Flushing WD40 inside a Cherry MX keyswitch

You'd flush it out with WD40.

Well, you should not have used WD40 in the first place (we could have told you that).

Seriously, you should never use a substance that you know leaves a residue. It should be a liquid which dries up. Rinsing keyboards in clear water, it depends on keyboard construction how long it would take for the water to dry.

Membrane keyboards are great for water-rinsing. Two or three days of gentle-warm air flowing over the keyboard, and it is dry again and ready for reassembly.

Any mechanical key-switches, it's going to take longer. And some keyboards are toast, if you spill a coke on them. If the keyboard cannot be fully disassembled, it makes it difficult to avoid sticking-switches. I had a keyboard that cost $150.00 and that one used steel rivets and no screws, so it could not be disassembled for drying purposes (the plastics unscrew, but the internal assemblies are riveted).

Paul

No, it's a cheap keyboard that looked new in Sham Shui Po. I bought it home then found that some keys were stuck, notably the ENTER key and the Right Shift key under it.

I popped their keycaps and smelled the corresponding MX keyswitches underneath. It's like kerosene or WD40, I could not tell.

So, could those mysterious liquid be cleaned without replacing the corresponding keyswitches?

Maybe an arsonist suddenly aborted a dark operation and dumped the keyboard. I dunno... :)

It is probably less trouble to find another keyboard.

I don't know how much solder-heat a switch like that can take.

Paul

No, I wanna repair/save/fix the keyswitches.

Is there an easy solution to flush whatever fluid as trapped inside those 2 Cherry MX keyswitches?

I don't wanna re-solder those 2 keyswitches. That would be a lot of trouble-s. :)

If the liquid has found its way into the switches where they are in-situ, then another liquid could be used to soak it out without dismantling. Water is no use because WD40 and most other oils are water-repellent, it needs to be a solvent for oily things. Some alcohols will dissolve a limited amount of oil, so you could try soaking it in isopropanol for a few days (in a closed container outdoors, to prevent evaporation and a build-up of flammable fumes).

Alternatively you might find a two-stage process works better - use a very light oil like paraffin [kerosene] to dissolve the heavier oily substance, drain it well, then soak in isopropanol to remove the residual paraffin.

Do not use 'rubbing alcohol' as a substitute for proper isopropanol, it is contaminated with water (and possibly other unwanted substances). Check that anything you use will not damage the plastics or remove the lettering.

I would personally try 99% isopropyl alcohol. It is cheap and likely easy for you to find, and likely will take most of the oils off the keyboard. It shouldn't take long to fully evaporate either, probably real quick if you put it out in the sun.

Best of luck.

To submerge the whole TKL keyboard? That takes a big bucket and a lot of "99% isopropyl alcohol"!! And it's dangerous because "99% isopropyl alcohol" could caught fire.

Let me think about it. It's a high-risk op!!!

I suppose both kerosene and WD40 are volatile fluid? In that case, maybe I could just bake the keyboard under bright sunlight for a few hot summer days in Hong Kong right now.

Then I could immerse the TKL keyboard into a big bucket of hot water for a day, then leave it to dry under sunlight again for a few hot summer days.

Well... worth trying as this method does not need anything special, nor involve fire risks. Meow....

They contain volatile components but there are also non-volatile oily substances in WD40, they are the ones that will prevent switches from working.

Oil won't dissolve in water.