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Are Keyboards Dishwasher Safe?
i_like_spam writes "Computer keyboards are a breeding ground for bacteria. Studies have shown that keyboards often contain more bacteria than toilet seats. Common cleaning methods, such as pressurized-air canisters and damp rags, help remove some of the dirt, but they also leave behind plenty of grime. National Public Radio describes a recent experiment by a reporter who used a dishwasher to clean her keyboard. Following the advice on Plastic Bugs, she placed her keyboard in the top rack, didn't use the heated dry cycle, and air dried the keyboard for a week afterwards. Her keyboard is now squeaky clean and functions perfectly. Has anyone else tried this or any other alternate keyboards cleaning methods? For those not willing to air dry for a week, dishwasher-safe keyboards are now available. Would you ever do this to your peripheral? "
Post it again in a week!
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Keyboards are so cheap I wouldn't think twice sticking it in the dishwasher if I felt like it. Heck, mine is so nasty I probably should, but I don't really feel like air drying it for a week... might as well buy another 15 dollar Logitech keyboard at that point.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
I usually just take mine in the shower with me when it gets extra dirty. Give it a thorough rinse and let it sit for a day and it's good to go.
I thought this would be common knowledge among Slashdot readers. This is a pretty old technique.
My wife put a keyboard in the dishwasher and killed it dead. Never did work again.
Contrary to popular belief, water isn't the real danger to the keyboard here, it's soap. The soap is conductive, and if it isn't fully rinsed, could short out contacts and render the keyboard unusable.
So the modified checklist is:
1. Keyboard you can afford to lose.
2. No soap
3. Shake empty of water, then air dry.
I've done this before. You can air dry it for only 24 hours in most climates, and a lot less if you're willing to take it apart after. If you use it before it's fully dry the worst that seems to happen is keys behave weirdly -- if that happens, it's not done drying yet.
At my current job I have access to an ultrasonic alcohol bath cleaner; that was quick and simple, and dried out even faster.
Compressed air nozzles also work well, though that's more for dust and debris and doesn't do much about the grimy stuff.
What about laptops?
-- rm -rf / tells you if you have root or not
Wash you damn hands!
The third most important thing I have learned in life: Squeeze anything hard enough and it eventually makes a noise.
I would not recommend putting your peripheral in a dishwasher. Not as dangerous as sticking it into a vacuum cleaner hose, but no fun nevertheless.
I can see something like this with a IBM Model M or a Unicomp customizer or a happy hacking keyboard, but most people probably are just better off getting another one.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Really just pop the keys off and wash them, you might want to take a pic of your layout so you can put back together easily.
seeing as my keyboard is a bit attached to my laptop, most people in my situation probably would not.
and air dried the keyboard for a week afterwards
A week? That's probably more fossil fuels consumed than a new keyboard would be.
Table-ized A.I.
The keyboard I use on a daily basis is dishwasher safe, it's one of those flexible silicon ones. Many find it uncomfortable or hard to get used to , but after becoming accustomed to the little amount of feedback, I'm quite satisfied with it. Search flexible keyboards on ebay or somesuch if you want one yourself.
I once used water to rinse the Coke out of the keyboard of one of my coworkers, figuring that there was nothing to lose. It worked--once the thing dried out, which took days. This makes me think that using a dishwasher is perfectly feasible and that getting it good and dry before attempting to use it is the key.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Way to think about the environment!
You know, in the wide range of bacteria-infested areas, toilet seats are remarkably clean. Handles in bathrooms are where bacteria really grow... so saying that a keyboard harbors more than a toilet seat doesn't really say much. How 'bad' do they really get?
Just discussing the same thing earlier with someone. Mechanical keyboards typically fair better than membrane keyboards for the dishwasher. The Keytronics I through in and let dry for a few days ending up half working. All the letters worked but special keys like Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Etc didn't. Would have been adequate for most Slashdot posters.
If it's a cheap membrane keyboard just send to the recycling center.
Not the dishwasher route though. I put them in the sink and wash them well; I usually use "Simple Green" as a detergent.
... NEVER one problem.
Shake well, or run a shop-vac over them after cleaning, and put them in a warm place with decent air circulation for the weekend. On Monday plug in, turn computer on
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
I rinse my keyboard with 200 proof Ethanol and let it try for an hour or so. Propanol is easily accessible and would work too. Soap is conductive, as another poster pointed out. Besides, who has a week to let their 30 dollar keyboard dry?
"Studies have shown that keyboards often contain more bacteria than toilet seats."
Don't you get tired of hearing how things are cleaner than a toilet seat? As proven on Mythbusters, almost everything is dirtier than a toilet seat, the floor, the counter, your mouth, your hands, all contain more bacteria than a toilet seat. So people, stop with the toilet seat analogies, they are meaningless!
I've had to look into finding a keyboard that could be repeatedly autoclaved (high pressure steam at 250-350 Fahrenheit) so that it could be used in an operating room during surgery. I had limited success with that - you can find different keyboards that are encased in silicone. They become unusable after a handful of cleaning cycles, however. The harder part was finding a pointing device - mouse, trackpad, etc.
the keyboard came out just fine... But the laptop display didn't come on and the laptop fan didn't show up..
:-)
*Doh* I just read the article... _Regular_ keyboards...
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
I've washed several keyboards over the last decade, and I've known about the dishwasher technique at least that long. I don't actually use my dishwasher, though, because I regard that as a waste of water and power. When I feel like washing a keyboard (which isn't very often), I take the whole thing apart and hose it down, first with water, then w/ some water-displacer, like circuit board cleaner.
I once had to wash my computer's motherboard, too, after my male cat sprayed it (the case was off, so the motherboard was exposed). I was amazed it worked at all after that, but it kept running for several more months, until the metal contacts began to corrode too badly.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Yup, I've done it. Had no issues and I only let mine dry out for about 24 hours, of course I also took the keys off to help it dry faster.
Of course now I use a wireless keyboard and I'm not willing to try it.
