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Disclaimer: We are not responsible for you messing up your precious keyboard by following our howto.
Okay people, here is the deal. I'm sure you have seen lots of keyboard how-tos. I even saw a pic of a full keyboard in a dishwasher. Now I'm sure if that person did that the keyboard didn't work afterwards. Ok, enough with the lameness.
Here is the Keyboard Diswasher How To:
For this howto I used the M$ Natural Keyboard Elitist thing you need to have is a dirty keyboard and a dishwasher of course. I was using a tiny brush on my keyboard and I was pulling out some nasty stuff from in between the keys. Mostly it was cat hair (damn cats) and crumbs, it was pretty sick as you can see in the photo I took.
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The first task was to remove the screws from the back of the keyboard. This is pretty straightforward, so no pics :P
After the screws are removed take the back off and place it to the side.
The back of the keyboardf
Now you will see the 3 plastic sheets - 2 of the sheets have wire traces on them, with a clear sheet in the middle. Remove ALL 3 plastic sheets at the same time and put that in a safe spot. Try to keep them together.
Back of the KB with plates removed
Next you will see a small PCB (Printed Circuit Board) with the keyboard wire attached to it. Gently lift the PCB and wire from the keyboard, under the PCB there was a small foam rubber pad. Remove that also, and place it to the side along with the LEDs. Those items will not be going in the dishwasher.
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Next is the rubber or silicon membrane. This is what give the keys their sping or rebound action. Gently remove this. I did not add that to the dishwasher, I was afraid that the water jets would toss the membrane through the dishwasher, so I washed those by hand.
The rubber membrane
After the membrane is removed you will now see the keys of the keyboard. The M$ Natural keyboard has 3 groups of keys. They are not attached to the front of the keyboard case so they will pop out.
- So with the keyboard apart you should have:
- Front and back of keyboard
- The keys
- Membrane
- LEDs
- PCB with wire
- 3 plastic sheets with wire traces
I put the front and back of the keyboard and the keys in the dishwasher:
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60mins later I had a fresh set of clean keys and keyboard covers. The only problem I had was that the keys didn't dry properly. So a little compressed air and everything was done. This would be a good time to do any keyboard mods that have been giving you the itch. Changing LED colours or adding EL Cable to light up your keys and so on. The only thing to do now is reassemble the parts and plug the keyboard back into your computer. After I assembled the kb the action of the keys was great, it felt like a brand new keyboard!
I hope this give you the courage to clean out your funky keyboard.
Thanks for reading this how-to, any quesion you want to ask or comments you have you can post in the forums.
Sludge-T