Hirose Cherry M85

M85 is a series of centre-illuminated switches from Hirose Cherry Precision. Introduced in 1987, it was adopted by Cherry Germany and included at the end of the M8 brochure, even though its purpose is quite different from that of M8 switches. It is a derivative of M8 and shares the M8 switch contacts, although in every other respect it is a totally new design. The name “M85” implies an M8 switch with contact type 5, but it seems to have been chosen for its visual convenience, and most likely uses the same contact system as Japanese M83 switches. M85 appeared in the Hirose chronology as follows:

Hirose filed Japanese utility model S63118123U in 1987 for M85, and from the patent it can be seen that internally it seems to use standard M8 contacts. As with other Hirose M8 types, it is single pole only.

The part numbers follow the common part number schema, with the stem type designation of “N” for Japanese custom type.

On the 31st of July 2013, Cherry announced that all of M8 series would be discontinued. This included M85A-0N00, the only known M85 model. The last-buy date for any M8 switch was the 31st of October 2013.

Models