Cleaning Your Mice Wheels?

frink_exp asks: "Cleaning mouse balls (and the rollers they contact) has been the source of many a pun and the subject of countless junk e-mail messages. As more optical mice replace their mechanical kin, such hygiene is becoming unnecessary. However, the mouse wheel is nearly as common as the mouse itself and human hands are grubby, sweaty, oily appendages. Invariably, a nice coating of gunk envelops the wheel. Sometimes it's just unsightly, but at it's worst, it'll sap the rubber wheel of all its grip making it difficult to scroll. Cleaning the wheel can be awkward as it tends to spin and unlike mouse balls, it doesn't just pop out (rehashing of the balls joke intended). The best method I've found is scraping sideways, parallel to the wheel's axis of rotation, slowly working my way around the whole wheel. This is tedious and annoying. Is this a common affliction? What is a better, easier way to clean the mouse wheel? Solvents? A wheel brush? Fire?"

Comments

Just take it apart

[earthdark]

Flip the mouse over, locate the screw(s), unscrew them, and gently take the covering off.

There's a spring pushing the wheel up, so take a moment to figure out how the wheel is lodged onto the spring and plastic parts before taking the actual wheel out.

Scrape the dirt off the wheel or wash it or whatever you like and pop it back in. Put the cover back on, the screws, and voila, clean mouse wheel.

Of course, if you have an optical mouse, you might want to unplug it or turn off the computer before looking for the screws on the mouse bottom...

Watch out for old mice.

[Piquan]

The x-acto that many people described is fine for modern mice. (I prefer to hold the knife at just shy of a right angle to the of the roller, and the blade at a right angle to the roller surface, and scrape along the length of the roller. Do this with the blade at a right angle or slightly tilted BACKWARDS; never cut into the roller!)

But look out for some of the older steel mice, such as on the Xerox Alto or earlier Symbolics Lispms. Those can be seriously damaged by x-actos. From Peter Payne's FAQ:

Q: My mouse is getting arthritis, can I do anything about it? (translation: your mouse has problems)

A: That's a piece of cake. If you have an original metal and comutator mouse, keep it, it is a work of art. My advice for all such tasks is (a) take your time (do it when you don't feel flustered or impatient) and (b) make sure your glasses are clean and the place that you are working has a really bright light - it helps enormously if you can see really clearly. Power down the machine, unscrew the bottom of your mouse, use common sense to remove fluff - and don't go jamming sharp metal things in there (if you do, there'll be tears before bedtime). I suggest that you also give your mouse mat a vigorous brushing too.

Replace it.

[Guspaz]

The answer is, of course, replace your obsolete ball-mouse with an optical mouse. Opticals are so cheap now, anybody can afford them. I believe somebody up above said they could get them for 10$ US? I've never seen them that cheap, but I have seen them for 25$ canadian.

Back in the day when I had a ball-mouse, I used to just pop open the bottom compartment, remove the ball, and scrape the rollers with my fingernail while slowly rotating the roller. I'd do that for all 3 rollers. If the ball was dirty, I'd wash it with tap water and let it dry.

But seriously man! Get an optical! No excuses!

Two products that I swear by....

[stuckatwork]

...are PhoneKleen found here, which are grem killing wipes, and are great for getting the black gunk of the keyboard and mouse exterior,

...and CaiKleen found here a rubber cleaner that restores that stickyness to rubber.

When I had to do desktop support, I always carried these with me.

An actual idea

[Mike556]

As a technican at a university I often find peripherals in various states of soiledness. All jokes posted in these replies aside, this is a very simple matter to deal with.

I usually use isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs to clean off dirty peripherals. This not only cleans the equipment very well, but gives the room an aroma that suggests you might be doing something important.

Rotating the swab while running it perpendicular to the mouse wheel seems to work best. Get a different swab often, however, or you'll just wind up depositing more gunk back on the wheel.

Hope this helps!

~Mike