I've always heard that automatic dishwasher detergent was extremely caustic. Combine that with the presumably delicate traces on the circuit board that underlies a keyboard, and what happens after a few weeks?
No really, what happens? What happens if you do this two or three times? Inquiring minds want to know.
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At my university (Sherbrooke) we work late, drink coffee and eat things like chips or our diner in front of the computer. Keyboards get dirty quickly because the security guards cannot enforce the law.
What IT does to clean the keyboard is much the same but probably less damaging. The have a big plastic box they fill full of water. They just immerse the keyboards for a few hours, lt them dry for 72 hres.
Everything is clean and they don't brake often with this method.
Good point about F6. It hasn't even been loved enough to be given a Function function on my Thinkpad T60.
Turns out it moves between focusable frames in Windows, and in Firefox, can be used to focus on the task bar - and hit again to focus on the page! Useful, yet unloved.
Someone needs to start a F6 fanclub. That key will get a complex.
About three years ago I found an decent athlon box on the side of the road. It had rained the night before so it was all wet. I let it dry for a week, turning it every day to make sure all the water drained out. When I was sure it was dry, I fired it up and it worked perfectly. It became my mythtv box for over a year. After I retired it, its various parts found their way into cheap computers I built for students, still in use. Most computer parts will withstand water as long as there's no electricity around to short thing out. I was surprised the hard drive still worked, it must have been sheltered enough from the water that it didn't rust.
I've done this many times.
In fact I inherited a dozen keyboards once and they were all a mess. Tossed 'em in my dishwasher and dried on my drier rack for 24 hours. They all worked perfectly. Real easy and hardly any work. I then used them on some budget system builds for people. They still work a year later.
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The Model M is dishwasher safe, at least so far. I have put two of mine in the dishwasher. No soap, top rack, air dry for a few days. Put the keycaps in the silverware holder.
I thought it was a joke when I first heard it, but I had a keyboard that was in bad enough shape to risk. I now use that keyboard at work. The second one I use at home, and it is due for another dishwasher cycle soon.
I use the old clickity IBM model M keyboards, and I just pop off all the key caps and wash them in a garment bag with the rest of the laundry. Nice, white and beautiful when they come out. I've also done this with MS Natural keyboards. Works like a charm. Make sure to lay the keys upside down to dry.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
I've heard of people popping the keycaps and washing those in a dishwasher, but not the whole keyboard as a unit. As mentioned elsewhere, the soap is conductive, and I have no doubt that even if you didn't add soap you'd still have some soapy residue in the dishwasher. Not to mention that the minerals in tap water are conductive, too.
I've also resurrected electronic equipment that was involved in a flood. We had to immerse the gear (MIDI keyboards and guitar pedals) in distilled water and then dry them off with hair dryers. At best, we had a 50% revival rate.
Pop the keytops and run them through a dishwasher. Better yet, pop the keys and wipe them with Windex Wipes. Blow out the keyboard with compressed air. It's how I've kept the IBM Model M I'm typing on clean and working well since 1993.
If anyone tells you otherwise theZ1058sg d gh$$%*@&Yg s96#(HA)G*DS HJ
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Most electronics can take a good washing. Water and electricity dont work well though so make sure its dry before you put it back to use. Anecdote: A friend of mine was working on his rig and left it on its side with the side panel off. His cat decided that it was similar enough to a litter box. Subsequently cat urine made the machine not boot. Very carefully the motherboard and video card were washed, without soap, in the sink and left over the electric heater for a week to dry. The machine was reassembled and the box is still in use today.
Do to possible legal action:
Yours truly,
Anonymous Coward
Best advice is to disassemble the keyboard before running it through the dishwaher.
You don't need to remove all the keys, you just want to pull out the membranes and the circuit boards. Not because they'll get damaged, but because they're the parts that take forever to dry.
If you don't trust your keyboard not to melt in the dishwasher (and some plastics will, even without the drying cycle), you can fill a bucket with hot water and some automatic dishwasher detergent, pop off the key caps and plastic parts, swish them around and they'll come out spotless. Then it's just a matter of rinsing, drying and reassembling.
If you do run your keyboard through the dishwasher, you should pop off some of the larger keys (shift, enter, spacebar, etc) and reapply a dab of grease to the ends of the little metal clips that hold them level.
I thankfully did. I can attest that these are somewhat dishwasher safe, however with the rugged yet semi-modular design it isn't exactly necessary. With some patience and soap and water you can take it apart and get it fairly squeaky clean.
I also feel obligated to make a shout out to http://www.clickykeyboards.com/ I'm not affiliated with them or anything, but when I emailed to complain about ordering key caps for a couple of keys I'm missing because they require minimum orders they said to just mail them a self addressed envelope.
So if your considering buying what is hands down the best made, most rugged, best and loudest keyboard on the planet please consider them.
Back when key caps could be removed with out damaging the spring mechanism...
I found that soaking the key caps in 409 and water would remove any finger crud.
While the key caps are off, tap and shake out the (INSERT FAVORITE SNACK) seasonings and give the other surfaces a quick wipe down.
The key caps dry in about an hour. Hopefully you know the layout of your keyboard when putting the key caps back on.
With later model keyboards I use 409 and cotton swabs to go after all accessible surfaces.
An emphatic yes, given what else I'd do to my peripheral!
"Would you ever do this to your peripheral?"
Nope. But then I don't share the [seemingly] common pathological fear of bacteria that's been created in the last decade or so.
...so no way in hell!
That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...
" dishwasher-safe keyboards are now available."
Thanks to slashdot, not anymore!
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What's wrong with prying your keys off, tossing them in a net bag and throwing the whole bundle in the washer? That's what I did, when we had a dish washer.
Bonus points for getting the keys back where they belong.
