how to remove razer keys This is a topic that many people are looking for. bluevelvetrestaurant.com is a channel providing useful information about learning, life, digital marketing and online courses …. it will help you have an overview and solid multi-faceted knowledge . Today, bluevelvetrestaurant.com would like to introduce to you LFC#184 – Razer Black Widow Elite Key Switch Replacement. Following along are instructions in the video below:
“Interwebs welcome to let s fix computers. I ve got a razer blackwidow elite keyboard keyboard here and it s got a very mangled left control and you might look that and go. Oh my god what has happened to that and the answer is pretty simple really so the left control key goes. There riche and because of the open deck style design of this keyboard.
The something has obviously gotten dropped on the edge or it s been clipped from the side or something. And it s broken the stem off of the switch you can see the remainder of the stem embedded in that key in that key cap and then what happened was the owner of the keyboard they attempted to fix it by just super gluing. The key back into the switch and a lot of people try superglue when it s plastic like this. But the problem with liquid super glue is that it s runny and it just runs in everywhere.
And so the key the the glue has just flowed through all of the cracks in the switch and just welded the entire thing solid. So that switch is proper ruined now so we need to take apart this keyboard to remove that switch. I don t unknown time since certain if these things are not user replaceable. Although.
I m gonna have a quick go and just well i ll probably research and just make sure that that s not removable anyway in terms of replacements. I ve got a couple of options in front of me. I first ordered this one so this is a these are razer green switches and they are clicky tactile switches. So they click and they have a tactile feedback and they are the equivalent of an mx blue switch for those of you who are equivalent with you know the mx series.
And so i bought this i think it was 2 pound on ebay. But the problem is it s not rgb and i didn t think of that when i was ordering it so then i had a look around for rgb switches and i found this tester switch. Which lights up when you press it however the problem with this guy is that when i actually actually arrived in the post. This morning.
It s just another regular green switch and they ve stuck just a rgb led in it and so obviously. This isn t a proper crow. Not rgb led it s just one of these little chip leds that when you apply power to it it just cycles through the colors and flashes and stuff. And that s basically just been wired.
You can see the legs go down to a button battery. And then the other direction. Via the switch. So this isn t a real rgb switch replacement either.
Which is a shame because i paid 10 pounds for this rittany. I knew it wasn t good value for money. But this is an experimental repair. What if i can establish that these repairs are straightforward to do then obviously i can look for a proper a proper source for replacement switches.
But whatever anyway so i m not sure what we re gonna do i could just put this one in and it ll work. But then the control key won t light up so another option. I could do is i could steal the led the led switch from a lesser key that will be less noticeable for example scroll lock on num block. These toggle keys.
You don t notice them when they don t light up so much because they have toggle functions on them so or i could remove it from the poor s brake key. So we might take one of those put it down there in the control key where it s more noticeable and then put the nan light up one in that for example. So that s that s what i m thinking of right now. But the first thing.
We need to do is take this keyboard apart. And see. Oh oh..
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The click is real the first thing. We need to do is take this thing apart. And see how those switches come out and how much work is involved in fixing this thing. So let s get to disassembly first and see how far we get okay so i m looking for places to open this thing up first and i m looking under these looking under the rubber fie try not to damage the double sided tape.
I can replace that though that s not a big deal and ok we ve got a screw under this one in the top left of the keyboard. But not under the bottom one so we ll stick that go back down yep. There s one there as well i could make my life slightly easier removing these by applying a little bit of heat first. But this is okay.
No there s nothing there okay put that one back down. No there is not one there either okay. So got screwed. There in there.
And i have also up seen additional screws underneath the deck as well so i think we re gonna have to do all the key caps off so let s take out these screws and see what we get from that removing those two screws appears to have done absolutely nothing so more screws need to come out. I think we need to remove enough screws that i can lift this entire top deck off i think that s what s gonna happen here so i ve got to start removing key caps to uncover additional screws underneath. There. Luckily i ve got a key puller tool.
