Comments on: Keyboard contact repair

By: suuasa

suuasa — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 13:27:21 +0000

hi,
i m working for turning point i m gating a problem
in key board membrane. is there any solution for track belting. And it should be in stacker type .

By: byszmann

byszmann — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:47:38 +0000

�

By: PutinRulz

PutinRulz — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:40:56 +0000

Hello everyone.
I am new here, and I’m glad that found this place.

By: acidrain

acidrain — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:55:04 +0000

Pencils are made of graphite, not lead. I used a trace repair pen on my apple keyboard (coffee or soda, don't know, bought it used). It cost about $7, but it will be used for other projects. It looks like a whiteout pen, but instead of whiteout, it has a silver-ish conductive liquid that dries in a few minutes. Put down a light trace, let it dry thoroughly, and you're done.

Radiocrap CircuitWriter pen, http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2104395&cp=&sr=1&origkw=trace+repair&kw=trace+repair&parentPage=search

By: mkoracer

mkoracer — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:56:33 +0000

OMG SCOTT!
It is good to mention the pencil method, but in my experience it didn’t work for longer stretches of missing trace reliably, they always seemed to flake out after a week or two.
I like the feel of the old keyboards, so I have bought a few $2 specials from Goodwill and chucked them after being unable to repair the destroyed traces.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:54:18 +0000

use a #2 pencil and trace the bad connections! Lead is conductive and I have repaired alot of keyboards this way. I am actually using a keyboard now that had 9 or 10 bad key’s and there all fixed and it’s been like 8 months.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:47:30 +0000

OMG those way’s to repair a contact are redicules and a pain in the ***. Here is the easiest way to fix a contact. Take a #2 pencil and whatever key is failing find it on the board and trace the contact line there your done lead is conductive and i have repaired lot’s of keyboards that way infact this one im using had like 10 bad key’s and I repaired them probably 8 months ago and they still work perfect.

By: lewis

lewis — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 14:30:26 +0000

Shame I didn’t check HaD for a couple of days, now you will all never know that pencil works great.

By: JDP

JDP — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 06:38:29 +0000

Has your teacher ever taken apart a keyboard? Have you? Most keyboard are built *very* cheap, with rubber dome switches. A good keyboard has real mechanical switches, like the famous collapsing spring of the IBM Model M, or the Alps switches in the Apple Extended Keyboard II. I’ve yet to see an oil immersion keyboard. If your keyboard starts to leak the oil, then what happens if the plates short out or an air gap forms that vastly changes the capacitance? It’s a feasible idea, but I can see many downfalls.

By: conor

conor — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:33:57 +0000

my science teacher was telling me how most modern keyboards use two plates immersed in something like mineral oil. The computer reads the capacitance of the plates (the plates get closer, the capacitance goes up) and detects which keys have been pushed. the purpose of all this being that there is no physical contact made, i.e. no damage, no corrosion, etc. is he right? if he isn’t, why hasn’t this been done?

By: pragma

pragma — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:12:34 +0000

@mrblarg: that’s the problem – your lubricant could act as a dilectric, turning the cu+al into a electrochemical cell. Such ‘connector lubes’ are probably out there, but I’ve never heard of them (never looked either).

I suppose it might be possible to have a sealed reed switch with some mineral oil between the contacts. Finger pressure would just push the oil out of the way, allowing contact to be made. But it would have to be in a flexible container like silicone or rubber.

By: mrblarg

mrblarg — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:47:35 +0000

Interesting stuff. aren’t there connector lubricants that can stave off corrosion, though? and is there anything they can do about the electrochemeistry between cu and al?

By: dioxide

dioxide — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:10:06 +0000

#8, gold oxidizes too, it just happens that gold oxide (whatever, you know what i mean) is as conductive as gold, where copper, silver, aluminum, etc have poor conducting oxides.

By: mkoracer

mkoracer — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 20:35:24 +0000

This is genius! I've tried various methods of repairing these traces using foil or wire with limited success, they always seem to fail after a while. The clamp over the superglue is great, I would just be worried that the glue would spread too fast and get in between the foil and the trace before I clamped it.

P.S. #5, it is mentioned in the article and the blurb that rear window defroster liquid would work well, it just costs a lot more and is harder to get than "stuff in your kitchen you already have"

By: Circuit Receptor

Circuit Receptor — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:03:42 +0000

I had a G15 gaming keyboard that was screwed up when my friend spilt water on it. I bet this could have helped… o well.. good thing I could return it.