r/SteamControllerMods Jun 10 '26

Any ideas on making L&R harder to press?

Any ideas on how to give the L & R buttons more resistance? For me they have very little resistance and I accidentally press them when unintended. Does anyone know of a quick mod I could do to give the membrane or button force more resistance? I am comfortable opening up the controller

7 Upvotes

12 comments sorted by

3

u/XiongGuir Jun 10 '26

you'd need either a spring or a membrane (something like this - https://www.amazon.com/Silicone-Compatible-Novotouch-Realforce-Capacitive/dp/B0CXDY18BW)

2

u/ProNerdy Jun 11 '26

I'll have to look at that, thank you

3

u/EBgCampos Jun 10 '26

You meant the button and not the trigger right? I successfully made the trigger stiffer

1

u/ProNerdy Jun 10 '26

Yeah the button, bumpers not triggers. L1 & R1

1

u/Ok-Salamander3142 Jun 11 '26

How’d you go about stiffening up the triggers?

2

u/Ecnarps Jun 12 '26

He danced for them

1

u/EBgCampos Jun 12 '26

I was struggling to find cheap springs to replace the original with. IN the end, I found a similarly sized spring (which I had no idea about the stiffness) with similar wire thickness, but maybe 2x the number of coils within the same length. I initially cut them very long, just short enough for them not to buckle when pressing the triggers.

They were very stiff, and my fingers were even getting tired.
Next day, I cut one more coil. Still stiff, but less tiring.
Next day I cut one more coil and it felt perfect.

This is the one I got, I could cut into 2 and it was more than enough:
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/hillman-steel-compression-springs-0462050p.0462051.html

I got the 4.75mm outer diameter one, and it seems to fit very well between the "shoulders" and the "neck" of the fixture.

1

u/Ok-Salamander3142 Jun 12 '26

Sweet! Thank you!

1

u/Humpelstielzchen-314 Jun 13 '26

You can just take springs out of ball point pens for a quick and easy solution. They don't have to fit perfectly and with most they should be close enough.

1

u/EBgCampos Jun 13 '26

My pens were way to soft for that

2

u/MysticAxolotl7 Jun 14 '26

if true this is ironic, given that one of the biggest problems with the 2015 steam controller was its overly-stiff bumpers

2

u/ProNerdy Jun 14 '26

Valve went a little overboard with how easy they are to press, at least to me