Here so i m gonna go around i m gonna specifically aim for keys where i can see a screw hiding underneath like over there okay. That s all the screws. I could see removed let s see if this deck lifts pool something is moving now we re getting somewhere. I think there s more screws to go surely that s everything that s everything there we go project janet t1 huh.
Okay right hold on sec firstly. I m gonna disconnect this deck here and i ve just found some really interesting stuff. Some really interesting stuff okay so firstly. I ll just quickly show you the fossum deck.
So here s the bottom case. It s called project janet 11. And it s got a whole list of different models. It s compatible with which is kind of cool razer master chief cooky chris sombrero pilgrim and so on and it s all for the different ones that you use this same bottom deck.
Which is kind of cool so you can see we ve got the client where the cable comes in and then we ve got a small sub board over here that s got a reinforced usb port. That s quite nice reinforcements there and the audio jack so that s currently so yeah and that s disconnected and that s a really yeah. So that s just usb going into there. So.
All the serial stuff is getting decoded on the back of the top deck. So let s take a look at there because that s where the action is so so here s the top deck. So firstly here comes a freeze frame to show you where all the screw points were so if we turn that guy over now let s look at the back. We ll go in down here so starting at the top.
We ve got another sub board. That s got our media controls on it so those are those are just tactile buttons. And we ve got a rotary encoder for the volume here as well. Then you can see with the back of all the keys.
Here the two pin keys and if i grab my speech. You can see this a two pin output. So you can see that s the back there pin pin..
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However more interestingly look. There s an rgb led under each key so on the race of keyboards. The led is not built into the switch itself. It s built into the keyboard.
And it just has a shine through light pipe. All the way up to the top are the mx switches like that that s why i really didn t expect that so yeah. That is really fascinating to see and at some point. We you know we re gonna take all of this off and we ll take a closer look so the next stage.
We ve got there s our usb input. And then we ve got two encoders here. We ve got we ve got an st micro. So that s a micro controller that handles the keyboard and then also look at that razor of rolled their own silicon here.
That s interesting so there s our usb microcontroller stm32 l15. One that handles all the usb and keyboard interface. However more interestingly. Though that raise a chroma 192 t.
31. 22. They made their own rgb control chip that s wild man. But also can t makes sense because with all of these rgb leds being completely independent.
The razer kronor is essentially a completely separate system to the microcontroller that s not in the slightest. Bit what i expected although i don t know what i expect it to be honest. But yeah. That s pretty cool fine okay then finally down the bottom.
There we ve got a big rgb led for the razer logo and all there s another one up there as well there s razer chroma controllers. So presumably they ve got and presumably they ve got one of them does half. And the other does the other half was something like that cool well then okay so the next thing. I m looking for i m looking for screws to remove the metal top deck from here does this i don t think it does right now.
This is a bit where i think we re gonna have a bit of a nightmare. Because i ve got a feeling that the way this has been manufactured is these switches go down on the top. So you ve got an empty socket you push the switch into and all the switches have been loaded up on this top metal deck. Then the the circuit board is laid out on the bottom.
And then i believe it then has been wave soldered now. It hasn t been wave soldered. It s it s gone through some kind of machine soldering system. And then that s just soldered everything into place which means that this top deck is not removable unless you d solder.
The entire thing. Which doesn t seem all to me one thing. I can see how we have got these we ve got some tabs here. If i twist those tabs that will release so.
What may have happened was the board was put on first then those tabs were twisted to hold it into place. Then all the switches were put in maybe you can see where there s unpopulated switches here perhaps for a different model. I have an idea we don t actually need to remove the deck..
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If i d solder. The two pins for the switch. The switch can come out from the top of the deck. And because we ve established that the rgb leds are independent of the switches.
I don t need to worry about removing any other switches. We can drop in this replacement. I ve got and they ll probably be a way of fitting. The light pipe into it so we even get the up the kramer effect on it as well.
So if i suck out the solder from those two pins. There. I should be able to push the switch out and dropping the replacement. So let s warm up the soldering iron and we ll see if we can remove enough solder to remove that ideally i need a proper solder sucker for things like this.
