Great news for those holding off on getting Gateron Inks because of the loose leaf problem like me.
From today’s NovelKeys Update:
- Gateron will be retooling the ink switches to help out with the loose leaves. This is not a recall, and they are not replacing switches. We will be putting the current stock of ink switches on sale during the BFCM sale below. We have an estimate of December for the updated switches.
Would it be a good Idea, to pick up some Blue Inks for a reduced price during the sale or should I wait until the loose leaf issue has been resolved?
Yes and yes. 
While this problem never bothered me, it’s nice to see it be addressed for people who struggled with the loose leafs. Sucks to put in work lubing a slider and suddenly you use and accidentally damage your leaf.
Is the leaf locked in place by the top housing, or is there a potential for it to move up and down, potentially changing the activation point?
The leaf sits on the bottom housing and the plastic on the bottom housing that surrounds the pins are what holds the leaf in place.
Basically with Gateron ink switches, the plastic that surrounds those pins are loose, so people have been able to too easily pull their leaf up from the bottom housing.
Would inserting the switches into a hot swap board, that uses Kailh sockets would mess with the leaf position and give me a bad impression of the switches.
Hopefully not, but no clue. Although I doubt it would cause major problems. If it did cause the leaf to shift, it would most likely make the stem have 0 contact with the leaf meaning it would never actuate lol.
The Kailh hot swap sockets don’t put too much vertical force onto the pins, mostly horizontal force. So it should be fine, but 
I don’t know much about these personally but I read on reddit the issue mainly arises when you try to open the switches to lube them. What sets the ink series switches apart from other gateron switches? I recently bought some silent yellows and like them quite a bit. are the inks just aesthetically cooler looking?
The issue that has arisen for many is that when they open their housings, sometimes something will snag the leaf and pull it from its fixed position. Typically the leaf is gentle and you don’t want to me messing with it too much otherwise you’ll start to notice a lack of consistency between switches if you’re not careful.
Silent yellows have the standard gateron housing which is a bit different from the ink line. Ink switches can owe their aesthetic ‘coolness’ to their unique housings which are made of a different plastic mixture than normal housings. This leads them to be a bit smoother than the average switch.
If you like your silent yellows, you might also like the feel of silent inks although the difference in spring weight may need to be accounted for.
I just lubed and swapped the tops of some black inks pretty recently, and the main thing is that the loose leaf makes lubing even more of a pain since you have to carefully put it back into place if it gets lifted slightly, or sometimes out of the switch altogether.
They’re a really cool switch outside of having to worry about that while lubing. I’ve been wanting to buy more of them but if there’s some sort of fix in the works for the leaves, I can hold off on them until it’s fixed.
Yeah the I’ve been wanting to try some of the regular Inks, but I’m waiting for the fix also. Loose leaves can cause so many issues it’s not worth messing with them IME from leaf swapping switches.
nice
In Novelkeys most recent email update there was information about how Gateron is aware of the problem and will be retooling their housings soon to remedy it.
I had bought some gat inks in like early October so it was definitely the second batch… I’ve heard that there’s been some sound inconsistencies due to the loose leaf problem. Was wondering if anyone has any information on that and if it would still be okay for me to finish lubing these and putting it in a hotsocket board. Also if anyone has a great way to lube the loose leaf switches… please let me know
People keep saying that if you carefully keep the leaf seated whole taking apart the switch, it’s fine. I’m not sure if that’s true or not or if these people are just in denial.
The affected sound signature is probably more apparent in silent switches.
Also I’ve head that this problem has migrated to zeal switches
So the easiest way I could think of to hold the leaves in place would be to use a small clip of some type (I find small hemostats to work awesomely if you have access to any) to hold one or both (if it’s super loose) of the legs pulled down tight on the bottom of the switch. Putting them in a HS board is troublesome though as the leaves will want to move if they are loose & there is a small amount of room for them to do so with the switch closed. If you’re soldering them in you can grab the legs through the PCB to make sure they are pulled tight, but I can’t see a good way to prevent them moving when installing them in a HS board.