Last week I washed my cupholder to get rid of the coffee stains. It's been air drying for the last week, and I can't wait to use it again!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I've done this for years, works great, no risk to the keyboard:
A couple of sprays (mist, not stream) of Formula 409 on the keyboard (I've found Formula 409 works the best). Let the cleaner sit for a 30 seconds to a minute or so. Then take a brush like you'd use to clean your fingernails (short, hard bristles) and use it to scrub the keys, being sure to get in-between them. Then wipe up the mess with paper towels, being sure to get as much of the cleaner out as possible. Repeat process as needed (I've had some keyboards take 3 or more tries to get really clean).
Ae keboas ishashe safe?
o.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
I knew a girl that had younger siblings whose favorite passtime was dumping juice into the keyboard. Or at least that is what she claimed. She would take the juicy keyboard, hose it down in the shower, then let it dry in front of a fan overnight.
From what I understand, she did it more than a dozen times by the time I heard about it. If it works, it works.
Indeed. Until a few years ago, my company (a producer of electronic test and measurement equipment) washed every circuit board we made, just after they were assembled. This was with de-ionized water, and was used to clean the flux off the boards.
We only stopped because using no-clean flux and skipping the wash is cheaper.
Using de-i water might be better, but I've gotten electronics completely drenched before without a problem (car stereo soaked in a rain, digital camera underwater for several hours). In all cases, just making sure they are completely dry before being powered is fine. (Make sure you take the batteries out so asap!)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Jst pt my kebord n the wshmacine nd it ddnt wrk :(
I have IBM type M's and pop one in the dishwasher every month. After about a week sitting in the basement they are dry, ready to use, and look brand new. I have done this for the last 10+ years and never had a issue. Just put the keyboard in facing down and use the cool dry cycle with regular liquid detergent. Works great. I have also done this with non-buckling spring keyboards with good results (new cheep ones.)
The resistances your immune system is building up from eating off the keyboard may save you some day.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Why not just use a can of Lysol?
Well at least they used to be...
I have my 12 function key Model M and my original IBM-PC ( 10 function keys up the side in two rows ) and they are both still the in great shape. The model M has had just about everything spilled in it, from Coke, Coffee, Beer, Jack Daniels, hell I even spunked all over the damn thing once ( pre-internet ) with an actual female participant! Its been through the dishwasher ( NO dishwasher detergent as its far too corrosive ) with a few drops of liquid dish washing soap several times, as has the original PC keyboard.
With things like pagers and cell phones it you drop it in toilet or into the sink or whatever, REMOVE THE BATTERY as fast as you can! If it was in a hostile environment such as a toilet full of piss, rinse if well under cold clear running water.
Once you are satisfied the contamination is removed, put it in a clean dish cloth, slingshot style, and twirl it at as high a rate of speed as you can produce using centrifugal force to get as much water out as you possibly can.
Turn the over to its lowest setting and let it pre-heat. When it has pre-heated, turn the oven OFF and place the electronic gizmo in the oven, top rack, once the temp has settled below about 70C, close the door and leave it in there until the oven is cold.
Put a new battery in the device, since most batteries have vents these days and there is around a 99% probability that the device will come right back to life.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
The mythbusters showed that the toilet seat actually has very little bacteria compared to every other surface they tested (bathroom floor, kitchen floor, kitchen table, etc.) Thus, the problem that "keyboards contain more bacteria than most toilet seats doesn't really matter very much.
Furthermore, the amount of bacteria doesn't really have anything to do with how healthy the surface is. Most dairy products have insane amounts of bacteria, but it's all bacteria that isn't harmful to humans. The bacteria you'll find in the toilet is probably more harmful than the greater amount of bacteria in your mouth.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
wel i'mm givvig ttthis grettt idea aa ttry tooo se oww welll ittt wokss... sinc ii cantt ussse itt untttil aaftr it driess i hav t us aan oldd keyybarddd for nnow.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Wow! How many times do you have to refresh the post reply page before you get a captcha you can type?
I once spilt a small amount of tea onto my keyboard and it never worked again.
It was one of those cordless ones though. Still, I wouldn't trust a dishwasher with any keyboard unless it was marked dishwasher-safe.
Just have a keyboard layout pic in front of you then just clean each one individually every once in a great while.
Best. Apple. Keyboard. EVER! by the way.
Every few years, I pull the keycaps, and the plastic top and bottom, and soak them for a few hours in hot water with a hefty dollop of Spic and Span. Brownian Motion is your friend.
As for the keyboard pc, it's mainly a case of using the vacuum cleaner to suck all the loose crud from all the nooks and crannies. The keyswitches are pretty well sealed. They have yet to show any type of failure.
After the plastic bits in the bucket have been rinsed off and dried, the key cabs are replaced and the top and bottom are screwed back into place and that's it for another few years.
Apple Extended Keyboard. 20+ years old and never a problem.
Which is why I spent US$40.00 for the Griffin iMate adaptor, so that I could continue to use the Extended on my 1.42 Ghz Dual Processor MDD Macintosh. After using the Extended, using any other keyboard (save for the IBM Model M) feels like I'm poking at a slab of Silly Putty.
Best. Apple. Keyboard. EVER!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
The roll-up keyboard.... easy to clean too.
Summary - yes, it works.
Long answer -
Back in the day, I had my brand spanking new Apple Quadra 660 AV and a very large, and very comfortable Apple Ergonomic Keyboard. It split in the middle, was adjustable about a dozen ways, and the ten key pad was actually another keyboard on a short ADB cable... The keys rocked, the space bar - for as large as it was - never missed a beat. It was a radically different keyboard compared to anything else out there - and it was so comfortable to use.
Until the 12oz can of real coke was spilled on it. I had just cracked open the can, set it on the stand my monitor was on, then realized I had unplugged my 33.6k global village modem from the phone jack because of a storm the night before. While contorting myself under the desk and reconnecting the phone cable, I wiggled the desk. I hear the can topple, but I was pretty fat and couldn't move very fast, and I was twisted up in all the cables under the desk. By the time I got back up - the can was over and mostly empty. It's entire content was trickling out the qwerty side of the keyboard and onto the desk, eventually the floor.
