The Ultimate Guide for Lube Monkeys (Switches) x 0 © & fenntasivccos) Oh- (@swe =) @ File E6t View Tools Help B a oe Lubing Switches TLDR: Look to the outline and click on the section you need to go Intro: Hello fellow lube monkeys! This guide is meant for keebheads who are constantly looking at the different techniques for switch lubing as well as for newer + enthusiasts just corring into the hobby who are looking for a more up-to-date resource. | lube and film switches for a lot of different people and have found different methods work better for different switches and constantly find myself talking with other lube monkeys about the results of different methods, lubes, etc. This guide is a reflection of that and is written by a few of us. Why do we hand-lube switches? Tris is a great question to ask yourself before you put yourseff through the process of sitting down for a few hours to open up, disassemble, lube, and reassemble your switches, The way that | see it, there's 3 reasons to hand lube switches: 1. Tomask any scratch froma switch 2. To get rid of spring ping or leaf ping 3. To deepenffill out the sound of a switch When should we use factory-lubed switches? As the hobby progresses, we're seeing better and better switches right out of the bag/box. Factory luibing tech/methods are getting better- so, when does it seem okay to just run those switches stock? Worth is subjective but if you need an answer, if there isn't springlleaf ping, there's a tolerable level of scratch, and the switch doesn't sound plastickyfthin, it sounds like your switch is fine to run stock. Be sure your entire batch is consistent though, not just one switch, The Guide (Disclaimer): The following sections are wsitten with lubing linear switches in mind- if you're lubing tactiles, you can stil use the same techniques, but | would read the tactile witch section before you go gung-ho on your switches, Lubing Your Springs Tris is definitely an odd thing to put as the first section but it really is one of the more universally modded parts across all switches- near, tactile, and clicky switches alike. Hell, your stock switch might be almost perfect for the most part aside from that damn spring ping- So, we're going to cover three methods for lubing your springs: bag lubing, brush lubing, and donut dipping your springs. Bag Lubing Your Springs:You've got your ziploc bag, you've got atleast some type of oil (Krytox 105-107 is whatis generally used) and you should have all your springs already harvested from the batch of switches (or if you're going to spring swap, that too). You're ready to lube! This method is great if you're looking for an easy time and looking to do the job a litle faster: 1. Throwal the switehes springs into your baggie 2. Add in a few drops (5-7 is fine, | do 1 for every 10 to be safe) of your cil 3. Optionally, | ike to add some 205g0, just a litle glob or two applied with a brush to the bag. | find the mix ends up thicker and lasts longer 4, Seal the bag but blowin air so that there's room for the springs to move 5. Shake it up for at least 30 seconds and really make sure the switches hit every part of the bag. This is basically spreading the lube all over the springs 6. Let the air out of the bag and then lay the bag on the table and massage them for a few seconds. This is going to make sure any globs of lube are spread out evenly and untwist some of the springs 7. You're done! If you look closely, your springs should have a thin sheen. Brushing Your Springs: So, you've got the same set-up as bag lubing but brushes instead of a bag (and optonally a tweezer to hold the spring). You're ready to brush lube! | found that brushing tends to last longer than bagrlubing and its a handy method if you don't have any thinner oils in-house. 1. Get some lube on your brush- you don't need a glob, just a consistent coat along the bristles of the brush 2. Hold up your spring and brush one end. You don't need to cover the inside, just brush perpendicular to the bottom and along the side of the end should be fine. You're looking for a transparent but still visible coat of lube along this part in the red circle of the imageeed Da ed cg a 3, You're done! You really only need to do one end of the spring, Place the lubed side onto the bottom housing. Rinse and repeat this process for the rest of the springs Donut Dipping Your Springs: For this method youll need a lube of your choice, probably 205g0\I personally use blend #7 from Gazzew for this). Donut dipping is not as fast as bag lubing, but if ‘you don't have thinner cils laying around and feel that brush lube takes up too much time, donut dipping might be for you. Disclaimer: this can use up a lot of lube very quickly, so if you're budget conscious, you might just want to brush lube. 1. Hold the spring with a tweezer, and insert it into a glob of lube, and a small ring should appear around it Like brush lubing, this only needs to be done on one side, The picture below uses blend #7, which is considerably thicker than 20590. a 2. You're done! Place the lubed side onto the bottom housing. Rinse and repeat this process for the rest of the springs,Full-Lube Method When people say they lubed a switch but don't specify how they lube it, this is what | imagine they did for lubing- its one of the most commonly used methods and | see a lot of video guides teaching this. The general idea is that you're lubing the of the bottom housing, the leaf, and the stem of the switch, This method will yield the deepest sound results as well but it will take the most amount of time. kr (Once you've disassembled your switches, grab your lube, brush, and stem holder and you're ready to go! 1. First thing is the bottom housing, you really want to hit 3 spots in this part the two rails and the leaf. | get lube on my brush tip (No globs, just a clear coat of lube for consistency and to avoid over-lube), Swipe the rails (red circle) twice per side using different sides of the brush and use whatever's remaining ‘on your brush to swipe across the leaf facing towards the rails(blue circle) twice. Krytox GPL 106 -> Krytox GPL 107 This is the order from thinnest to thickest for viscosity of oils. Honesty, it's fine to pick up any of these, Just note that 105 wil not last that long compared to 106 or107 due to its lack of thickness. However, | personally stil use 105 to lube my springs. Switch Lubes © Krytox 204: Thinner or runnier than 205g0, some people use it for tactiles. © Krytox 20590: The "standard! lube that everyone gets and should be available with every vendor. 