DCX vs DCD vs DCL - Drop’s Keycap Profiles Explained
We’ve covered the basics of keycap profiles before—spherical/cylindrical, sculpted/uniform, etc. One thing that has come up more and more over the years as we’ve expanded our portfolio of offerings here at Drop is the distinction between some of our similar profiles. Specifically, what is the actual difference between DCX, DCD, and DCL? Cylindrical Profiles To recap the previous article on the topic, one of the most basic ways to separate various keycap profiles is by shape (cylindrical, spherical, or flat). DCX, DCD, and DCL are all cylindrical profiles. The most famous cylindrical profile is Cherry profile, as defined by the original manufacturer of the keycaps—Cherry. GMK now owns those tools, and as such, only they can technically claim to produce “Cherry” profile keycaps. Similar keycap profiles are often called Cherry profile colloquially, but are in actuality slightly different. For the sake of not splitting hairs, all of the cylindrical profiles discussed here are...
Apr 9, 2024
Over the course of the last year or so of writing switch reviews of my own, I’ve been integrating more and more data into my descriptions and comparisons of switches. This is seen no more clearly than in the dozens of wiggly-lined graphs, known as ‘Force Curves’, that now sprout up in the dozens on each of my latest reviews. While I’ve managed to avoid dragging the discussion of force curves into any of my short articles on Drop thus far, the increasing use of them throughout my work means I should probably get around to discussing them sometime soon. After all, while I live and die by this kind of information for switches, I fully well understand that I am more obsessed about switches than the vast majority of (admittedly kind of already weird) mechanical keyboard enthusiasts. However, I think that knowing a thing or two about force curves could make a big difference in the hunt for your perfect, endgame switches. So, here’s the quickest and easiest introduction to force curves and how to read them so you can make the most informed switch purchasing decisions. At the absolute most basic level, a ‘force curve’ is a graph that shows you how heavy a switch is at every single stage of it being pressed in and released. Or, rather, it’s simply an objective, graphical representation of how the switch feels in your hand! More specifically, a force curve depiction and what you actually feel when pressing in a switch are the exact same thing - the complex interaction of the spring, the stem, and the leaves of the switch that complete a circuit to register a keystroke in your keyboard. While these force curve diagrams were once upon a time pretty rare to see on vendor’s and manufacturer’s sales pages, they are becoming increasingly more common with new switch manufacturer marketing techniques and a couple of enthusiasts collecting force curves of their own. (See the work from enthusiasts like HaaTa, Pylon, and even my own Force Curve Repository!) Regardless of who made the force curves that you encounter on a sales page or in a data repository, they almost always are displayed in the form of an x vs. y style of graph which plots force or weight (vertical) against displacement or stem travel distance (horizontal) and feature two curves - one for the downstroke of a switch (pushing it in) and one for the upstroke (releasing it). In the event that they aren’t labeled or color coded, the downstroke curve will almost always be the one that is higher up on the graph and can be read as if you were pushing in the switch by looking from the left end of the curve at 0 grams of force (gf) to the right end where it bottoms out, or reaches its maximum force. Here’s an example force curve with some labels to help digest all of that new information: