How can you get rid of leaf ticks/pings on switches?

Learning and discussion Key switches
1

I was wondering if anybody had any success in eliminating leaf ticking/pinging?

I have had instances of ticking on switches such as:
Raeds, Tangerines, OPblacks, and most recently the Epsilons. Not to mention plenty of tactile switches usually have this too.

Here’s an example of Raeds ticking:

Of course assuming it still happens when the switches are all lubed including the leafs.

Some unconventional things I have tried to eliminate it:

  • Lubing the back of the leaf
  • Lubing and filling the space in the back of leaf completely in the bottom housing
  • Lubing the top housing
  • Superglueing the back of the leaf to the bottom housing
  • Swapping springs

The closest one that work is filling the space behind the leaf with a crap ton of lube. Even then it’s still not 100% as it only works some of the time.

I was wondering if anybody had tried something different? Or is this just not salvageable?

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2

I’m interested if anyone’s figured out to solve this as well. I’ve always chalked it up to an inherent limitation of the Cherry MX switch design but knowing this community I’m guessing there’s someone out there who’s come up with a solution.

3

Best solution is headphones :rofl:

Seriously, though. I don’t know of a good fix. Sometimes you just have to live with some extra sounds. Life is a bit extra sometimes.

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4

Is it just me or do I hear nothing? It sounds fine to me, but I could be wrong.

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6

Did you use headphones when you listen to it? Also go to 1:07 in the video, the ticking is very audible.

7

You’re right in that most tactile switches has this, which is the reason why I’ve been all about linears now. U4T indeed is the best with this, although some still do get some ticking but very few of them.

I notice with JWK linears a lot of them have this problem. On the other hand I don’t usually find this problem with Gaterons, SP Stars, and Tecsee switches.

9

If the U4Ts won’t satisfy you then sadly nothing will, unless a vendor will come up with an innovation the mechanism of the tactility is just prone to this.

10

Actually I’m more referring to the problems in linears than tactile switches.

11

Same. I can’t hear anything. No ping or anything. Maybe it’s really faint and the mic is having a hard time picking it up.

12

Very much possible that the mic didn’t pick it up well. Although it’s very audible in real life. Did you listen with a headphone?

13

Yup. Turned it up too.

14

I don’t hear a tick but maybe a higher pitched chirping sound? Is that what you hear at 1:04?

15

yes that’s right! I do wonder if other people never encountered something like this or are just not hearing this in normal instances.

1 Like
16

It seems almost impossible to eliminate leaf sound issues in their current design. They’ve basically included a small, thin tuning forks in our switches.

I think our savior will be more optical switches. Surely we’re going to get there one day.

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17

There has been a few saviors that people have been waiting on that still hasn’t panned out yet. The modern beam spring is one of them (The Silo Beam Switch - Jacob Alexander — Kono Store). And of course topre is awesome but has no way of customizing at all other than keycaps. So I think all of the jars of switches that we have on our shelves will be around for many more years to come.

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18

Absolutely true. But for leaf ping, optical is a no-brainer solution that already exists (unfortunately in limited options). Linear switches can be near perfect, and tactile have zero leaf noise issues (since there is no leaf :slight_smile:)

It’s strange that we don’t see more optical custom options. They’re 100% compatible with our keycaps, and there are no limitations on the way the keyboard has to look. Is the PCB/plate design for optical that tricky? Must be.

19

It’s the only thing that I can think of. Or it could just be that the pcb fabricators simply aren’t willing to do it unless the client is a big OEM manufacturer like razer that’s going to sell millions of units to gamers that are only buying one keyboard :stuck_out_tongue:

20

For what it’s worth I can definitely hear it, it’s subtle and not so much in sync with the key strokes so it can be confusing.

Durock POMs suffer from something similar in my experience.

21

Yes, this absolutely. The ticking randomly appears and not in sync with the keystrokes. That’s why they stand out so much when typing normally.

22

I’ve never thought of it this way, but that description makes perfect sense.

1 Like