But i don t have one because i can t be bothered to buy one all right so we re going to start by wetting up these joins with some leaded solder to make it easier to deal with this so we ll add in some leaded solder and the lated solder will just lower the melt point. And it will also just freshen up those joints. So they melt a bit easier and now. I m gonna try and get in there just with some solder wick just to see if i can pull all of that out okay.
I think we need just a little bit of extra flux on there just to get the solder to move everything is flowing. I just need the solder to actually move right i might be able to just give that a shove now so am i correct in saying that that nub is the bottom of the switch. It is so i m going i ve got my fingernail on the the bottom of the switch. And i m just gonna heat.
Those joints alternately and just see if i can give that a good shove. I don t think i can do that one handed nope. I need i need some help with that maybe if i get trying tool on the end of it if we re out yeah boys right okay. So this switch is a different shape.
I m not sure if we can oh well maybe we can trying to see if we can convert that let s take this switch apart. And see if we can get that light pipe out how the base is a different shape. Though we might be able to do a little bit of tactical modification to that hmm okay right sitrep. So i cleared up that light pipe and cut it out however when i actually compared it to the switch.
The the switches. I ve got here. I think are an older design before the chromakey boards. When they were just doing a single backlight color.
And i think that they were designed to just have a single led like this in them. I don t think. This is that much of a hack speaking of hack. I think this thing is failing already.
I didn t think it lasted very long oh well so i m not gonna be able to fit this light pipe into my replacement switch. So what i ve done is i got the dremel and i ve just dremeled out a channel along the top of it there and that means that when that s sitting in place. The led will be able to shine up through there and that should be enough to get the shine through on the key cap. It s not gonna give the the halo glow around the key.
I don t think. But it will mean that the control the actual key cap itself will light up. I ve cleared these holes of the remaining solder and now as you can see when we look through there we ve got the hole..
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There we ve got the two terminals. The nub hole to locate it and the led and now i should just be able to drop that in there and as you can see the led lines up with that hole so i ll just see if i can push this into place for realsies. I m gonna make sure that pin doesn t bend and there s our replacement switch and it s slightly different you can see it s got a different. It is a.
But it is a different design from the chroma switches. However i think that s fit for purpose so i m gonna solder that in and i think that s gonna work let s commit to that all right that is in so let s just do a quick let s do a quick electrical test. I m gonna plug this guy here and the led should light up and we can do a quick test run with just a spare key cap. I ve got here and see what happens okay right there we go so as you can see because we don t have the light pipe.
The viewing angle is very inferior. But the led is there and it does shine through let s just see if we can get a rough gauge on how effective. That is so i ll position the camera. And we ll put a couple of keys on that let s just unplug that while i m mash keys yeah.
It s dimmer but it works and actually by i m comparing it against the windows key. Which is gonna be very bright anyway. Because it s a big key. But if you compare it versus alt.
It s all right at the very least it does glow. But you can see we ve got a halo effect around these two keys here. But there s no halo around that one so that s the price there. But i think that ll be alright to be honest.
I think that s not bad going considering. I thought we weren t gonna get rgb at all on one of the keys. I think that s all right good. I m going with that all right i m going to come back tomorrow.
And we ll put this thing back. Together. All right keyboard is now reassemble that except for the right control. I put the i put the right control.
Key cat on our replacement key. So we ve got a known good key cap over there and now we ve got to try and clean up this other control key cap. I m gonna trying to drill out that broken stem and then we ll put that on to this switch. Which is a nice decent switch and with a bit of luck by swapping those two around.
We ll be able to balance out the jank enos on the keyboard. So it s not noticeable. Okay now we have it everyone one repaired keyboard so as you can see our repaired control key it does illuminate and we ve even got a little bit of a glow from behind. It there s not as the halo effect is not as even as the other ones.
Where you can clearly see the led on top however the actual key itself lights up so at a casual glance. We d never know that there was an issue with that one and then our repaired control key cap is over there and that guy s hunky dory as well so past that thank you very much for watching everyone. And i will see you all next time ” ..
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