21 Sep
2011
21 Sep
'11
6:32 p.m.
On Wed, 21 Sep 2011, Tony Duell wrote:
I gve you the shortened version last night... Here's the longer story of
my type M...
After assembling it the first time (without hooking the springs over), I
tried it out nad found that 2 or 3 keys were not working. I could live
without Caps Lock, but not without 0 [1]. So I took all the nuts off
again to reloate the flaps. I'd got most of them back in the frame when I
knocked my arm on the side of the bench. The result was that I scattered
the flaps everywhere. I managed to find all but 5 without too much
toruble, and since I was making one good keybaord from 2 dead ones, I had
plenty of spares. Then I released I could anchor the flaps in place by
hooking the springs on, and it all went together very easily.
Ah, yes, I bumped the tray as well, causing the flaps to fly.
That's probably the only problem with the Model M. Some of them have the
rattle-rattle of rivets heads bouncing around.
What I do now is insert a flap then slightly stretch
its spring and press
it over the rear of the key plunger housing, forcing the rim of the housing
between the coils of the spring. It'll stay like that, and the flap will
be held in place. Fit all of them, put the rubber sheet, the membrane
sheets and the base plate on, and screw it all together. Then unhook the
springs by running a screwdriver along, and fit the keycaps.
That sounds like a keen way of saving time when putting things back
together. One of my Model Ms has developed a problem with the F key such that even the
slightest pressure causes it to trigger rather than
triggering at the snap. I'll probably cut off the plastic rivets and fit
it with screws to get it back to health. I've done that once before and
the results were very good. The one that I reworked with screws went out
Indeed. It's probably stronger than the original. I don't like heat-stakes...
I noticed a web page where it's suggested you use
2mm screws. What I do
is drill the holes with a 2mm twist dril lan then tap them M2.5. I put
M2.5 screws in from the top side (screwing them into the newly-tapped
holes in the plastic frame), then assemble the flaps, membrane and
baseplate nad fit washers and nuts on the bottom.
I used the screws themselves to tap the holes.
You cna't fit screws inthe very bottom edge,
it'll not go in the case if
you do. And there are a couple of other places where you either can't fit
a screw or you have to flie the head down to clear the wire loop that
stabilises some of the larger keys.
I found that if you do without the bottom edge screws, there really isn't
any problem. It all sticks together rather strongly. I solved the head
clearance problem by countersinking the screws.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
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