Things that make us go... hmmm šŸ¤”

Yes indeed - that’s why I always run the sideways ones through the Geon Trimmer tool a few times before mounting caps!

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The hotswap minivan (Kumo) is terrible about rotating switches. Nearly impossible to get a set of keycaps looking straight on it. :rage: definitely should be a last case resort

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EDIT: of course 10 minutes after I post, GH is back up.

Same. IsItDownRightNow says that GeekHack has been down for a week.

I’ve posted a question about it on Drop. We’ll see if it gets a response.

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Federal courts just said ā€œhell nah, shit’s illegalā€ to the unilateral tariffs, which is good. I think appeal is already filed. But now I’m confused, which means delivery companies with international orders are going to be confused.

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Geekhack is back now.

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Just saw your IC for the CK980C ([IC] CK980C - An Homage to the FC980C) and want to compliment your efforts as well as Cipulot’s on the project and hope all goes well with it :slight_smile: I’m not even a FC980C fan (I am a Topre Lover though) and I want to get in on this board just purely off the motivation.

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Does anyone have recent experience with zFrontier? They are an old player in the hobby and have been mostly reliable over the years.

I noticed their English discord has been taken over by porn and they haven’t had an inventory release since December (these usually happen monthly).

I have one keyboard on Groupbuy with them :rage:

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They carried a set I designed, DCS SMRT, this past spring and were fine with shipping orders; as far as I know everyone who placed an order through them received their sets.

They may be shifting focus away from the west with tariffs and everything, and maybe not maintaining their English-facing social media. But I haven’t heard anything about them having issues that would be group buy-threatening, along the lines of other failed vendors.

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They never really paid much attention to their Discord, I don’t know why they bothered creating it in the first place!

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I always seen them as a vendor that can ship a product but have non-existent customer support. The fact that they don’t even use their Discord says alot.

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I mean I’m not surprised that a China based vendor isn’t using their Discord server a lot given the fact that Discord is banned in China.

Another Chinese Keyboard vendor’s discord that I am in doesn’t get used alot. Granted that’s partially because of the fact that it’s not a very fleshed out/set up discord server but also the Discord block doesn’t help ofc.

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That is true but it’s not like they can’t bypass it. We still see Chinese users/vendors using Discord to this day. Even if zFrontier doesn’t use it, they’re still known for not having customer support in general.

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Well I give up on trying to find a truly deep sound HMX switch. The closest I have found is Canglan V2/3s, but even those skew towards the higher pitched side IMO. I finally spring swapped & installed the HMX x WS Arowana blacks in my F1 & sure enough they skew much closer to high pitched clacky than low pitched thocky. Not a bad switch by any means, they are true rail bottom out & smooth as can be. Although after all the HMX switches I have tried made with so many different plastic blends I’ve come to the conclusion they HMX is not the brand to go to if you’re looking for switches that are even slightly on the deeper side of switch sound profiles.

The only other thing I can think of is franken switching some of my HMX switches to try to achieve what I’m looking for. I think if I use the stems from Snow Crashes (POM) or Arowana blacks (POK) to keep the rail bottom out, the bottom housings from Serene Greens (POM) or Canganlan V2 (straight PA66), & the top housings from Hades V2 (straight PA12) it might end up with something deeper sounding than any stock HMX switch. Even then though I am doubtful it’ll reach a sound that is truly on the deeper side of the spectrum…

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How’s the Hades V2 compared to those then ? I havent got too many HMX switches as they are often too light for me (55g actuation is my go-to) so the comparison is interesting to me, I’ve tested the Unikey+HMX Purple Dawn too which I tend to like but is certainly high pitched.

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The Hades V2 & Arowana Blacks sound very similar to each other TBH. Surprisingly the Hades are actually the quieter of the two even though it bottoms out on the pole & the blacks are rail bottom out. I mean for HMX they are both on the deeper end of their sound spectrum, they just pale in comparison to truly deep sounding switches like Cherry switches. Overall both are great switches, just not what you’d want if your looking for a truly deep sound. I believe they have a heavier version of the Hades V2 that might be more up alley weighting wise.

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Update on my F1, decided to throw a batch of Gateron Uhmknown switches (full travel version) I already had modded in it & the difference is night & day. These Gats finally got me a taste of what some proper deep sounding switches sound like in the F1 & it’s exactly what I was hoping for! much quieter & has way more thunk to the up/down strokes!

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Though from what I understand the Kickstarter process has been a bit of a mess, I’m interested to see what you guy think about the possible keyboard uses of that eufymake UV printer that’s been making its rounds on Youtube maker channels in the past few weeks.

It seems entirely capable of making custom keyboard decorative designs, custom designs for badgeds and weights and even custom keycaps.

Why not the Oil Kings then ? These are some of the deeper tone switches along with JWK Epsilon and such.

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Honestly just out of laziness since I had the batch of UHMknowns already lubed, filmed, & spring swapped. I do have a batch of Oil Kings, but i need to mod them yet. Also the only differences between Oil Kings & UHMknowns is the UHMs use a UHWMPE stem instead of POM & the top housing color. They are really nice switches IMO, not sure why theynever got popular. Especially given how popular Oil Kings are? :person_shrugging:

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That’s interesting. In another of my hobbies, woodworking, UHMWPE is the gold standard for low friction diy linear bearings. Medium-weight linears are not quite up my alley, but they are currently at $0.25/switch at Divinikey.

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