I had some intermittent keys on this keyboard controller, and I tried taking it apart and cleaning the contacts with 70% alcohol and Q-tips. The really bad contacts, I tried going over them with a graphite pencil.
It repaired most of the keys but now others are intermittent even though I went over them with the alcohol and Q-tip cotton swabs. Can anyone recommend the ideal cleaner to clean these sort of contact pads (some sort of conducting black material on both rubber and PCB boards)? I am willing to purchase new contact strips but I would still have to clean the PCB side of the contacts.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Also any tips on how to get this controller feeling like new again would be appreciated.
I very feel fortunate to discover you have this forum. I enjoy your videos on Youtube.
Usually a cleaning will not resolve this problem. #1 replace the contact pads. #2 on ebay there are sellers that supply kits of just the contact pads that you glue on. I would only do #2 if your contact pads are not available or you just had one or two keys to fix.
To me it sould like your pads are just plain worn out.
Cheers
Cleaning the pcb, don’t use anything but Alcohol. Maybe a soft toothbrush
Thank you for the reply.
Looks like Syntaur has the contact pads. Just waiting on them to answer my question.
The rubber contacts should be replaced, along with the pcb’s they are attached to….
If the keyboard is old, to get that “new” feeling you would need a new keyboard assembly.
The rubber contacts should be replaced, along with the pcb’s they are attached to
Whether the pcbs have to be replaced depends on the type of pcbs. If there are graphite contact spots on the pcb too, then in some cases replacing it might be required to to replace the pcb too, but if the pcb side of the switch is only a net of copper traces, then a simple cleaning will do the work.
And to be honest: I had around 40 or 50 keyboards with bad contacts on my bench until now, and there was only one, where I had to recommend a full replacement. The others I could recover by simple cleaning and only I a few cases (one out of ten) by replacing the pads.
The PCBs with the rubber contact pads have the black graphite (if that’s what it is) contacts.
What I did was clean them w Q tip cotton swabs and 70% rubbing alcohol and most got better while it made some others that were not intermittent, intermittent. So now I’m thinking maybe that was not the best method but it seems everyone agrees that alcohol is the best cleaner.
I’ll try cleaning them again and if that doesn’t work I’ll just replace them. There doesn’t seem like there’s any damage to the carbon on the pads or PCB side contacts so not sure what’s causing it to be intermittent.
I just wanted to update this thread with two more options though I haven’t tried either yet.
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Conductive Rubber Keypad Repair Kits - like used on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vq0S4UU9yM
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Deoxit F5 - which explicitly says is safe for carbon, plastic and membrane switches. I’m assuming its safe for rubber assuming thats what the membranes are made of, however I keep hearing otherwise (even though you are not putting it on the rubber it might travel there. Mineral spirits is supposedly bad for rubber so I don’t know why they list its safe for membrane switches).
I haven’t tried either personallly so correct me if I’m wrong.