I disconnected the ADB cable from the left side of the ergo keyboard. And attempted to soak up as much as I could, shaking out the keyboard, wiping it down - repeat.
I spent over $100 on this keyboard a year prior... I wasn't going to give up. Wipe it down, shake it out, over and over until nothing else came out. Then, just to make sure it was dry - a hair dryer on low for a few minutes.
That seemed to take care of it... for a day. Then the asd, zxc and qwe keys started sticking. No matter how much cleaning I did, I couldn't fight the shit that was in that coke. I even looked for another ergo keyboard, but Apple stopped making them. eBay - never heard of it.
So the last choice I had was to dishwasher the keyboard. I put it on a short cycle, no heated dry, no soap, but the rinse agent seemed like a good idea, so I left that in. After it was done, I quickly removed it from the dish washer shook it out and wiped it down, repeated.
I let it sit overnight and shook it one more time to make sure no water was left.
It worked like a charm and felt pretty good. I did need to take apart the space bar key a few months later and regrease the mechanical action - I suspect the high washing temp rinsed away the cheap-o clear grease that was there before. $1.20 at radio shack for more than I'll ever use.
I'm a little wary of using plain water, so I use tun-o-wash, which is basically an industrial solvent. Makes everything squeeky clean.
...in the dishwasher, dried then for a week and they worked. But I can't remember if I used soap. My inclination would be to use a few drops of regular dish detergent in place of the dishwasher stuff.
Ten years ago my step-brother was doing it often; don't know how long he dried it for or if he still does it. It worked for him.
I wouldn't do it to any of my current keyboards since they also have USB ports in them.
I would suspect components placed in the wash would be susceptible to long term rust problems. That is better than throwing it away because it is dirty. I personally have an old IBM Model M keyboard that can be disassembled. The plastic keycaps and outer casing is removable so I can wash that in water. The more delicate electronics I usually clean by hand with cotton swabs and other tools.
Here is a popular illustrated guide to cleaning a Model M. You can also buy one yourself from here. Although as a warning many Intel based motherboards have moved away from PS/2 ports so the days of the Model M may be numbered.
Shut down the PC. Wipe down the keyboard with a paper towel soaked with rubbing alcohol. Cleans the grim and the drying time is short.
I suggested this as a joke and never thought to try it out. I really don't
want to know the condition of my keyboard, just shaking it out would
be good.
I quickly retracted my suggestion in a later post, not sure if
it was ever tried.
That one of the most idiotic things I have ever read about. Anyone exercising even a little common sense would use a dilute solution of detergent and Chlorine Bleach in luke-warm water, wet a clean rag or dishcloth and wring it out well, then thoroughly clean your keyboard. Let it air-dry for a few minutes or towel-dry, and your ready to go. O M G!
I read somewhere that the old DEC VT100 (or was it the VT220?) had instructions in the manual that said something like "put them in the dishwasher to clean up".
This is the ENTIRE TERMINAL, not just the keyboard.
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Those ones that roll up and are made of mostly rubber seem like they could get washed with a sponge while still in use, though I've never seen them in person, only online.
:(){
Studies have shown that keyboards often contain more bacteria than toilet seats.
Studies have shown that cities often contain more people than maximum security prisons. It's quality, not quantity that worries me.
We're rather experienced with the ritual destruction of keyboards. Quality and durability varies wildly from one to another.
Anyone tried to put one of these Matias Tactile Pros through the dishwasher? (I'm actually only interested in version 1, which I have).
Whats this obsession with cleanliness.
Our immune systems need a good broad range of bacteria to learn to fight.
One day, we will be eating designer dirt tablets to boost our immune system.
So don't clean them... lick them!
http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/1031002421.html
46137
Seriously, that's just dead obvious. Some clean easy and some don't. There are /dozens/ of different constructions.
In the day of 14000 baud, our local cafe keyboard used a single sheet of silicon for the springs. Cleaning that puppy was thankfully simple. Pull the back screws, hose down the silicon sheet and key-set in the dish pit (The keys remained attached to the face plate. It was a neat system.), then take the key-set outside for a noisy shake. Towel-off the silicon and you're done. And boy that thing needed those cleanings every few days. We served mocha milkshakes & you could still smoke.
My current ancient MS Natural is the complete opposite. It's a fiddly PITA tear-down of individual keys, and you're just not going to get into all the little nooks with a dishwasher, never mind how long it would take to dry after immersion. Might actually need that absurd sounding week.
As I look at it now, my old IBM keyboard, which hasn't been washed in years, has some weird grime patterns on it. J, Z and Y are the filthiest keys. The function keys are the cleanest, probably becaiuse since I never use them. The commonly used keys, like the vowel keys, are pretty clean, probably because they are rubbed so often, except they all have a thick layer of grime right at the very top.
I wonder if there is some expert out there who can decipher a person's personality from their keyboard grime.
I really should clean this thing, not out of paranoia, just because it is really dirty.
evanchik.net
I've washed three keyboards by taking them apart, all three had only plastic in the top half. The electronics and spring function were in the lower half (YMMV).
The real disgusting crud was all on the plastic only top half, which made it through the dish washer with no problems. They looked like new afterwards.
The lower half with the delicate stuff had stayed pretty clean, a little blast of air and some gentile wiping with a damp (water only) sponge took care of it.
If you are willing to risk the effects of dishwasher detergent on electronics, then the risk of taking a keyboard apart shouldn't bother you at all.
Disclaimer, all three keyboards, an MS and 2 brand X El-Cheapos were all held together with screws, a snap together keyboard would be a bit more difficult, but not a show stopper.
It's worth taking a modern keyboard apart just to marvel at it's simplicity. They may be cheap, but some creative mechanical design has gone into them.
The keyboard I am currently using is about 8 years old. It is a Compaq and has been through the dishwasker 11 times. It works great. I put it in the top rack and use no soap and then let it air dry for 3-4 days. I don't let it go through the drying cycle in the diswasher.
I am doing it because I can.
