A Keyboard Vacuum that Sucks?

ewhac writes "Recently, on a whim, I bought one of those tiny little battery-powered vacuums, pitched as effective in cleaning the schmutz out of your keyboard. After trying it out, I found out that it sucks. Or rather, it doesn't suck. Er... It fails to remove the aforementioned schmutz. This came as little surprise to me, since there's obviously an upper limit to the volume of air you can move with a pair of AA batteries. But I suddenly became curious as to whether an effective "keyboard vac" exists at all. So I thought I'd ask here: Has anyone encountered an effective, small hand-held vacuum that doesn't suck? ...er, does suck? Sucks well? Whatever..."

Comments

3M appears to make something

[adolf]

3M has a vacuum, as displayed on this page from the Mouser Electronics catalog.

Costs a couple hundred bucks. 1 HP motor, has a filter that's supposed to be able to trap toner, and looks like it's got all sorts of exciting, elongated attachments for your sucking pleasure.

However, like someone else here, I suggest putting the keyboard through the dishwasher. I tend to take the electronics out of mine first and just run the plastic (keycaps, chassis) through, but there's nothing particularly bad about water and keyboards, or any other modern electronics.

Just make sure things get dried out before the metal bits (fasteners, microswitch parts and other contacts) begin to oxidize, but even a little of that would be far from fatal.

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