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KN-86 Deckline

Keyboard Hot-Swap Socket Tutorial (YouTube)

What it is

Section titled “What it is”

A focused tutorial walking through what Kailh hot-swap PCB sockets are, how they’re installed (when the PCB ships without them pre-populated), and how an operator uses them to swap switches without touching a soldering iron. The video is the canonical “what does a hot-swap socket actually do?” reference for someone new to the small-mech-keeb world.

The relevance to KN-86 is that the holykeebs Ferris Sweep PCB ships with hot-swap sockets pre-populated on the current revision (ferris-sweep.md, holykeebs-buyers-guide.md). The operator-facing benefit — swap a Kailh Choc v1 switch in 30 seconds, no soldering — is exactly what this tutorial illustrates from the user side.

What this teaches that KN-86 needs

Section titled “What this teaches that KN-86 needs”
  • The hot-swap workflow itself. Once the Sweep is built, the operator (or Josh, or any future user) can change switch flavor (linear → tactile → clicky → silent) without desoldering. The video is the visual reference for that gesture: pull the keycap, pull the switch with a switch-puller tool, snap a new switch in. Worth bookmarking in the eventual KN-86 Owner’s Manual as the “how to swap switches” reference.
  • What hot-swap sockets look like under the keycap. Useful for ADR-0031 follow-on documentation work (the keyboard.md rewrite per ADR-0031 §F3) — a screenshot from this video or equivalent illustrates the physical mechanism cleanly.
  • The case where hot-swap sockets are not pre-installed. The video shows the alternative path: PCB ships with through-hole pads, operator solders the sockets in themselves. Not the KN-86 build path (holykeebs ships with sockets installed), but useful context for understanding what we paid for by choosing the Soldered kit tier per holykeebs-buyers-guide.md.

What we are explicitly NOT doing from this video

Section titled “What we are explicitly NOT doing from this video”
  • Not installing hot-swap sockets ourselves. The holykeebs Soldered kit ships with sockets pre-installed. We skip this step.
  • Not Mill-Max sockets. The video covers Kailh-brand sockets specifically; Mill-Max 0305 are the other industry-standard option but holykeebs uses Kailh. KN-86 inherits whichever holykeebs ships.

What this is good for in marketing

Section titled “What this is good for in marketing”

The hot-swap affordance is a real operator selling point — “you don’t like the switch feel? Pop it out and try a different one. No tools.” A 15-second clip from this video (or a self-shot reproduction) is a strong marketing-page asset for the deck-customization story. Worth queueing as a marketing follow-up under marketing-plan.md post-v0.1.

Notes

Section titled “Notes”