I did it with a keyboard I picked up for $4. It was a logitech keyboard with all the media keys and such. It was a filthy mess. It got it all squeaky clean after I ran it through the dishwasher. It was beautiful... and it didn't work, even after setting it over a heater vent for a day. I thought my impatience had fried it... but several days later tried it again just out of curiousity. It worked great! It's now my main keyboard. One note, I used only water for that load. I don't recommend trying this with soap. -T
I have keyboards that use Electric Capacitance switches, Alps, Cherry, and Membrane rubber switch. Would it be safe for all these? and for buckling switches?
Just wonder.
You don't have to do this with an IBM Model M: The keycaps easily pop off and can be run through the dishwasher WITH soap.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I've done this several times with old keyboards. Its perfectly fine as long as you unscrew them and remove the electronic middle bits, and let it dry completely before you put it back together. Works on all of them.
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
Ten years ago my step-brother was doing it often
I did it once. I dumped most of cup of coffee into my Microsoft Natural Keyboard a few years back. I took the whole keyboard apart...the keys come out in groups, and there's a dimpled plastic thing underneath the keys. Since I had it apart, it didn't take a particularly long time to dry...I waited a few hours, I think. Washing it didn't hurt anything, but the keyboard was never quite the same. Some of the keys were harder to press down for some reason, like there was more friction or something. I tried putting a little bit of Teflon lubricant on those keys, but it didn't really feel quite right after that. Over time it's improved, though.
Can't imagine why I would wash my keyboard often, though. People always get so scared when they find out there's germs around. That's why I have an immune system. My keyboard hasn't hurt me yet, so I'm not too worried about it hurting me in the future. Maybe if I get some sort of keyboard-born illness someday, I'll change my ways...assuming it doesn't kill me, I guess.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
All of the keyboards I had let me remove the keys without breaking the thing - just pop them out with a knife. I then clean each key with a wet cloth and use a vacuum cleaner to get all of the dust and crumbs off from the inner depths of the keyboard. The electronics never get in contact with the water this way and it seems to give good results.
Most of the keyboards out there are cheap enough that you'll spend a good deal of time reattaching keys to them after you've dug them out of the bottom of the dishwasher. SOME of the keyboards will be onhappy that you've soaked the solid state bits in detergent and hot tap water (basically) and refuse to work afterwards, but this should occur more with older keyboards than with newer ones. Some of the newer keyboards just encase the electonics in a plastisol (ish) blister like calculators. You can eventually corrode contacts and damage other parts, but you aren't going to unseat socketed chips.
The short answer is probably not. Don't fall for the GIGANTIC CAN OF SPECIAL COMPUTER COMPRESSED AIR, or the computer wipes and that garbage. Take regular rubbing alcohol, cut it by half (so 1/4 cup rubbing alcohol, 1/2 cup water). Get a lint free cloth (not a paper towel or a rag)--lens cleaning towels from camera shops work great, and are reusable. Then remove the keys and wipe down the accesible parts.
The rubbing alcohol will evaporate quickly, and you just wipe up the very small amounts of water left.
Alternately, you can buy Flexible Keyboard, but it isn't as cool as you would hope it is.
I have heard of running keyboards through the dishwasher. I read something on it several years ago. From what I read though, it seems much safer to do it this way:
1. Disassemble the keyboard, and set the pcb(s) aside.
2. Put all the keys in the silverware basket
3. Put all the plastic panels on the top rack
4. Run normally, but skip the heated drying stage
5. Air dry until completely dry.
6. Reassemble.
It's quite a bit more work, but it sounds like it would be lower risk. I'm almost tempted to try it without disassembly though (but I'd likely break down and just disassemble it anyways).
:(){
Paluminum.net
If your keyboard uses oil between the keys, you should NOT wash it!
I tried that on my beloved none Windows key keyboard, and afterwards all the keys were hard to press down because the oil was missing =(
I've had the same Dell keyboard for over 3 years, I have been washing it in the dishwasher for two. Every couple months or so I unscrew the screws and place the front in the dishwasher leaving all the electronics on the counter. Wash & let it dry, Put it back together and SNAP. Works like new. Side note thou several of my keys are now blank. That is due to wear and tear mostly, but I would not count out the dishwasher.
How do you know it hasn't hurt you? Have you never been sick? At this very moment those bacteria may be evolving sentience and soon they will plot to destroy your brain with laser beams fired from bacteria-proportioned starships.
But something else, well know by people using MEMS-like manufacturing process is that when you want highly-purified water to stay well, pure, you _do_not_expose_ it to even simple air, because even that will increase its conductivity by ion dissolution very quickly.
They probably forgot this other detail: to put the computer/water mix in a sealed box.Damned amateurs.
[Pruneau
If you are confident enough to disassemble your keyboard, just remove the electronic touch sensor board(s) and throw the rest of the plastic in the dish washer (no hot dry cycle)then leave it in the sun for a day. Re-assemble and you are good to go! Oh and btw, I wouldn't recommend this for any high end keyboard as the extra buttons could make things tricky.
I've done this before, except I only washed the keys. It took a minute or so to pop all the keys off, then I just stuck those in the dishwasher and did the rest of the board by hand. Sure, it's a pain in the ass, but there's no real worries, because the keys obviously are easier to dry.
I was shaving one day and knocked my treo 700w into a toilet, I grabbed it out immediately and took the battery out, ran clean non chlorinated water through it, put it in the oven on 150F for about 5 hours, put the battery back in and it worked fine for months. I eventually moved to an xv6700. It still worked fine though.
Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.
You don't need to type the captcha if you've logged in or are logging in as you submit...
Just go buy a new one! For chrissakes, people. It's a KEYBOARD. You can find a new one for under ten bucks, easy. If you've got a half a pound of cheetos in your keys, just go get another one.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I can personally attest to the validity of dishwashing keyboards - I have seen it done (successfully) first hand.
About 10 years ago, my friend's mom complained that her computer was acting strangely. It would keep typing the same letters over and over again after a single initial keypress. My dad did some investigation and noticed that this happened on every program, not just the DOS prompt where she noticed it.
