Why I’ll lubricate my linear switches in breast milk cups from now on

I spent the weekend building myself a DIY keyboard – again. The Meletrix Zoom65 comes as a complete kit. In other words, unlike other DIY kits, switches and keycaps are included. I don’t care about the keycaps, since I have something special in mind for this keyboard.

But the switches have done it for me. They’re so-called Jwick Linear Switches. These budget linear switches are manufactured by JWK. Each switch retails individually for about 23 US cents. Certainly a positive. Consequently, I wanted to try something that I’d never done before, fearing a bad result. I didn’t want to throw my money down the drain. But the time has come: I bag lubed my switches, or at least part of them.

Why lubricate switches at all?

With so many complicated terms in one sentence, your head must be spinning. Don’t worry, I’ll break things down moving forward. You’re probably wondering why us weirdos keyboard enthusiasts grease our mechanical switches.

A mechanical keyboard gets its name from its switches. The only mechanical thing about them. With mechanical components, friction occurs during movement. That friction can feel and sound scratchy.

The so-called stem moves up and down within the switch during typing like the piston in an engine. In doing so, it touches the housing of the switch. This creates friction and, for enthusiasts like me, the unwanted scratchy feeling and resulting sound when typing. A typical first-world problem. But as it can be quite bothersome, people like me resort to brushes and grease in an attempt to reduce friction.

You can imagine: lubricating all the switches on a keyboard individually is a huge hassle. However, if the keys are to be consistently lubricated, it’s necessary. At least that’s what I thought until I tried mass lubrication in a plastic cup – bag lubing.

In addition to the housing and the stem, a switch consists of a spring that pushes the stem back to its original position. For quite some time now, I’ve been lubricating the springs all at once in a plastic bag by adding a few drops of Krytox GPL 105 – an oil – and shaking the thing like there’s no tomorrow. Now I wanted to apply the same principle to the stems.

I always only lubricated the stem anyway, leaving the housing in its as-delivered condition, because for me, the effort and result don’t pay off. Switches don’t really feel any softer when I lubricate case parts as well. But that’s my opinion, others may see it differently.

Bag Lubing stems or switches in breast milk cups

Instead of plastic bags, I used breast milk cups for lubrication, which we still have lying around in large quantities as a young family. You can, of course, use any plastic containers available to you. I disassembled all my Jwick switches and separated the parts. Putting two switches aside: one that I wouldn’t smear and one that I painted by hand with a brush as usual. Boom, a comparison.

The stems go into the breast milk cup. I added a pea-sized dollop of G-Lube from Glorious to the wall of the cup. Enthusiasts will now ask themselves: why no Krytox 205 Grade 0? The answer: This was my first time, and this way of smearing is more wasteful than doing it by hand. I didn’t want to waste my expensive Krytox on this – says the guy who keeps spending 50 francs and more on single keycaps. 😉

Then I just needed to screw the lid on the cup and shake it for a few minutes. I looked at five random switches and was delighted: the result is very consistent, with neither too much nor too little gunk on the switches for my taste.

For comparison, here’s the switch I lubricated by hand and left in its delivery state. There’s some smear on it out of the box, but inconsistently and especially far less.

From the typing feel, it’s the same as the look: both subsequently lubricated switches feel considerably less scratchy. However, I didn’t notice any differences between these two. It feels buttery smooth when typing.

I can only describe the feeling to you, but the sound is featured in the following video.

Here too, it’s the same as with the look and feel: the subsequently lubricated switches sound considerably less scratchy.

I wiped off any gunk that accumulated on the top of the mounting mechanism with a lint-free cloth after reassembling the switches.

A few moving pictures of the finished keyboard during my typing test:

Verdict: I will now only lubricate my linear switches like this

Thanks to this method, I saved about an hour and a half on lubricating a 65-per cent keyboard like the Zoom65 and got the same result. Awesome, I’ll do that for all linear switches moving forward – and with Krytox 205 Grade 0 instead of G-Lube. Why only with the linear ones you ask? When lubricating in a breast milk cup, the whole stem is lubricated. With a tactile switch, I don’t want to lubricate the stem’s feet, which provide the tactile feel. I fear that tactility will be lost as a result. But maybe I should rethink that, too.