The F5 key on my Framework (about a week old) feels dead and has since day 1. The key works, but it doesn’t travel very well and feels like it bottoms out almost immediately. If this were a less-used key I probably wouldn’t care, but I use F5 a lot.
I suspect this might be fixable by popping off the key cap and checking to see if the scissor mechanism is out of kilter or maybe the keycap is misaligned. I found this post where @Davy_Bell helpfully included a GIF of the keycap removal. It looks pretty straightforward, but I am wondering if it will void the warranty on the part if I try and damage it. Is this something I should try, or should I start with Framework support?
Just to close this out, I contacted Support and they ran me through some troubleshooting to attempt to make that key respond properly. They did not want me to remove the keycap.
The troubleshooting did involve removing the keyboard, so now I know how to do that. It is marked as “difficult” in the guide, but it isn’t really. It is straightforward, just time-consuming and tedious. The process is actually pretty easy, even with the fragile ribbon cables. Don’t be intimidated by this job if you need to do it, just have a clean surface and a couple of containers for storing the screws as you remove 'em. It is really not very hard, and that was good to learn.
Anyway, Support authorized a replacement so they’re sending me a new one. Overall, this has been a pretty painless support interaction and the team was responsive and helpful. There’s nothing more to be done on this one, but I figured I’d at least provide an update about the outcome.
The “difficulty” comes in the form of "try not to lose any screws, or strip any threads. (The more you do something, the more likely you’ll eventually do something wrong. In this case, there are a lot of screws. Like shooting a basketball, 1 - 2 in a row, fine. Try 50 in a row.)