He pressed her on the subject of her keyboard, asking if anyone had spilled anything on it - to which she fervently replied "No". Being the problem solver he is, my dad had brought along his own keyboard to use in testing and lo and behold, everything worked just fine.
It was about that time (faced with evidence that it was a peripheral problem) that she admitted that there may have been some iced tea spilt on the keyboard a few days prior - but that she didn't think it was any big deal.
Since my dad had a spare keyboard anyway, he gave it to them in exchange for the tacky one. Once home, he did the very experiment described in the article. He ran the keyboard through the dishwasher (bottom rack) on low heat so as not to melt the keys. Then he propped the keyboard up in front of a floor vent to let the dry, air-conditioned air work on it overnight.
The next day, he plugged in the keyboard to discover that it was fixed! Back then keyboards had less gadgetry (no numeric side-pad or soft "media" buttons up top), but hey - a win's a win.
Wash your hands after you eat and don't eat while you are sitting at your computer. My keyboard stays pristine this way with the exception of some dust which compressed air handles nicely.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
The keyboard looks a lot cleaner. I think it worked.
I'm not sure about the rest of the laptop yet... How can I dry it faster.... Aha!
Yeah, but qbwiz might have problems logging in since he 'b' key isn't working...
You can buy a dishwasher-safe keyboard, per the suggestion in the original post. Alternatively, you can use one of the three or four other keyboards you have lying around. Should you have no unused keyboards around the house, purchasing another regular keyboard to use until the first dries (and in case of failure in the experiment) would be lots cheaper than purchasing a waterproof keyboard, presently. Another option is to pop the keys off and just wash those.
Now, the requisite jokes...
Clearly you haven't seen my toilet seat.
Hmm... my laptop keyboard is getting pretty grimey...
Her keyboard is now squeaky clean and functions perfectly. Has anyone else tried this or any other alternate keyboards cleaning methods?
I used to work in a shop that repaired electronics and part of what we did was smoke and fire restoration. Wet smoke is corrosive. In a nutshell, some keyboards are well suited to cleaning. Most electronic components can survive a water based cleaning. If you want to kill stuff, get it wet. Leave it wet and power it up. Electrolisis will eat the metal and pollute the insulation.
With those basics on killing stuff, remember that many keyboards are of a cheap membraine with conductive plastic pads. When this sheet of rubber is sandwitched onto a printed circuit board and clamped into place by attaching this to the mechanical keys above the bumps, you have an excellent place to trap water with no ventelation if it's immersed.
To clean smoke damaged keyboards we would photocopy the keyboard (so we get things that are non-standard like the location of the esc, home, end, del, gold, do, keys back into the right spot). Pull all the keycaps, shell the case, pull the screws to seperate the switch assy, wash and dry the components and reassemble. (Don't do this on an IBM clicky keyboard!)
After reassembly, they got a nose test for odor check. If it failed, it got an ozone treatement to kill remaining smoke odor. If you are crazy enough to take apart a clicky IBM AT keyboard, look online for reassembly instructions. Getting the springs back properly is critical. Done wrong it will damage the springs. The clicky keyboard is not a membrane keyboard and has no electrical contact switches. It is a capacitive non-contact switch. Simply shell it. Leave the keycaps on. Wash it, set it on end after rinse, let it dry, and reassemble. Again, important, don't remove the keycaps. Otherwise you will spend the rest of the day trying to get all the springs back in place.
In a nutshell, when cleaning electronics, watch for assemblies that can trap water such as electric motors, some transformers, switches (including keyboards) and water unsafe parts such as paper cone speakers. Most components may be safely water and soap cleaned if they are rinsed well and dried very soon.
Some early keyboards had a conductive paint that was used on the membrane for the keyboards that was water soluable. Washing these keyboards killed them. Many electronics parts distributors carried the bottle of replacement conductant to repaint the contacts on the rubber sheet. We had a bottle, but never needed it except on a TV remote.
The truth shall set you free!
/me learns to read before posting...
Putting it in more water and baking it seems counterproductive...
..If anyone has mentioned this, but at work the environment is extremely dusty and greasy. The keyboards used for the process control equipment get gummed up after about three weeks. It's bad enough that by a month or so, half the keys stick.
I will typically just unscrew the backs and take the case apart. Gently blow off the PCB and the rubber piece(rinsing it if there's soda on it) and set them aside. Then I'll take the front and back covers out and soak them in soapy water for about ten minutes followed by a scrub, a rinse and a blow dry with plant air. Reassemble and they're good to go. Once every three months or so I will use a silicone grease on some of the keys that are still a little rough due to wear from the batch infiltrating them.
Any one else used the silicone grease? So far it hasn't affected the plastic. Anything found to be better?
And yes, we would just replace them after 6 months of wear... but they're not the regular 104 key models. Not sure what they're called, but the control key is where CAPS is on a normal board. CAPS is immediately below and is a small-ish key.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
...no problems so far. Oh, by the way: A keyboard costs less than two pints, so I don't know why you couldn't just try yourself, instead of asking everybody on slashdot.
Is that I use a Microsoft Natural KB. I can't use straight KBs for long without pain. All these alternate KBs with OLEDs in them, or back lighting or being dishwasher safe doesn't help people that need more ergo KBs.
I've cleaned many keyboards, not in the dishwasher but using the shower.
The process is simple and obvious:
1 - Unscrew keyboard
2 - Remove electronics
3 - Shake or brush out as much of the crap that falls between the keys as you can
4 - Run face plate under a warm shower
5 - Dry thoroughly (shake out most of the water then use paper towels for fastest drying)
6 - Re-assemble
The only time consuming part is putting all the little rubber contact cups that some keyboards have under their keys back in their place. I'd say that I can usually I can clean, dry, and re-assemble a keyboard in about an hour, and you don't have to do it very often (unless you often eat lunch at your desk).
So I guess a keyboard wouldn't be a big challenge.
