washing my keyboard in the dishwasher...

From: Brad Parker <brad_at_heeltoe.com>
Date: Mon Nov 22 10:35:02 2004

Quick update on my keyboard washing experiment:

Background:

I dumped red wine on a cheapo ps-2 keyboard I got from dell. It's all
plastic but I like the "feel". I mopped up the wine but the keyboard
would not work the next day - some keys worked, some did not, some
produced odd results, some where "sticky".

What I did:

I read the email on using the dishwasher so I tossed it in the top rack,
upside down and added a little liquid soap. I washed it on a normal cycle
with no drying heat.

Afterward I shook it dry and then put a hair dryer to it for about 10
minutes. I left it on it's side with a towel underneath for a day.

After day I then plugged it in and it didn't work. bummer.

So, I opened it up. Lots of water still inside. And, a nice thin
plastic flexible pc board with lots of black contacts (carbon?). Each
key had a little round rubber "dome" with a black spot (carbon?) in the
middle. When a key is pressed the key presses the rubber dome and the
black spot contacts the flexible pcb and makes contact.

I removed and dried the flexible pcb (it still had some minor wine
stains which I washed off with water. I left the whole thing open to
dry for a few hours.

Then I put it back together and it works like a champ! Yea!

So, the dishwasher worked well and cleaned out all the crud (and most of
the wine) but opening it up seemed to be the correct thing as a final
step.

The water inside may well have evaporated if I chased it with iso
alcohol and left it in the sun but it's cold here now and I didn't do
that step. Also, I think the "two layer" construction of this really
required opening it up to get it to completely dry.

ymmv :-)

-brad
Received on Mon Nov 22 2004 - 10:35:02 GMT