Cleaning your keyboard and stuff in a dishwasher

paris

Not sure if this is the right forum for this or if this has already been posted - but I came across this link a couple of weeks ago that I thought just had to be an April Fool's Day joke.

http://www.rabidhardware.net/howtos/kbmod/index.shtml

I also came across a much simpler version of the above link too in article form, which covered everything from putting your floppy drive, cd-rom drives, power supplies motherboards (without batteries), disassembled Ink Jet printers in the dishwasher.

I thought it was kinda interesting.

paris

Xterminator

Thats f*cked up, that is!

X

Bosco

A keyboard in the dishwasher at a lowish temperature should be fine once it's dried properly. I've cleaned a keyboard in the shower with a scrubbing brush before and didn't have problems, except that it took so long to dry that I lost patience and took the keyboard apart to dry it.

These days though I use Isopropyl Alcohol (Iso-Propanol) which can be bought from any good chemist, and a clean cloth.

Typedef

Recipe for breaking electrical equipment.

Take one idot.
Instruct idot to put piece of electrial equipment into the dishwasher.
Next tell him to turn on said dishwasher.
Then remove now broken piece of electrial equipment and recycle.
/Sit idot down in front of typewriter and tell him to randomly punch the keys until he churns out 'A tale of two cities'\
QED.

Bosco

You could probably get away without the typewriter

SantaHoe

Ah the joys of keyboard rescue!

My method is far more time consuming:
[1] Disassemble the keyboard entirely. (4 mins)
[2] Rip off the keys with a screwdriver or other sturdy tool of choice (10 mins)
[3] Clean off the little black contacts on the back of each rubber stopper thingy. (1 hour)
[4] Dump the 105 or so individual keys into a basin of hot soapy water and clean each one off with your fingers, before placing them all on a big towel. (1 hour)
[5] Scrub the bare keyboard casing with more hot soapy water, and leave to dry. (15 mins)
[6] Give the transparent circuit sheet a good wipe-down, being carefull not to bend it too accutley. (30 seconds)
[7] Snap the keys back into their proper slots on the keyboard casing (~10 mins - depending on how well you know your qwerty)
[8] Replace the rubber plungy things on the inside behind the keys, making sure they're neatly in place (~8 mins)
[9] Drape the plastic circuit sheet back over the rubber plungy things, and make sure they're exactly aligned with their respective contact points. (2 mins)
[10] Re-attach the rest of the keyboard casing, while hoping desperatly that you haven't misalingned the plastic circuit sheet. (2 mins)
[11] Plug in the keyboard and test every key... if it doesn't work, you'll have to remove the casing again, and check the alignment of the plastic sheet. (could take a while)

I somehow managed to spend 6 hours reclaiming a keyboard using the above steps, but it was nice to have the ol' girl working again.
Dishwasher? PAH!

astrofool

at 1/2 of minimum wage you'd earned enough to get 3-4 keyboards in the same time, what a silly thing to do

SantaHoe

I realise that, thank you astrofool.
But it was the challenge that counted... you may aswell tell those people who spend hours overclocking and tweaking P100's that they could buy a faster chip for half the man-hours blah blah blah.
Some people just don't get it.