I managed to spill a glass full of peach flavored iced tea on a running mobo one time. Of course it instantly crashed, screen black. I killed power and went to bed. By the next day it was dried and looked pretty scruffy, and of course wouldn't work. Since I had absolutely nothing to lose at that point I pulled it from the case and washed it in the sink with warm water, a little dishwashing soap and a soft brush. I rinsed it for a while with warm tap water (distilled or filtered would be better) and dried it in a warm but not hot oven - about 140 F - for an hour. After cooling it off it worked perfectly, and I used it for a couple more years without any failures. I've done it once since with a newer motherboard, as well as several other boards and devices.
Electronic components on the motherboard are not porous, and in fact part of the packaging spec is resistance to humidity and moisture absorption. Fan bearings & bushings are, or course, a completely different matter. The real enemy with spills or washing is contamination with crud, minerals, etc in the water that becomes conductive. Keyboards used to be tricker, since they used (long ago) electromechanical switches. Now most are capacitive or conductive-pad types; as long as you get all the crap and soap rinsed out and let them dry properly, you're good to go.
when I had to clean salt water spray off a bunch of electrophysiology gear I used in a seawater aquarium room when I was a grad student. I didn't have a dishwasher, so I used warm DI water with a little bit of Ivory dish soap for a surfactant. Wash, rinse, repeat, leave to dry in the sun until the next day. Voila! High-impedance intracellular amps and pulse generators restored to function for another two weeks of experiments.
dont the electrical components rust after a while drying. i seen electronics rust pretty quick after being imersed in water. many electronics components have iron exposed.
I once dropped a water balloon onto the keyboard of my Apple ][+. That keyboard isn't just powered, it's attached to the computer. Water was all over the motherboard and everything else. And, being a little kid, I was bright enough to switch it on "to see if it still worked." It didn't.
But you know what? It lived. Dried it out as best as I could with a hair dryer and left it overnight, and it worked fine.
Breakfast served all day!
First of all, holy carp. It's been two hours, and despite how late it is... the fact that there are already 191 replies before mine (at the time I checked) is sad.
But I've never washed the whole keyboard. I remove the upper body, complete with keys, and wash that. I even use dish detergent on it. I've got two of the same wireless keyboard, so I just pop batteries into and sync up the idle one, then put the clean one away to be pulled out when the current one's dirty. Originally, I bought one to replace the other, but that was because the receiver was shot on the first set.
This way, the keyboard doesn't have to sit a week to air dry. It can be used almost immediately after using the heated dry option on the dishwasher.
Water itself doesn't conduct electricity.
Reminds me of the XKCD comic - http://xkcd.com/c237.html
Dekker Dreyer
I have done this twice to an old SGI keyboard I use at work. Works beautifully. The trick is, as mentioned in the summary, do NOT use detergent, do NOT use heat to dry, let sit to dry for at least a few days in good ventilation (ie. in front of a fan), or a week otherwise. The circuitry inside keyboards is usually quite simple and very robust. I can't imagine it's completely safe for the device, but if the thing is too filthy too clean otherwise, or non-functional due to a spill or whatnot, it's definitely worth a try.
;)
However, consider this carefully: the contents of a keyboard are GROSS. Imagine running a well-used mop head through a dishwasher cycle. Then imagine washing dishes right after that. Then imagine eating off those dishes. *shudder*
The moral of the story is: use the dishwasher at work after hours.
Flipped, dried, ran it, and 3/4 of the keys didn't work.
Intentionally poured in water, swished, flipped, dried, ran it, and 1/2 of the keys didn't work. Improvement!!
Amazingly, the laptop kept going!!!
New keyboard installed by (an irritated and laughing-at-me) IT guy, and it is all back to normal.
Most water is unclean enough to be conducting. Not that it matters, if there's no power source in the water the electronics won't do anything except rust. Since he pulled it out quickly and a toilet isn't large enough for a laptop to submerse quickly the water probably didn't reach the battery before he removed it.
I know people who regularly wash their keyboard like a dish though they do it manually, not with a machine.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Unless your keyboard is RoHS-compliant, the solder contains lead.
Leaching the lead out of the solder and into your dishwasher sounds like a great way to get lead poisining...
Wouldn't a light spray of Lysol every so often do the trick?
I occasionally clean keyboards with a spray of distilled water. That is not going to disinfect, but it most likely will not hurt and get the spilled coke or whatever out of it. I doubt that a light spray of Lysol will hurt anything if you are worried about cooties. In a hospital situation, where keyboards can and do spread disease, membranes or touch screens are good and always disciplined hand washing is essential.
water doesn't hurt electronics contrary to popular belief.. its powering them up when wet that does. and its not even shorting that does the damage when you do.. it electrolysis that kills them by damaging the circuit.
when we assemble printed circuit boards the last step is to wash them in warm water to strip the flux used in the soldering process.
also when i get a gadget thats been dropped in the toilet (pagers are notorious for this) we tell the customer to pull the battery, put it in a bucket of fresh water.. and bring it over to the shop.
i have a 99% success rate reviving drowned electronics this way.
$0.02 from a electronics tech in the field..
Why wouldn't they have more bacteria than a toilet seat? Toilet seats doesn't have that many bacteria at all, if any.
Why not just take the keys off and wash them separately? You could have them dried with a blow dryer in 15 minutes. Do we really care about the parts we never touch? I pop off all the keys and give them a nice alcohol wash about once a year just to keep it looking clean. Takes about an hour. Compressed Air underneath when they're all off, and its about as good as new as you'll ever get. And this keyboard is 9 years old.
You can clean your keyboard quite effectively in the shower. Simple use warm water and let the shower spray it. I have done this for years with my keyboards. The newer keyboards with foam hand supports and other features might not be as friendly with this cleaning method. For those of you that are particularly Howard Hughes like you can purchase keyboard covers. They can be washed or thrown away. Maybe software companies need to hang a sign in the bathroom that reads... All Employees must wash their hands before they return to work. BeDammit
I've taken apart many of them and washed the "Cheap" contact surfaces (not getting any Water or Soap on the circuit board) with a wet rag and a tiny bit of soap then again with a clean rag. The plastic keyboard it self I have scrubbed a bit and rinsed well and let all the part dry on a Towel turning them over a few times for about 3-4 days then put them back together and they work fine.
