I cannot answer that without a break-in machine. TBH, I think it’s not worth getting one unless I was thinking about starting a business selling polished switches.
Lots of people ultrasonic clean their switches, although with a q tip, isopropyl alchohol, and a steady hand you can get a lot done.
Most annoying thing about alps is the difficulty with switches in terms of making sure you get clean ones or cleaning the ones you have. They have suuuuuch a tremendous effect on the feel. Hopefully you can get your alps in good condition! They’re a fun switch architecture with unique feeling linears, tactiles, an clickies!
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If you own a machine, use it! A few of us in the DingKey discord have been doing that quite successfully for a while with our diamond polished switches. 24hrs seems to be a good starting point.
TBH I wouldn’t recommend getting one of you’re only looking to do a board’s worth of switches or so. They’re fun gizmos but how many people are really breaking in switches even semi-regularly? Granted, I have two machines so maybe I’m not one to talk.
I finally built my board with diamond switches and it’s wild having the sound of MX Black with JWK-level smoothness. Much nicer than my NOS vints, which were already very smooth compared to modern Hyperglides.
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This. The sound of Cherry Black is why I bother to polish them.
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I have the dingkeys break in machine with 36 switch at a time, and my 4-way kit for 72 switches should be coming pretty soon. Don’t have the diamond paste yet, will have to get that.
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Tried polishing a NK Cream switch. Polished Cream had more POM-on-POM sticking issue than stock.
So I cannot recommend polishing NK Cream with diamond paste.
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Just came across this thread a few days ago and want to diamond polish some cherry hyperglide browns. I found a diamond polish on amazon with different numbers and microns. For example, one of the options is #50,000 and 0.5 microns and another one is #20,000 and 1.0 microns. Does the number have any connections to the microns, like this set of numbers are for certain microns? Also what would be the optimum option for polishing cherry hyperglide browns?
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No idea.
Re hyperglide browns, I cannot recommend polishing tactiles nor clicky switches because:
- Difference in smoothness is less noticeable with those switches.
- Some parts will wear more than others. Third, I haven’t done them.
- I haven’t tried polishing them.
Can i mix the diamond paste with krytox 105/106 to make the diamond polish more fluid? i feel like it’d make the diamond paste easier to apply, idk tho
I don’t know but am interested in the result nonetheless. 
quick question:
do you keep the parts of the switches together or just put together whatever after parts dry?
I think most of us don’t bother. For example, I clean the paste off with an ultrasonic cleaner and it’s just too much extra work to keep those parts together.
do you use just water? or denture tablets and/or soap?
At least in my opinion, you don’t need to separate them. Unlike vints, all of the switches will have gotten basically the same amount of usage so it’s okay to have pieces mixed together.
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Like @leemu, I don’t keep parts of a switch together. That said, I wouldn’t mix different batches as there are differences that may come into play when making frankenswitch like I did mixing retooled Cherry black housing with Hyperglide housing.
I run them for a few min with water, then again with water and a drop or 2 of dish soap, then once more with plain water. The soap isn’t strictly necessary but it helps getting some of the stubborn paste out of little crevices in the bottom housings.
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I’ve been lurking on this thread for a while and have polished around 400 vint blacks (some polished more than once) so I figured it’s about time I shared the method I use.
Tools needed:
- massage gun
- small switch tester for holding switches (I use 3x3)
- stem picker for applying paste
- mild detergent for cleaning
The paste I use is 0.5 micron 25% concentration from TechDiamondTools (available in US on amazon or ebay). I have tried 0.1 micron and it does look a bit shinier and feels marginally smoother (maybe placebo) but on the really scratchy vints it doesn’t do as well.
- Spread diamond paste on the stem using a brush.
- Put pasted switches in the switch tester.
- Massage gun each switch for around 2-3 mins hitting them dead on for about 1 min then from different angles for 1-2 mins. Try not to angle more than 45 degrees as it really doesn’t accomplish much.
- Rinse parts with hot water and use a brush with mild detergent to remove any leftover residue
I usually ultrasonic the bottom housings after this to get any other gunk out and I use a corrosion removing solution to give the leaves a clean since vints often have corrosion buildup. Also a good idea to blow out the bottom housing leaf area with compressed air to prevent further corrosion from developing.
This process takes around 1 hour for 9 switches from start to finish. I keep the stem and housings matched up throughout the process. May be tedious but it turns scratchy vints into very nice usable switches.
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@donpark what do you think I should do I currently have mx blacks lubed and firmed I saw diamond polished mx blacks and I want to get it done by someone which is 30 usd plus 40 after being lubed. I just wanted to ask if diamond polished switches make a huge difference or it’s just a small difference thanks.
Edit: also wanted to know if you had a sound test of comparing all of your experiments and also for diamond mx blacks is tribosys 3204 better than krytox 205g0 I just want mx blacks to be smooth lol
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That depends on whether what you have now is good enough to use. If it is then your Cherry blacks are smooth enough. If not then the next question you should ask yourself is whether you can appreciate the sound of Cherry blacks. If not then I don’t think polishing will be worth the effort, particularly if you’re going to have someone else do it which means you’ll be missing out of the ‘making of’ experience.
To me, it’s the best sounding switch period but the first set of Cherries as well as retooled blacks I got after that were both too scratchy for me to use so I had to polish and difference was significant. Large batch of Hyperglide I got was pretty smooth already with so the difference wasn’t significant. Will the next batch be as smooth? 
Was the result smoothest switch I ever tried? Definitely not.
As to lube, I tried 3204 more than once but always ended up relubing with 205g0 which just seems to go much better with polished blacks.
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thanks so much I think I will just lube and firm since I’m on a tight budget what you think?
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