Mechanical keyboard switch teardown: interactive 3D teardown

All 6 steps

1. 1Pull the keycap

   Hook the wire keycap puller under two opposite corners of the keycap and pull straight up: the keycap slides off the switch stem’s cross. Pulling at an angle can snap the stem or the keycap’s cross socket.

2. 2Pull the switch out of its hot-swap socket trap

   Slide the switch puller’s two prongs down over the top and bottom of the switch, where its plate clips are. Squeeze, so the clips let go of the steel plate, and pull straight up: the switch’s two copper pins slide out of the hot-swap socket under the PCB. Set it in the switch opener. Avoid this trap: The switch’s two copper pins are thin and soft. Press a switch back into a hot-swap socket at an angle, or with a pin already a little bent, and one pin lands on the PCB beside its hole and folds flat under the switch instead of going into the socket’s spring leaf. The switch sits in the plate as if nothing were wrong, but the key never registers. Check both pins are straight, line them up over their holes and press the switch in straight.

3. 3Open the switch

   With the switch sitting in the opener’s pocket, put the lid on its two posts and press it down: its four prongs push in the top housing’s four latches, two on each side, and the top housing pops free of the bottom housing. Lift the lid off again.

4. 4Lift its parts apart

   Lift the top housing straight off. Under it the stem stands on the coil spring; lift the stem out of its guide, then the spring off its post. In the bottom housing the two copper contact leaves stay where they are pressed in: one fixed, one that bends, each with a gold crosspoint.

5. 5How a keystroke is made

   With the top housing still off, the stem and spring are set back in and pressed. At rest the stem’s leg holds the moving leaf away from the fixed one. Pressed 2.0 mm down, the leg slides past the leaf’s tip, the leaf springs across and the two gold crosspoints touch: the circuit closes and the key registers. It goes on to 4.0 mm, the bottom; let go and the spring pushes the stem back up, parting the contacts.

6. 6Lube the stem and the spring trap

   Brush a very thin coat of switch lubricant along the stem’s sliding rails and a touch on the coil spring’s two ends, never on the contact leaves. The switch then goes back together in the reverse order: press Reassemble. Avoid this trap: Switch lubricant belongs on the stem’s rails and the spring, never on the two contact leaves. Take a loaded brush into the bottom housing, to do its rails as well or just in passing, and it wipes grease over the leaves’ gold crosspoints. Pressed, the stem still lets the leaf spring across, but now the crosspoints meet through a film of grease: the key registers only now and then, or not at all, and the switch has to come apart again for the leaves to be cleaned with a clean, dry brush or a little contact cleaner. Wipe the excess off the brush first, keep it on the stem’s rails and the spring’s ends, and if you do the housing’s rails too, keep it well clear of the leaves.

What you need

• Wire keycap puller · pulls a keycap straight up
• Switch puller · for a hot-swap keyboard
• MX switch opener · presses the four latches
• Switch lubricant and a fine brush · optional, for a smoother switch
• A parts tray · for the spring and the stem

Questions

Safety

Unplug the keyboard before you pull switches. A hot-swap socket is held on by its solder pads only: press switches in straight and support the board, or the socket can pop off.

• Lithium-ion batteries: never bend, puncture or pry a battery with metal. A damaged cell can go into thermal runaway: it smokes, catches fire and can explode. Discharge it below 25% first; if it swells, hisses, smokes or gets hot, stop and move it somewhere safe.
• Static (ESD): work on an anti-static mat with a grounded wrist strap; a spark you cannot feel can kill a chip.
• Power off: switch the device off and unplug its charger before you open it, and disconnect the battery before touching anything else inside.

About this teardown

3D Spatial Reconstruction: Models are engineered from factual hardware measurements to visualize internal layouts, screw lengths, and hidden cable traps before you open your device. Always verify cable routing on your specific hardware revision.

The keyboard is a 60% hot-swap board of our own design, and the switch a generic MX-style linear switch: a 15.6 mm square housing in a 14 mm plate cutout, keys 19.05 mm apart, 4.0 mm of travel with the contact made at 2.0 mm, and a 45 g spring, as in Cherry’s MX Red.

The spring force shown between rest and the bottom (about 30 g to 60 g) is our estimate of a typical linear spring, and the 3D runs faster than real hands do.

The traps are our own pictures of what goes wrong: in the pin trap the switch comes to rest on its folded pin, a fraction of a millimetre proud of the PCB, and in the lube trap the grease on the gold crosspoints is drawn large and the leaf stops just short of the fixed one on it.

Sources: CHERRY MX Red: 45 cN, 2 mm pre-travel, 4 mm total travel, Redragon’s switch lubing guide (January 2026): keep the gold contact leaf dry; lubed contacts can leave presses missed or not registered, and the leaf is then cleaned with a dry brush or contact cleaner, Glorious, fixing bent switch pins (September 2021): a bent pin can stop keystrokes registering; lined up, a switch goes in without force, and a folded pin is unfolded and straightened with tweezers, Price: MechanicalKeyboards.com, Cherry MX Red 45 g switches from $0.28 each (October 2026).

The 3D models, drawings and text are our own. The device shown is a generic one of our own design, not any one maker’s model.