20590 can be used to lube linear, tactile and even clickies. Its an al-arounder lube and with the right amountitechnique you can use this lube for almost any switch. * Krytox 205900: People mixed up this lube with 20590 on Amazon. Definitely a thicker lube than 205g0 you can tell by examining it, Recommended to use this to lube creams or mx blacks to mask the scratch * Krytox 20592: I've never bought this lube before but some Korean Mech Youtubers use 20592 mix with 105 to lube their nears. It may be worth experimenting with © Krytox GHv4 Thick (106+206g2): Thick lube used for scratchy switches like mx blacks or creams again. Using this lube tends to deepen the switch’s sound a bit due to the thicker consistency. Be careful with this lube if you pick some Up, a8 ghv4 is harder to spread the lube compared to 20590 and easier to over-lube with. “Less is more" © Tribosys 3203: A thinner lube, generally used with tactles + Tribosys 3204: Can be used to lube for linear or tactile switches. | would pick this over 3208 as its like 205g0- you can use it in different situations. Many switches nowadays are already smooth enough that using 3204 is fine. © Gazzew Blend #7: Purchasable from Gazzrew himself, this is a thicker lube that many people favor for donut dipping Tactile Switches ‘As | mentioned previously, the guide was primarily written with linear switches in mind but we'll be covering howto lube tactile switches in this section, The main difference here is that the stem has a bump that we have to keep in rrind. Many people will tell you to not lube the stem legs or leaf to preserve the tactility/not dampen it. However, as someone who has used many tacties, | think it's okay to lube the stem legs if you want to round out/dampen the tactile bump. ‘Sometimes a tactile bump might be just a tad sharper than you would othervise like but you can round that problem out with leg lubing, Just treat it ike lubing a linear switch in that case, one swipe across the legs is fine, | still avoid lubing the leaf facing towards the rail, You can do full-lube or stem-only, for tactles, it's all preference. I'll now cover where to avoid lubing if you did want to preserve the tactile bump. Bottom Housing © You can stil lube the rails of the bottom housing if you like, but avoid lubing the leaf facing towards the rails, | found that it dampens the tactlity too muchPetar fortactiles Stem © If youwantto preserve tactilty, avoid lubing the stem legs ed poet youwantto [> Peay Just because you can't lube the legs doesn't mean you can still do the rails You just have to be mindful of where you apply lube since lubing the side could still get the legs Reducing Leaf Ping: Many switches, tactile or linear, can suffer from leaf ping(Some JWKs). But there's a method to getting rid of it and it doesn’t involve dampening tactlity for tactleswitches! This method has been drifting around for a while now but | haven't seen any ‘quides with visuals for it, so | had to experiment myself. ‘Where do | lube to reduce leaf ping? You're going to lube the back of the leaf, the side facing towards the back of the switch and away from the rails. Swipe twice, making sure to go from end to end in the highlighted area. eee td easton tid © You can use whatever lube you're using for the switch already, 3203, 3204, etc, but | found the best results with 20590. Broken-in Switches With switch break-in machines becorring more and more accessible, coming across broken-in switches is pretty commonplace these days. Luckily, the method that ‘you use to lube a broken-in switch is more or less the same as any other stock switch, You could do the ful-lube method or stem-only, depending on how smooth your switch is or what type of sound you went to go for. However, the one thing you should note is that when you lube broken in switches you need to keep the housings/stem together. Unlike regular svitches, you can't mix and match the housing and stems- this is because the switches wore in such a way that the parts are a perfect fit for each other. Mixing parts would mitigate a lot of the benefits of breaking in switches. Most people recommend opening, lubing, and closing each switch, one by one, to avoid mixing anything up. Personally, | open a small batch of switches, keeping all the parts together, lube them all, and then close them all, in an assembly line fashion. Whatever ‘works for you, go for it because as long as you keep the parts together, you're gucci, Cleaning Off Factory Lube We've already discussed when you should just run factory-lube/oiled switches but let's discuss when you shouldn't run them If you're having doubts about the factory job of your switches even after it passes the sound test (no spring ping, no leaf crunch, not thin/plasticky sounding), take one of them and open it up. yway pare an example of a decent factory job ‘What you're looking for is @ relatively consistent application and no dlobs of lube Now what looks like a bad factory job? Well, if there's any white globs of lube ‘on the stem, that should already tell you that the job is going to be inconsistent ‘throughout the batch. An example of such is when you noticed that a good number of your switches have issues/visibly have more lube than other switches throughout the batch, ees aC) Decade This occurred vith a % of the batch How do I clean it? ‘Thatll depend on how thorough you want to be. The most thorough way is to take a ¢-tip/cotton swab and isopropyl alcohol and wipe all the lube off the bottom housing and stem. However, | found it easiest to take a clean rag/tonel, wipe off the lubefoil on the stem and call it a day. The mejority of factory lube is usually on the stem anyhow. Some people also use ultrasonic cleaners on the stems and let them air-dry over the day but this doesn't work 100% of the time, Do I have to clean it? Nope! If you find that the factory lube is consistent enough or little in amount, you can lube right over it instead of cleaning it off. Just be sure to. go extra light on the 20590 or even use a thinner lube if you're planning on doing this. Your main goal is to spread the factory lube and get an even layer across the stem. Conclusion and Contact Us Thanks for tuning into the guide, | hoped you found it informational It will be continually updated & revised as we grow along with the hobby. If you have any questions about lubing switches or just keyboards in general and the guide or google wasn't able to help, feel free to join the server where we hang out and shoot your question under #keeb- help: ites //discord convinvite/weeng