It turns out in my case Costar stabilizers sucked. For the spacebar I am using (SP, DCS profile) there was a loud click on bottom out.
With a few mods the Cherry plate mount stabilizers are ideal – smooth, quiet, and sturdy.
Here is a guide showing you how I modded them to work on my FC660C.
First, a typing test
Notes
If you follow the steps below it should take you about 30 to 45 minutes. With a 6.25u spacebar on the FC660C you will need to use 1u Alt/Mod keys, leaving small gaps but you could always use a 6u stab and space bar with this mod.
Required items
Niz or equivalent Topre MX housing (part of it will be trimmed off so heads up)
Cherry 6.25u plate mount stabilizer
3.6 mm nylon zip ties x 4 (If you need to remove the stabilizer you will have to cut these)
Hobby knife (X-acto, Olta, etc.)
Plastic nippers or nail clippers
Needle nose pliers
Tweezers (recommended)
Cloth type bandaid
Electrical tape
Dielectric grease (Superlube, etc.)
Your plastic lube of choice ( Krytox 205 grade 0, 105, etc.)
Steps
Open the board and unscrew the plate from the PCB
Remove any stabilizers and remove the space bar slider housing. Pinch the locking tabs from the top and push the housing through.
Using a hobby knife, carefully trim off the front lip of the slider housing you want to use. This is to make space for the stabilizer bar. Don’t worry there is plenty of material to keep it locked in and stable.
Trim two of the zip ties leaving a very small T-shaped piece where the head attaches to the strip. For the other two zip ties, clip the whole head off where it meets the strip. Here’s a pic of the cuts for the T-shape ones:
Trim 12 small pieces of electrical tape wide enough to shim the stabilizer holes in the plate and apply 3 to the top and bottom of each hole
Trim and apply thin slivers of cloth bandaid that fit the top of the lower hole where the stabilizer bar goes in, making sure it covers the full length. This will stop the bar from making a loud click when you tap it
Lube the stabilizer – I followed the TaehaTypes method on youtube except in the end I didn’t clip the stabilizer legs because it never actually bottoms out. You may put electrical tape on the bottom to stop lube from coming out depending on your situation.
Wiggle the stabilizer into place and put on your spacebar, using it to adjust the alignment so the sliders move without getting pinched on the housing walls. Take this chance to adjust your lubing and make sure everything fits because it’s about to be locked in
Carefully take the space bar off and seat the stabilizers again. Slide the T-head zip ties into the gaps in the top of the stabilizer housing, with the little teeth facing up towards the home row
Flip the plate upside down. Take the two spare zip tie heads and slide them on the strips, cinching down the housing on each side. Use needle nose pliers to pull the strip, and at the same time use the tweezers to hold the head down, locking the stabilizer in place. Clip off the excess zip tie strips so they are flush with the top of the heads.
Hurray! A nice stabilizer that is very firmly locked in place. Now just reassemble the board and enjoy. Here I used yellow zip ties so you can see the top of the little T-shaped bits clearly.
I don’t blame you for deciding to keep it stock one bit. This process was time-consuming and fiddly but I love this kind of stuff for some reason.
At the same time, the result has been excellent. I have used this board daily since I posted the tutorial and it’s been delightful. The space bar is still my favorite of any I’ve used.
The housing material is pretty brittle, so you have to be careful when pushing the clips.
I have used a flathead screwdriver and pushed with the side, rather than the tip.
This is such a good resource!
Does anyone have any tips or links to guides on drilling the stock Topre 2u housings?
I’ve harvested my Novatouch to use its sliders on my FC660C but as it is an ISO version it comes with one less stabilizer. I plan on getting a KBD or JTK slider and then drilling the stock 2u housing.
Less snug, basically the same fit as in realforce/leopold housings. The snugness comes from the niz 2019 housing+stem, so you have to replace both for max impact&feel. Still better than kbdfans sliders and for now the best for hhkb are still novatouch sliders in terms of snugness, but niz 2019 should be okay too.
I came late to this thread. Very interesting thread.
I recently purchased an ABKO K935P V2. It’s my understanding that these use NiZ 45G domes.
In terms of the 2019-version Niz sliders that people are buying for their Topre boards, are the Niz domes on the ABKO going to be using comparable sliders in stock form? [The ABKO is MX-compatible, using Niz.]
I’m just trying to get a sense of how close people are bringing Topre boards to a stock Niz/ABKO board with these sliders. And how the Niz/ABKO 45G compares to Topre with the Niz sliders.
Thanks to this thread I have now fully converted my FC660C for the Heavy-6. I used the Niz sliders, JTK sliders for the mods and Axioms 3d printed stabs for the spacebar.
I accidentally didn’t use the smoothest printing material for the space stabs which was an issue I could mostly fix by filing the plungers down a bit. There is still some friction there but with a BKE heavy dome its fine for me under normal usage.
The JTK sliders are a bigger issue, the SA caps fit too loose or sit too low, specially the enter key feels like it can leap off the board if I try hard enough. I used o-rings in the caps to help them sit at the right height but I might try some thin plastic foil on the sliders to tighten them up a bit. They don’t feel or sound as nice as the Niz sliders.
I only received SA Spacecadet about two months ago at about the same time as I received the Heavy-6. It was the last SA set I ordered (fall 2018) since just like many others I had become a GMK fanboi. And I didn’t plan for it but boy, is this a great combination! Despite the 2u mod issues, together with BKE domes and Hasus FC660C alt controller I am very happy with the end result.
I’ve tried to find the KBDFans sliders when I was sourcing all my parts but I had no luck there.
2u costar plus 1u Niz sounds very interesting, should help with a more even feel too. I take it you have done that. Did you need to hot glue the 1u switch to stop it from sliding horizontally in the plate? Could you share a picture?
Cool, thanks for your replies. There was so much discussion in this thread about the space bar that it didn’t land with me to use the costars for the 2u keys Time to raise my expertease
