They shouldn’t be. It’s just a tight fit so they’re a little hard to get off.
Here’s a picture of the Alps encoders with black slim chroma caps which showed up today. Much easier to turn the Alps encoders which have more resistance than the originals.
Edit:
So the one encoder started glitching out again after I thought I had it fixed by reflowing the STM32. I found 3 74HC4051 IC’s on the back. I thought they were for just the buttons at first but it looks like they “are” connected to the encoders. Reflowed those 3 and the problem is gone again, hopefully for good.
Here’s some pictures of the IC’s
I had it open yet again, so I decided to try a few white LED’s in the memory pads. Why not 
Edit # um I’m losing track. Most sane people would have just sent this thing back.
I decided to try the DC power jack since I’d only been using the USB for power.
Plugged it and it didn’t come on at all. Tried a couple different 9V-12V power supplies.
Opening it up again 
Voltage regulator had one leg that wasn’t soldered down, just floating about the pad. I can definitely say this wasn’t tested before it was sent out. 
Anyway… I soldered the leg down. Now I have DC power.
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Gosh !
Perhaps this was tested just long enough to be be put in the rework pile, the tester could have found either problem, or another you haven’t found yet ! When you’re selling stuff like this you think, “Why do the rework, as long as you still have good units to sell”, right ? And then at the end this unit just got moved accidentally to the fixed pile, and shipped. I generally would have attached some sort of tag to remind others but maybe this was just put in a pile.
You’re pretty good with fixing/improving these, i’d wonder if Isla has anymore left in a junk pile ? Maybe they’d sell them off as salvage ? Hell they may even have parts left over, though you can skip the encoders.
Then again why bother, I’m sure you’ve got better things to do with your time.
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Also mine arrived without one of the rubber feet, and some of the pads trigger also other pads when pressed. I’m a bit disappointed…
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Hey! Been awhile since you posted this but I’m thinking of doing the same mod to my Kordbot. However, I’m having trouble actually getting the thing open. Even when the screws are out, it looks like something is holding the board in place at the top and bottom sides. Did you have any similar difficulties when opening it?
If you’re talking about the case I seem to remember there being screws under the rubber feet.
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