Question Mechanical Keyboard buttons stop working after cleaning.

[cnyk]

Hello,
After a sugary drink spillage, I cleaned my mechanical keyboard with Electronics Contact Cleaner (non-conductive and smells like a mix of Alcohol and nail polish remover). After cleaning the keys, I oiled them with Silicone Oil spray. I have 2 keys that after being oiled worked fine for like an hour, after that they stopped working normally ... i have to press them real hard for them to register. I thought that the oil was not enough so i oiled only those 2 again and they started working normal for like an hour... they seem to be working normally only when drenched in oil. Do i have to clean them even more with the contact cleaner? Should i now buy oil dissolver spray or the contact cleaner will do the job? Has this happened to anyone?

 

[Paperdoc]

Describe the key contacts. I presume you mean you actually disassembled the keyboard so you can access the internal parts of each key and the contact surfaces.

I am used to a designs where the actual contacts are really little carbon buttons on the bottom of a one-piece molded sheet of flexible plastic. This sits over a printed circuit board so that each carbon button, when pushed down, touches a pair of electrical contacts to connect them. The actual key caps that you press are held over that sheet of "buttons' and that is how each gets pushed down to make contact. Is that what you have inside? Or, are there actual metal flexible pieces that get moved when pressed?

 

[cnyk]

uhm cherry mx reds i removed the keycaps, pushed down on the plastic + and sprayed so that it enters inside of the switches. the switches are like this one

 

[Paperdoc]

I'm not familiar with that type. It looks like it is assembled by snap tabs. In general, trying to open such a unit has a BIG risk that the tabs may break so you can NOT re-assemble the switch and guarantee it will work. So I do NOT recommend you try to do that. That means actual access to the contacts inside is not possible.

What you did first might have been enough. MOST electrical contact cleaners contain a SMALL amount of conductive lubricant to keep the cleaned contacts working. But you added another item - silicone oil - that may actually interfere with good contact if there is too much. And too much is only a VERY small amount.

Try re-doing the cleaning with the cleaner ONLY. Wait until the residue of that has evaporated out, then add nothing. Just try it with that one cleaning step.

 

[cnyk]

Yep thats what i did i put alot of contact cleaner inside to clean it again. Seems like the first cleaning wasnt enough for those two keys, because so far after the second cleaning its working perfectly. Lets hope it stays like that.