At my work I have an elevating desk. When I press up it works for some time and then stops suddenly and reverses direction. This table has always had this issue, but I just assumed it was lack of pressure when pushing the button. I had it disassembled once and added some plastic to add pressure, but alas, the button was shitty to the core. I got back to the office this week after a long work from home stretch and it was the final straw: the button must go. To quote Dave: Don’t turn it on, tear it apart!

The PCB was waaay more complicated than I anticipated. It has a beefy microcontroller and a whole lot of very nicely done power supply work. The relays are connected through a ULN2003 and there’s even a serial port for remote control (before you ask, yes it has been done). The small clicky shitty buttons in question are in the bottom of the picture below:

I couldn’t find a button in my stash that had the same shaft length, but I did find loads of Cherry MX compatible Kailh Speed Gold switches. Removing the original spring + lever assembly reveals a hole a couple of mm short of being MX sized. Enter stage a cheap wire cutter and voila: A Cherry MX-sized hole:

Now all that’s left is to remove the old button, add some good old wire and solder and glue the new Kailh switches in place:

A dab of epoxy (and my ex said I couldn’t commit) and I have a working desk controller:

Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Happy hacking.

/J