Before I start I just want to say that anyone thinking of doing this please keep in mind you are doing it at your own risk as this will void your warranty and potentially damage your keyboard.
So while I was waiting for my soldering iron to arrive from Aliexpress I wanted to lube my Mecha Mini that had brown switches on it. After watching a few videos of others spray lubing their keyboard and videos of what brown switches sound like lubed ,I decided to spray lube my keyboard.
After lubing the switches, i let it sit out to dry for a day and I have to say, I am kind of glad I spray lubed it as the keys feel so much smoother to type on. I believe it even fixed the chattering I was having before as well.
I had some serious pinging with the stock switches and with superlube it helped with that a bit but the most is the buttery feel of typing. I noticed that the tactility went down a bit but its not completely gone.
I am really impressed with spray lubing and cannot wait to try to lube it traditionally with krytox once my soldering iron arrives as I plan on swapping out these switches to Tealios.
Do I recommend you spray lubing? Well that is up to you but if you have a choice to solder, I would go the traditional route but just saying spray lubing works and is an option with the risk I stressed in the beginning.
Anyways I uploaded a video for sound comparison, sorry this is my first video so I have to work on my editing skills lol.
I once filled a bag full of 15 cent cheap switches and sprayed lube in the bag and let them sit for a few days. It also worked. I’d never do it again though it was just an experiment.
This a good post. There is nothing wrong with spray lubing as long as you understand the risks. So many people say don’t do it, but not everyone can desolder a whole board. As long as you’re cautious, you can get the same benefits as others.
This technique has a risk of ruining the switches if you do it wrong, or you are unlucky.
… But if you have a spare keyboard somewere and you want to do something to improve your cheap plastic prebuilt keyboard, why not ?
And it is specially true for people that never desoldered switches from PCBs before, the number of people that ruined their PCB by doing that the first time, with no adequate equipement, is quite significative.
I wonder if spray lubing is a safer approach for newbies…
NOTE:
I do not recommend spray lubing, particulartly to people that know how to desolder stuff.
I don’t really know if it is safer for noobs, but one reason that I am advocate (if you understand the risk) is how much cheaper is it.
If you want to do it the “proper” way, you are looking at a cheap soldering iron, solder sucker, some solder, lube, lube applicator(brush, etc.), switch cracker…
And all this is suggested to a person that was not able to afford a hotswap board to begin with…
The time it takes as well. Being it was my first time spray lubing I took extra cautious and to spray the whole board (60%) took me almost an hour. Hardest part was trying to match the amount of spray each switch got.
Traditional method which im not looking forward to take at least 3 hours I read?
Traditional lubing will give you the best results, and is safer for people correctly equiped for desoldering job, but as said there is an entry cost and a desoldering knowledge to acquire (that can possibly ruin your PCB the first time you do that).
True true. I think most of the spray lubing methods I have read/seen have you letting your board “air dry” over night too. Still some time, but obviously less than other methods.
agree with 