In the spirit of the "hold both shift keys down and type The Quick Brown Fox..." it's time to see how stiff the keys are on your keyboard! A USA nickel weighs 5.00g according to the US mint (if you don't believe the US Government see this pic with $10 of nickels). Just start collecting them up and balance them on a key. It's easier to glue them together into a 50g stack but not necessary if you don't have glue around. The Logitech G series for example will take about 13 nickels or 65g. My HP DM1z NotBook took 12 nickels or 60g. I'll take the results and include them in the database of keyboard switch stiffness, I call this the RipOmeter.
13 nickels held up on my original Razer Lycosa's 'F' key. The real trick is to stack them without any of the nickels touching the adjacent keys. There's just barely enough room on a Lycosa for that. It has laptop style compact keys that flange outward and downward at a 45 degree angle. For kicks I pulled out my old laptop-style Viewsonic Slim keyboard. I had to use pennies instead of nickels obviously. It held up 21 pennies. A zinc penny generally weighs 2.5 grams. So that's 52.5 grams or 10.5 nickels.
Thanks - I was wondering if the Razer Lycosa was the same as the Logitech G series. Seems to be. Also The Saitek Eclipse may be a bit lighter but not much so. The other trick is if the keys are too small for the nickel is to shave off a shim off of a cork. Drink wine. A4Tech KL-5UP - 60g
80g! Builds character I guess. Is that an older keyboard? Sometimes after a few years I find I have to really mash the rubber domes to get any switches to register. Anyway, added your result to the "Keyboard Peak Force To Activate Switch" database here.
I don't have enough nickels so I used a combination of nickels and quarter to press down on the "F" key of my 1st gen Saitek Eclipse. I placed them very carefully and gently so that I do not accident press down on the coins which would then press down on the keys. I also don't drop the coins on top of each other since dropping something causes an object to exert more force than just it's weight. 7 Nickels + 6 Quarters = 7 x 5 grams + 6 x 5.67 grams = 69.02 grams of force.
6 quarters and 6 nickles on my Deck Legend with black switches, so going off of JaguarSKX's math its 64.02 grams
Repeated a few times to make sure I wasn't introducing any weight by dropping the nickels on one at a time and came out to 12 nickels, or 60 grams, on my Razer Blackwidow Ultimate (blues)
Thanks for the measurements! Added them to the database. The Das Blue MX Cherry at 75g looks a bit off to me. Make sure your nickels aren't hitting the adjacent key.
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