Keycap mounts
This section documents keycap mount forms, dimensions and compatibility between brands.
Contents
Mounts
- Cherry 8 mm
- Honeywell
- Jeanrenaud, Elec-Trol and ИЗОТ
- Micro Switch, Licon/Cortron, Omron, TESLA and Alps
- RAFI, Siemens, Sasse and ITW/Devlin
- cruciform
Customisations
A number of switch series were customised by the manufacturer to accept different keycaps, including keycaps from rival manufacturers. Known instances of this are detailed below.
Series | Customisation |
---|---|
Alps KCC | General Instrument Series S950 is a variant of Alps KCC series that takes Clare/Pendar keycaps. Looking at the injection mould cavity numbers, either Alps provided the tooling (or the plans for the tooling) or produced these switches on GI’s behalf. |
“Side-angled” cream shares a keystem customisation with KFF; in both cases, these switches are thus far only known from Facit typewriters from Sweden. | |
Alps KFF | These share the same apparent keystem modification as KCC above. |
Cherry capacitive | Cherry’s pre-DIN solid-state capacitive switches were adapted to accept standard NCR keycaps, just as was Datanetics DC-50; this can be found in model B4TE-8301, built for an unidentified NCR terminal. |
Cherry M7 | M51-0131 is a variant of Cherry gold crosspoint with a custom mount. The reason for the custom mount remains a mystery. M51-0131 is a replacement part number for M51-0129, and one assumes that the previous version of the switch had the same custom mount. |
Cherry M7 Style D itself is a mystery. So far, it has only been found in SAGEM keyboards. These switches are Clare/Pendar mount, which suggests that they were a custom part made for Sagem to permit them to use existing Belgian or French-made keycaps. | |
Cherry M9 | Cherry M11 is a ground-up redesign of Cherry M9 created as a drop-in replacement to Datanetics DC-60. |
Cherry M94A-1GBR is an M9 variant that takes the same keycaps as M51-0131; these are found at various sources in Bulgaria (both used and NOS). | |
Cherry M9 in general was widely used in typewriters, using at least one custom mount, marked “TA” in the M9 part number schema. M94A-18NI is another “TA” type, although it will accept Cherry MX keycaps. | |
Datanetics DC-50 | NCR requested a custom DC-50 type that would use their existing blade mount keycaps, possibly from reed switches. |
Switchcraft 315900 is a DC-50 variant that uses a standard non-keyboard pushbutton mount. | |
Datanetics DC-60 | Evidence suggests that DC-60 was customised to accept MX keycaps (the cream DC-60 type); this has been found in the same keyboard as Cherry M1, where the latter was used for space, but with the standard DC-60 mount. |
Digitran KM | Digitran made a KM variant that accepted Micro Switch keycaps. |
Micro Switch SD | Plunger type C was a custom SD Series type for NCR. This is a blade mount, whose dimensions differ somewhat from the custom DC-50 switch made for NCR. It looks like it is the same stem as that of the illuminated switches with plunger-integrated LED, as though NCR only wanted a single keystem for all |
Plunger type K is another custom type. This has been found in a Bunker Ramo keyboard. There is no indication that this was customised specifically for Bunker Ramo, but it is definitely a non-standard mount. | |
Mitsumi KAM | Mitsumi KAM was adapted to take Marquardt keycaps |