This is actually my first post after lurking for a long time but unfortunately it’s because of an issue with my Plum 75. I know how these keyboards don’t like to be modded but I really didn’t like the stock domes and wanted to change them out. So after about 3 days of trying to line up my BKE lights I gave up and tried to put the stock dome sheet back in and the whole middle of the board won’t register and the outer keys chatter and register on their own.
I’m really upset and I figured that Niz sells dome sheets on their website and have a tutorial on how to change a dome sheet as well so they know people will be doing this. But honestly I don’t know what happened and now I have a board that’s pretty much useless and I’m really upset since I really enjoyed the feel after modding it.
I’ve contacted Niz, and their rep on reddit about trying to send it to them to pay for repairs and shipping it both ways but they say it’s not a quality issue and that there’s nothing I can do about the problem. The only remedy is to buy another keyboard and hope that this doesn’t happen again and that I didn’t just waste money on another keyboard. After all of this, I knew I should have just gone with a real Topre board because of all the problems I’ve been having.
I’ve done dome swaps on my Novatouch and RF 87U with no problems and never had issues with keys not registering of anything.
I’m sorry if this has become a long post of me venting but I’m at a loss with this situation and I really don’t know who to contact or if I should just cut my losses and give up on this thing.
Just read Vvanderfell’s guide on modding this keyboard. Yikes, what a painstaking process that looks like The good news is, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your keyboard PCB. The bad news is, it sounds like you have a spring alignment option, like some springs may have shifted somewhere during the process. The ugly news is, the only fix is to disassemble and retry, with no real guarantee that it’ll work perfectly until you completely reassemble and test.
Another thing you can try without completely disassembling the board is to adjust the tightness of some of the screws. I had some chattering on a similar board I modded, and loosening a screw near the keys fixed it. It was a very slight adjustment, about a quarter turn. Maybe try that first and see if that might help, but if not, it’s try, try again
Thank you for your reply. I ran a little test to see if some keys were in fact dead. kept the plate and keys off and had the dome sheet and springs on the PCB and used a keyboard tester to try every switch while shifting around the spring under the dome sheet to make sure it was centered. Some keys are in fact dead and the L CTRL is registering even when I took the spring out of it all together. I’m afraid it is in fact a PCB issue.
Just for one last test, how about instead of testing with the dome sheet you use just one BKE dome and spring? Somehow I don’t think the results will be different, though
If I shimmy the single dome with the spring around each key pad I can actually get all the switches to trigger. Some of them go really easily and some like F5, F9, M, and Delete need to be “teased” but will trigger with enough moving around of the spring. Super weird that some keys are normal and some really don’t want to register.
Oh neat, that does mean that every switch should be functional, though as you noticed some are a touch finicky. I think this keyboard could still be recovered, but the trickiness of aligning that many switches might end up being more trouble than it’s worth.
Have you considered sending it off to a trustworthy person in the community to try their hand at “repairing” your keyboard?
I’m not opposed to sending it out to see what they can do. I might just keep it around for spare topre conical springs and maybe harvest the TMX sliders since they are the same ones 1upkeyboards sells
The good news is, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your keyboard PCB. The bad news is, it sounds like you have a spring alignment option, like some springs may have shifted somewhere during the process. The ugly news is, the only fix is to disassemble and retry, with no real guarantee that it’ll work perfectly until you completely reassemble and test.
Yeah, that does sound like a PCB issue …
