Keyboard socket kills switches?

[YellowJersey]

So I had my keyboard modded a few months ago to make it hotswappable. I had Cherry MX Browns in it and just got my Guzzew U4Ts. I had to snip off the two plastic pins so that they'd fit into my 3-pin sockets.

 

 One socket (the one for my left arrow key) seems to kill the U4T switches. No U4T switch works in this socket and, once it's been in this socket, it doesn't work in any other socket. But my browns still work in this socket.

 Any reasons why that would be?

[williamcll]

40 minutes ago, YellowJersey said:

So I had my keyboard modded a few months ago to make it hotswappable. I had Cherry MX Browns in it and just got my Guzzew U4Ts. I had to snip off the two plastic pins so that they'd fit into my 3-pin sockets.

 

 One socket (the one for my left arrow key) seems to kill the U4T switches. No U4T switch works in this socket and, once it's been in this socket, it doesn't work in any other socket. But my browns still work in this socket.

 Any reasons why that would be?

Did a capacitor/resistor fell off?

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

Had a good look at the pins of the switch before and after? And what hotswap sockets did you use, not all of them are really compatible to all switches, unfortunately.

 

Otherwise, if the switch still works in the specific socket, then I doubt it is something electrical and more about mechanical damage to the pins. There are no electronics inside the switch, it is just a simple piece of metal opening/closing a circuit.

[YellowJersey]

12 hours ago, GarlicDeliverySystem said:

Had a good look at the pins of the switch before and after? And what hotswap sockets did you use, not all of them are really compatible to all switches, unfortunately.

 

Otherwise, if the switch still works in the specific socket, then I doubt it is something electrical and more about mechanical damage to the pins. There are no electronics inside the switch, it is just a simple piece of metal opening/closing a circuit.

I've examined the pins of the working and non-working switches. I don't see any difference. I don't know what hotswap sockets are used; I sent it out to a third party. It's just weird that no U4T switch works in this one socket, the socket seems to kill any U4T switch I put in, but the Cherry MX Brown switches work just fine in it (before and after). I have no idea what's going on. All the other sockets are fine with the U4T switches.

[YellowJersey]

@GarlicDeliverySystem @williamcll

The plot thickens. I did some experimentation and took the pins/leaf from a Cherry MX Brown switch and put it into one of the dead U4T and it came back to life. It worked fine in any socket, except for that weird left arrow socket. I decided to take the housing off and examine the PCB and it looks like there's a tiny bit of excess solder (or something else) on the underside of one of the pin holes where the pin would poke through. My theory is that is causing damage to the internal leaf mechanism rather than the pin itself by pushing the pin back into the switch and damaging the leaf. I also experimented with putting a U4T stem in an MX Brown switch and that also killed the MX Brown, which did not work again when I put the MX Brown stem back in. So I think it has something to do with that crap around the pin hole in the socket combined with the longer stem of the U4T that's causing the issue. It's not a deal breaker as it only affects the left arrow key, but it is somewhat annoying. I should have taken a picture of the PCB when I had it all taken apart. My guess is that it would have to be de-soldered and re-soldered to remove the crap around the hole.