Differences between CHERRY MY & Topre

[RBithrey]

Me again,

So, I've been using a Topre Realforce 105UFB for a few days and have to admit, am impressed by its overall feeling.

I've used a couple of G81-3000s in the past with MYs inside (FTSC) and it got me thinking - what's the difference between the way FTSC keyboards work and the way that capacitive rubber domes work?

Cheers!

Reece.

[Myoth]

wew, that's a lot of difference in any way you put it... do you mean the actuation mechanism or the difference in construction that result in the different feeling between the two?

[RBithrey]

wew, that's a lot of difference in any way you put it... do you mean the actuation mechanism or the difference in construction that result in the different feeling between the two?

Most probably mechanism to be honest Myoth, although any other info would of course be handy!

Cheers,

Reece.

[Muirium]

Domes are domes. When made well, they are smooth as silk. No contacts to grind on.
Capsense domes are domes you aren't forced to mush down at the end, to actuate. They fire effortlessly on the fly, nice and high like all good mechs.

Fairer to compare Topre with MX than MY, though. Cherry MY's notoriously poor. Feels like damp newspaper, for reasons only vintage Cherry ever knew.

[Myoth]

wew, that's a lot of difference in any way you put it... do you mean the actuation mechanism or the difference in construction that result in the different feeling between the two?

Most probably mechanism to be honest Myoth, although any other info would of course be handy!

MY are membrane based, the actuation happens when you close the circuit.
Topre is electro-capacitive, I wouldn't be able to explain it to you honestly. Though, as Topre is quite polarising, there's a wide array of threads and documentation on the matter :
wiki/Topre_switch#Construction
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyb ... they_work/
https://www.keychatter.com/topre-switches/

As for the difference in construction, MY is more-or-less a silder on top of a spring on top of a metal contact : you press on the slider, compress the spring and eventually have the metal contact close the circuit. It's a linear type of switch.
Topre uses a rubber dome to create tactility, it's nothing more than a very high-end rubber dome as far as the feeling goes. Not to take away from the quality of it. It's the organic feeling of tactility with everything that makes mechanical switches so appealing, if not more, considering the properties of electro-capacitive switches.

[Muirium]

Capsense is nothing magic. It's the exact same thing your phone's touchscreen is doing to sense your fingers. Move a conductor (your finger or metal like a spring) closer and a capacitor can sense it, immediately, without touching. In keyboards, they just put a single sensor under each one of the keys. Once the key gets closer to the sensor, it fires the keystroke. Again without touching. Which is why you can build it to be so smooth.

Switch contacts and especially membranes like MY and 2000s-era rubber-domes are the opposite. They need touched by the slider to work. Or mushed good and squishy squelchy hard, in MY's membrane's case!

(But don't you have to touch touchscreens? Sure. But you are not touching the touch sensor. You're just touching nice non-conducting glass. It's still spooky action at a distance, going on within.)