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Don't wash your keyboard

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kinarfi

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I thought keyboards were sealed I guess not .
I think I made a mistake, I washed my keyboard after removing it from my computer now it types weird.
I presently have it under a hair dryer keeping it warm and blowing air hoping it will just dry out, I will later put a vacuum on it to see if that helps, is there any active electronics in a keyboard ?
Anybody have any good ideas for it?
The attachment is supposed to say "KEY BOARD.png
KIEY .LOADng.png
black = cut & paste
blue = a to z & 1 to 0
red = a space b space .... notice how u jumps up one row
green = top left to bottom right
lt blue = CAPS top left to bottom right
purple = CAP LOCKS top left to bottom right
 
I had to strip and wash a keyboard after it had been soaked in hydraulic fluid.

Luckily it was a water based fluid, not an oil based fluid, so some soapy water and a good rinse and drying off had it working nicely.

Unless they are specifically built to be "waterproof", they are not.
Yes there are some active electronics in there.

JimB
 
Oops, that wouldnt do it a lot of good, there is a processor in a keyboard to generate the codes and serial protocol.

Was that hydrolubric Jim, I've dealt with that stuff on power presses, when it starts to dry is goes really sticky.
 
Once on a blinding rain, I had to jump out from the car and make a run for an entry located about 100 meters away.
When I arrived there, I noticed that my cell phone (a brand new BlackBerry Torch) had fallen off.

Retracing my steps back to the car, slowly as I no longer minded getting wet, I finally found my BlackBerry on a deep puddle. It must have been close to 10 minutes the phone was under water.

I immediately removed the battery and drove back home. Arriving there, I immersed the phone on a glass full 0f 96 degree ethanol.
My reasoning for use ethanol was twofold: first ethanol is really water-avid, it will immediately dissolve any water. Second, being itself a liquid, ethanol will penetrate through the smallest crevices.
Also, ethanol completely reduces the water's surface tension.

Allowed it to dry for a full day, replaced the battery and....the phone worked just fine. It worked for over the two years I owned the phone.
 
I take mine apart and wash them with soap and water all the time, and have NEVER had a problem. I let them dry before using them though. (Duh...)
 
Looks like some of your keys are "shorted" together (you press one and it also connects others). Note nearly every time you type "i" it also types a "k", same with "l" and "o", and a few others.

My guess is you still have some drying to do. Make sure you get into every crevice. You'll probably need to completely disassemble your keyboard in order to completely dry it though, and even then it would take some work.
 
HW540 new one on me, but then I've never worked on anything as fancy as a sub.
 
depending on collected contaminants and moist residuals and degree of corrosion, one can recover a wounded keyboard with isoprpyl alcohal flush drain, vacuum and force air dry for 24h to remove fluids under chips. I have been successful using liberal amounts of flushed alcohal, drained then vacuumed. I used a central vac.

beware of sparks.
 
Ok
I never worked on anything as fancy as a subsea production system.
 
I immersed the phone on a glass full 0f 96 degree ethanol.
My reasoning for use ethanol was twofold: first ethanol is really water-avid, it will immediately dissolve any water. Second, being itself a liquid, ethanol will penetrate through the smallest crevices.
Also, ethanol completely reduces the water's surface tension.

Is this what they call "displacement drying" or somesuch?
I'm sure I read somewhere a while back that isopropanol helps the evaporation of water - would that be todo with the reduction of surface tension as you describe in ethanol?
I spend a lot of time dealing with filthy electronics, and in idle moments I often find myself thinking about ways to clean this kind of stuff with minimum fuss.

kinarfi - as others have said it will probably be ok once it's dried out completely. If you really want to be sure, take DerStrom's advice and strip it down again.
 
oil has a fairly low dielectric constant of 2 , I suspect WD40 is similar. Water is very polar active with d=80.
If ethanol has low impurities, it should be good.
WD40 smells better even though extracted from fish oil and also displaces water and has high breakdown voltage, so one can use this as well as alcohal based cleaners.

In the old days freon based cleaners were best with ultrasonic baths, now ozone unfriendly.. However time of day crystals with foil lids did not seal well under PCBA aqua-flux cleaner processes used in board shops and tended to rust and halt our mainframe clocks within days after shipment :eek: ... So I demanded TOD crystals be stuffed post aquaflux board cleaning... same day I investigated the problem.
 
I suppose the concern with WD40 is its effect on (some) plastics. Is it really extracted from fish oil? Someone once told me it was 90% petrol... certainly does have a curious smell.
 
you are correct it is a myth, but an ex-colleague won a Bass fisherman's tourney with ut, but now WD40 is banned from competition... so he said

I can only vouch for low residue isopropyl,alcohol
 
Water does not damage most electronics if you dry it fully prior to turning it on. I have washed my hall effect keyboard several time in the dish washer with good results.

I said 'most electronics' because little in this world is absolute and people chew your backside if they know of the rare exception.
 
I do believe I solved the problem, My son agrees that I probably put the ribbon back in incorrectly causing the weird key strokes, the problem will be fixed when my new key board gets here Friday.
If you put water under a vacuum using a vacuum pump designed for evacuating an air conditioner, the water will boil off at low temperature especially if warmed, I just happen to have a vac pump, so I soldered a port in the end of a coffee can, soldered and taped another can to that can, but it was too short for the key board, so I cut a hole in the end and put the key board inside and put another can on the end and sealed it with more tape. Things were going well as the sound of the pump was changing as it drew the vacuum, then with a loud bang, the cans that had lids cut out and were soldered and taped together imploded, my problem was solved, buy a new key board!!!!
After I took all the keys off and removed the foil and buttons, I only found very minimal electronics in the line of the indicator lights for number lock and cap lock and a few others, sooooo if you manage to spill a soda or a beer or some other drink on your laptop computer, you can probably wash the keyboard successfully if you allow it to dry NATURALLY.
I hope my sharing has been educational for some of you, especially the part about water boiling at low temp under a vacuum. :)
Kinarfi
 

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I knew about water boiling at low temperature in a vacuum, but I think that you win the prize for the most imaginative way to destroy a piece of electronic equipment! :D

JimB
 
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