OT: Repairing keyboards

Cannot say about price now-a-daze; 10-30 years ago one could find them fairly cheap. My ~8 year old generic KB is at least deep hot-stamped and only one Shift key shows slight wear, increasing from the "S" to the "t" where the "t" is half-dark rather than full black like the arrow to the left of the "S". If i get really critical, the Ctrl key under it is slightly lighter than full black all else OK.

On a sunny day (Tue, 24 Dec 2013 19:11:20 -0800 (PST)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in :

People smoking? When I had the TV repair shop, I got many sets with a 'dark' picture. Rinsing the CRT screen with alcohol cleared that up, pure nicotine.

So far, I've found two type M keyboards in my stash.

Heck, who needs a new keyboard? I still have my IBM model M on my current computer. It was built in 1987 according to the sticker on the back, and works flawlessly. Great tactile feedback, and when the keys get dirty, I just pop 'em all off and wash them in the dishwasher. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Could be peanut oil, used in many compound products. The problem is, it does not always like to stay mixed.

Jamie

On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 09:02:04 GMT, Jan Panteltje Gave us:

Some of the things you post make you sound so senile.

On Wed, 25 Dec 2013 06:34:00 -0500, JW Gave us:

I like the idea of being able to adjust my sound volume from the keyboard. I like seeing my family members pop up on the little display. I like being able to plug a USB device in *here*, instead of down at my machine under the desk. I like being able to pause a movie from *here*, without having to find the mouse cursor, then the target click point to do it in the GUI. Oh, and I can bring up the local weather on the display too.

Very unusual for a rubber-dome keyboard that get business use. The ink (carbon, or whatever) usually gets intermittent long before that. Buckling-spring keyboards don't have that failure mode. Mine lost a scan line after 16+ years of office use.

On a sunny day (Wed, 25 Dec 2013 13:04:44 -0500) it happened snipped-for-privacy@attt.bizz wrote in :

The Logitechs work a bit different. They have a rubber dome mat in it, under the keys, but the things press against a normal foil keyboard (2 layers with conductors). There is no conductor on the rubber domes. But.. the keys get stuck and the lettering comes off. The one I use now and fixed with superlube uses a different type plastic for the space bar than the keys, spacebar is all yellow now, discolored? And the little anchors that prevent it falling out broke off. I drilled a hole and made a metal wire lock so the spacebar does not fall or jump out of the board.

No, not smoking; nothing external. I *thought* those things too, but I've seen it many times since in my own remote controls, phones, etc. I don't smoke, I don't drink sugar-waters, and I don't spill.

So, it's definitely inside the box, and if you wipe it away, it comes back. The pcb's aren't making it, so it's gotta be oozing from the silicone rubber.

Cheers, James Arthur

Hmmm, I think my remote did not get oily after I cleaned it. A little may be, I don't think I washed the rubber that thoroughly. But as you describe it there must be *some* pockets to hold that oil, perhaps designed in there? May be we have to dissect a few remotes to see what is inside those rubber domes, studs etc. It may be trickier than it looks to make a keypad like that to last for almost 10 years, there may be some serious experience & knowledge put inside. What if the "buttons" have tiny oil reservoirs (?!), which release some oil if pressed strongly (which is likely to happen if the button has stopped working...).

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff, TGI

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I've seen this happen on a number of remotes, cordless telephones, etc. I've read that this oily material is a plasticizer, which is part of the soft rubber compound used to mold the flexible keys. The structure of the rubber breaks down over time (ozone may be an issue?) and the oily material is released and oozes out under pressure.

I've restored a couple of devices with this problem by scrubbing the gunk off of the board and keypad with various cleansers (isopropyl alcohol, acetone, or a water-based cleaner), roughing up the rubber very slightly with fine sandpaper, and then painting the contact area on the back of each key on a conductive coating (Neolube, available from MicroMark). There are kits specially made for this sort of keypad restoration, which include a conductive coating for painting on... don't know how this may differ from Neolube but the intent is the same.

On a sunny day (Wed, 25 Dec 2013 17:17:40 -0800 (PST)) it happened snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in :

Well, air pollution perhaps. A while back I ordered a 'learning' remote from ebay ebay item number 140598827312 for about 5 $, still has to arrive. I want it to learn some of my Samsung TV remote codes, the ones I normally use to watch video from harddisk (connected to the TV USB) as that remote is highly non-functional, and always has been, cannot be opened either.

It could be a solution.

Maybe dioctyl phthalate plasticizer. It's also used as vacuum pump oil, since it has such a low vapour pressure, which means that it hangs around forever at room temperature.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Terminal.

On a sunny day (Thu, 26 Dec 2013 15:06:15 -0500) it happened Phil Hobbs wrote in :

Something makes no sense, I have many mobile phones, and lost count of remotes, other gadgets with keyboards too, and never that (My Samsung remote never worked right from the beginning). And I have been with those and lived in many places and different environments, some clearly hostile to electronics.

So I suspect either a bad product (but that would be strange for all of those), or something in the air. Could be cooking oil? That is nasty and gets into everything too, open fire, what not, oil lamps, etc etc. Live next to a refinery? Other industries?

You could check by cleaning some sheet of good material and leaving it for some month, and analyze what collects on it.

You can check for all sort of substance, for example you can do a radon check by sucking some air with a fan through a piece of cloth, and counting accumulated radiation, air is never 100% clean.

On Thu, 26 Dec 2013 12:16:51 -0800 (PST), Greegor Gave us:

Not any more. Terminal_down.

Any good for lubricating mechanical clocks?

Dunno.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs