Keyboard Cleaning

[whirlpolf]

wait a minute

you guys really put the keyboard into the dishwasher? Just as it is, no disassembly?
What if some water stays between the contacts? How does it dry? There is this silicone liner (with its counterpart contact spots). What about the electronic PCBs?
This really puzzles me, but it is so tempting ;-)

Can you explain how to get it dry again without any residual moisture?
Thank you
Joe

 

[mark_wpduet]

I always run the vacuum dusting brush full power over my keyboard, then wipe it down with bleach water.

 

[dirtybuck]

You[re Gonna Love This...

I had a spare keyboard sitting in the closet. I decided it needed cleaning as well. I also used the spoon method to pry the keys off.

When I came to the spacebar, I did it just a tad too hard and BROKE OFF a very small and minute piece for it to sit right.

I continued with the cleaning routine, and then decided to disconnect my other keyboard and put the newly cleaned one on to see if there was any "problems" with it.

There are. When I hit the spacebar, it has a tendency to stay down on one side and won't come back up until I press on the other side (if I'm lucky). So now, it's toast. It was a cheap ass keyboard to begin with, so what should I expect.

I always like to keep a spare on hand, so I'm going to Walmart later. I did some online looking on their site earlier, and noticed a keyboard by Logitech that looks like a fairly decent design and is in a good price range (my mouse and webcam are also the same brand). I'll take the one I'm using now, make it the spare and hook up the Logitech.

So, BE CAREFUL on prying the keys off! Make sure you're not taking off any other crucial parts, no matter how small they might be.

 

[whirlcool]

Joe:

If you run a keyboard through a dishwasher you need to hang it out to dry for a very long time, maybe a few weeks before plugging it back in. I never use that method, but I have held one under the faucet running hot water on it. I let it hand out for a month after wards in a spare room to let it dry.Before I hung it up I shook it for awhile to get as much water out of it as possible.
I thought it was a goner even before I cleaned it in this manner, so I didn't have anything to lose. But it worked.

Early keyboards had glass tubes where the keys were inserted into the keyboard and removing a key from the keyboard will also break those ruining the keyboard.

 

[whirlpolf]

Now that's cool!

Bill and Allen, thank you both very much.

Prying keys off is no longer a problem for me, I've been doing this some hundred times already. (I know about the space bar problems, had them in the beginning, don't ask for sunshine). But today my palms can sense this little "outch"-touch to it (push hard, harder and after hardest it's called "gone" - I can avoid that by the feel of it, no problem.)

This dishwasher thing is fascinating, I think I will run some older ones in my machine and then use a combination of both methods: Disassemble and put all the washables in a laundry net (fine mesh) and give them a "glass and crystals" soft wash. After a hopefully shorter drying time I will put everything together again.

If this dishwasher method can free me of that dreadful brush/wipe routine, I will owe you one ;-)))

Thanks again.

 

[lordkenmore]

I always like to keep a spare [keyboard] on hand

It's a good idea having a spare keyboard. Years back, I learned this the hard way when one letter on my keyboard stopped working. And of course, that letter was one I needed regularly. It was my only keyboard, so I was basically without a computer (except for looking up stuff in document archives) until it worked again. Fortunately, a good cleaning fixed the problem.

These days, I keep spares of pretty much everything. I think it's a good idea, since my computer hardware is old--everything I'm using now, except maybe the mouse, is 10 years plus. If something breaks, I can get back in business in a matter of minutes. The only weakness right now is my monitor--my backup can only viably do 800X600. But that would be good enough to survive a few days.

For keyboards, one can go to a thrift shop. The thrift shops in my area often have them. Goodwill usually has a huge stack of keyboards. There is a good chance that it will actually work--at least something carefully chosen. I've even seen new keyboards and mice show up. The quality is pretty low--most of what I see are something provided for free by a computer company. It probably gets donated with little or no use in favor of something better. While not something I'd want to actually use for any length of time, a cheap Goodwill keyboard can be a nice, cheap backup that's "good enough" to get by with. And every now and then, a good keyboard does turn up--that's where I got the IBM M keyboard I'm using right now.

 

[DADoES]

 
<blockquote>... I learned this the hard way when one letter on my keyboard stopped working. And of course, that letter was one I needed regularly. It was my only keyboard, so I was basically without a computer (except for looking up stuff in document archives) until it worked again.</blockquote> Character Map can be used to get a missing/malfunctioning letter, but it's surely not as convenient as a working keyboard.

 

[lordkenmore]

Character Map can be used to get a missing/malfunctioning le

Programs like Character Map can be used. I had a program of this type installed, and I might have used it when that letter went out. I think I also might have copied the letter to the clipboard, and pasted. One could also have used a macro program to globally reassign the missing key to one that was little used.

But I found that creative solutions were too inconvenient. It was hard writing anything--the missing letter kept distracting me and derailing my train of thought. Which derailed quite enough on its own. Given that I had several things that needed to be written NOW, I actually switched to using my old typewriter. It seemed easier to adapt to that than a missing letter. I was actually surprised that my transition to the typewriter went pretty well--although this incident occurred only a few years after I'd stopped using a typewriter. The bonus was shutting my mother up, who hated computers, and who, if I recall right, went into the "computer users can't survive without them!" theme when that letter went out.

Had I been unable to get the keyboard fixed, I might have learned to work with some creative solution. At that time, I was not in the mood to cough up $100 for a new keyboard (this was before $10 keyboards), particularly since the computer was not as necessary at that time as it had been in previous years. Or maybe I'd just have stuck with the typewriter. Thankfully, I was able to get the keyboard cheaply fixed by a local computer shop.

 

[autowasherfreak]

I use a vintage IBM Model M keyboard, and every three months or so I pop off all of the keys and soak the in the sink with a little laundry detergent and a little bleach, then I clean the rest of the keyboard using Windex. The IT tech at my old job told me that I could completely disassemble the Model keyboard and wash it in the top rack of my dishwasher. I've never done it, I don't have the nut driver so I can remove the the nuts that hold the case together. I have washed the key tops in the dishwasher a few times.

 

[qualin]

A funny story...

Funny story..

Back in the late 90's/early 2000's during the dot com boom, I worked for an ISP (Internet Service Provider) as the local tech support guy.

During that time, we got in a bunch of promo gifts from various vendors, one of which were stress balls. The problem with these stress balls is that they were filled full of silicon sand, which happened to be an excellent conductor.

Well, over the span of a week, three of these balls exploded in the raging fists of the poor people doing telephone technical support, ruining their keyboards in the process. (Not to mention the occasional Coke spill bringing the tally up to five.)

Well, these were just your basic bottom end Dell keyboards with the rubber domes inside and your typical plastic sheets. So, I took some time, carefully disassembled the keyboards, popped off all the keys except for the spacebar and shift keys (I never take those off, they're a pain to get back on.) and put the top portion of the keyboards into the top shelf of the dishwasher.

Imagine the absolutely confused look of the receptionist as she's walking by watching me stuff disassembled keyboards into the dishwasher.

One "Regular" cycle with "No heat" option and they were clean as they were when they came out of the factory. I let the top parts sit overnight to dry them out after vigorously shaking them and reassembled them the following day.

As for the keys themselves? I let them soak in a bowl overnight with a palm olive and water mixture. The problem with doing that is that a lot of manufacturers put a bit of oil on the shaft of the key so that the key has smooth key travel. Palm Olive detergent removes all of that. The best way to fix it is to keep a can of sewing machine oil handy and lubricate each key shaft. (Perfect for fixing seized CPU fans!)

After that, the only stress balls we were allowed to have were those foam ones.