keep them in the boxes you savages.
On a side note, I noticed the sliders are kinda scratchy when messed with at odd angles. They seem to have little numbers on the sliders, god knows why they didnt make them solid smooth pieces of plastic…
Could be POM on POM in action again if both stab stem and stab housing are made of POM. Makes me wonder if stab stems are POM in general like switches are. Based on having clipped off stab stem legs, I doubt it. If not, then it’d have made more sense to use POM only on the stem.
Interesting, can someone try a POM C3 slider in a gmk stab?
This is something I can facilitate, I still got some OG GMK screw ins, extra packs of C3 stabs, & a bare PCB I could do this with. Just woke up & got some stuff to take care of, but I’ll try it later & let you know what it feels like.
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So far I like these stabs in use. I used 205g0 on the stems/housings (thin application) and on the wires (thicker – same volume as I would use dielectric grease). They are smooth and don’t rattle, and holy hell were the wires hard to clip in which I can only interpret as also being hard to pop out. My only complaint is that I was forced to bandaid mod them as they clacked hard against the pcb (I’ve gotten away from doing this mod on gmk stabs). I’m not sure if this is due to the stems sitting lower in the housings than gmk, or that they just have more surface area that comes into contact with the pcb since they are molded without feet that you normally would clip.
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V2 of these stabs is now up for preorder on TKC and iLumKB. They claim the internal clearances have been fixed so as to be more tolerant of warped keycaps.
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Hello everyone, I’m planning on using my R1 c3 stabs, on my upcoming U80 build, and although I’m not planning on using PBT keycaps, I’d still like to keep that option open for me in the future.
I’m not exactly sure, which part of the stab causes the problem with PBT keycaps; but do you guys think the problem would be solved if I’d use, let’s say a durock or gmk “stab-stem”, and would put it in the c3 housing?
It greatly appreciated if someone could help me out with that.
Thanks in advance,
Fab😀
The stabilizer insterts are intened to move straight up and down. However, when the keycaps are warped (almost always with the ends curving upwards) it causes the inserts to be no only incorrectly spaced, but it causes them to move up and down at a slight angle. The result is friction. Sometimes it’s so bad the key cannot return without a very heavy spring. I ususally expect a 50/50 chance for any stabilizer to work properly. I have about 20 extra sets in the closet just in case. Some GMK, some durock, some C3.
And yes, the tolorances on C3 stabilizers is very tight. So any warpage is going to cause more friction than in GMK or Zeal or Durock.
afaik, and somebody else can and should correct me if I’m wrong, PBT caps just near-universally have a higher warp rate on longer keys that the R1 C3 stabs didn’t take into consideration. I don’t know that a different stem would help with that, per se, unless it was looser on the X-axis in the stab housing which might have an adverse effect on the sound/feel.
Can confirm that it’s an issue with R1 C3 stabs…well, the issue is really with the keycaps. I have a set of ePBT BoW where the backspace causes noticable friction on GMK stabs and binds completely on R1 C3. The key doesn’t looked warped on the bottom, but I think that one of the stems is. Strangely, all the other keys and spacebars in that set are fine. I also haven’t tried my new R2 C3’s to see how they fair. GMK sets feel completely fine on the R1 C3 stabs.
I discovered a way to fix warped PBT keys rub against C3 stabs, and best of all, it’s fairly simple:
Use a heat gun on a medium setting to get the under side of the key as hot as possible. The goal is to make the standoffs and bottom of the key almost pliable. It should be very hot to the touch. Be careful not to burn your fingers. I use needle nose pliers to hold the key since it gets hot. Once it’s hot enough, mount the key back on the keyboard and push down firmly on the key where the stabilizer mounts are until the key starts to cool down. I use a towel so I don’t burn my fingers. This will straighten out both the key’s standoffs and the keys itself. It may take a few tries to get it right but eventually everything should be nice and straight. Since C3 stabs are so tight, they actually work well to fix warped PBT keys.
I’ve almost never had a 7u PBT space bar work with stabilizers out of the box, but with this method I can now get them to feel as smooth as a GMK space bar.
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good idea. I used a similar technique by heating with a hairdryer and then pressing the spacebar onto some of those Gateron keyset holders (the plastic plates with stems to hold caps). The only problem I had was that it made the holes in the keycaps too big so I have to use a bit of plastic wrap now. But I’ll take that over non-working space bars. 
I like your idea better b/c that seems less likely to stretch out the holes
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Thank you all so much for the help, and many useful responses, you really helped me out quite a lot!
I think I’m just going to go with the “full” c3 stabs, and, in the rare case that I’m actually going to use some PBT caps, will just try the heat gun/hairdryer fix.
I gotta say, this community is really something special, again, thanks to everyone, and have a great day:grinning:
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It really is an awesome community 
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Having the exact same problem with the Heavy Industries. They are so much shorter compared to the GMK equivalent. TBH, I have always preferred PBT over ABS. But this episode is making me change my mind. I really need a replacement 7u spacebar, maybe someone should just do a spacebar GB with the right specifications.