A few months ago I added Holtite sockets to a Leopold FC980m. After some trial and error I stumbled across someone who had a one liner Reddit comment reply saying use solder paste. I ordered some on Amazon and it worked out great I was able to get all of the sockets flush with the PCB. No shenanigans with tinning the sockets and minimal filling sockets with traditional solder.
After at least 4 whole board switch swaps I only had a problem with one socket that was pulled out with a switch. I was able to resolder paste and install the socked quickly. (I think it came out because I was using switches that had been soldered before and didn’t have super clean pins.)
I did try some Mill-Max sockets (models: 7305 & 0305) but didn’t like how the lip of the sockets made the switches sit above the PCB. I couldn’t get one of the switches to sit flush against a plate in a numpad set up so I went the Holtite direction.
I am about to start doing this again on another board and I realized that Holtites fell out of popularity a while back. I am curious does anyone know why? (ie Mill-Max are just superior, Holtites are too hard to install and/or PCB compatibility is not good failures etc)
Is there any other alternative to Holtite or Mill-Max? (Kailh ones require being designed into the PCB so they aren’t an option for my case)