LifeTime Gamer
... But it don't work with cats.
God Be Gone
He said Treo, not laptop.
http://pinopsida.com
Every two months I disassemble my keyboard and run the plastic bits through the dishwasher. I hand-clean the little metal chachkis, and dust off the electronics. Then I reassemble. Works pretty well, I think.
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The majority of all bacteria around are harmless to humans unless you have an immune defense problem. And those on a keyboard aren't that bad otherwise we would have seen a massive health problem.
OK, when you see the dirt on the keyboard it's time to clean it...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I have two Kinesis keyboards that I absolutely love. I think they ran about $200 - $300 each 6 years ago. These aren't disposable but I would still have concerns about putting them in the dishwasher. Not sure why. I can't think of any logical reason why they would be destroyed but it just seems so wrong. I did spill orange juice into one once. To get the OJ out I disassembled they keyboard, ran the keypad through running water and let it dry outside for a few hours. Still... Anybody put their Kinesis in the dishwasher?
Just pop off all the key caps, toss them in a jar of isopropyl alcohol and shake. While letting the jar sit, wipe down the case with alcohol, after pouring out an 'board chow' that may be hiding in the depths. Give the key caps another shake, then pour and wipe each cap with a towel to remove chunky grime and then place on key switch. Easily sanitized without risking the electronics and minimal downtime. Actually no real downtime if you know the keyboard layout.
Actually it does address the problem, but in a different way from what people seem to think.
Healthy skin doesn't let much bacteria and other keyboard nasties in.
So just wash your hands before you eat, or touch your eyes etc with your fingers, or touch other more permeable bits of your bodies (mucous membranes).
Also, you are likely to have an immune system that can cope with the crud YOU put on your keyboard. Or you're already suffering from whatever disease that's on it (you caught a cold from somewhere else, and put the viruses on your keyboard_.
Now if you used someone else's keyboard, then sure you could catch something.
Remember: even if they recently cleaned their keyboard in a dishwasher, and it WAS super clean, it doesn't matter - if they have a cold and they touched it, you should wash your hands after you use their keyboards (if you want to reduce the odds of you catching the cold).
Wash your hands. If you're paranoid wash with soap and water, followed by alcohol to kill stuff. But I don't really think it's such a big deal, unless you're staff in a hospital dealing with sick and/or weakened people. Or there's some really bad stuff going about (in which case try to work from home).
Printed circuit boards are normally washed in something like a dishwasher after soldering. A few components can't tolerate that, mainly some speakers, and they have to go on after the washing step.
But you have to use water with low dissolved solids, since, when the water evaporates, it's going to leave solids behind. Leaving streaks of iron behind is definitely a Bad Thing. So use distilled or de-ionized water.
when we assemble printed circuit boards the last step is to wash them in warm water to strip the flux used in the soldering process.
The fancier way, apparently, is to wash it in hot water, THEN in almost pure alcohol (to absorb the water), THEN shake it *really* hard, to get rid of (now less pure) alcohol droplets. When late one night our (very experienced) electronics guy got to the last part I (more of a software kind) had to try to look the other way, you know, with the sickening feeling that this beautiful half-gold-plated thing will crack right there and then -- but it did survive just fine.
Paul B.
In fact, looking at my keyboard, it's probably time to do it again.
Just make sure not to use drying heat, and don't put other things in there with the keyboard (like regular dishes) run it on the light cycle if you have one, and, if you live in the viciously dry mountain air of Colorado, you can use it again in an hour or two. I'd usually throw them in about 9:00 at night, open the door of the dishwasher when it was done and I could use them again in the morning.
The only time it ever failed was when my son spilled an entire 32 oz cup of coke into his keyboard (don't ask) and I forgot to turn off the drying heat. It looked fine, felt fine, smelled clean, but it never even recognized as being plugged in after that. I figure I melted some useful component off the board.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Just cleaning the keyboard? My first experience cleaning electronics was when I was 10 years old, and spilled Coke into my C-64. It didn't just get the keyboard, but the whole motherboard. The screen just went black. I shut the whole thing off, pulled everything apart, washed it in the bathtub, and put it back together. The computer worked, but the keyboard didn't work well. I pulled the keyboard *completely* apart, washed everything in soap and water, dried it with a hair dryer, and put it back together... just before my parents got home.
I've fixed a lot of "watered" electronics over the years, including things dropped into saltwater fish tanks - you have to get those apart, rinsed, and cleaned RIGHT away. But the worst I've found yet was a cell phone that a baby sucked on... I had no idea that saliva was that corrosive. Every bit of copper on the board was GREEEEEEEN. I cleaned it all off, rinsed everything, dried out the microphone... and it worked. That one even surprised me.
Back to the topic of keyboards.... they're usually not worth the trouble. I don't think that putting them in the dishwasher is going to clean under the membrane very well, and that's where your problems come from. Don't buy into the hype about huge numbers of bacteria... unless they're certain strains of bacteria, you have nothing to worry about. If you knew how many bacteria are living on and inside of you right now without any ill effects (and sometimes GOOD effects), you'd turn into an OCD-handwasher immediately. And that's just bacteria... there are lots of other things, too.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
This was a popular topic of discussion on Usenet in 1996. Seriously, what gives?
Worse, they could evolve into wireless keyloggers.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Not every keyboard is ready to get cleaned in a dishwasher. In some cases you have to disassemble them and clean all the parts separately. Here are guides to take apart a computer keyboard and clean it for keyboards made by almost any manufacturer.
Yeah, I ran my CRT monitor through the washing machine once... it was full of cat fur cause the cat slept on top of it.
It seems "ok" now but it still keeps making these funny popping sounds and smells like ozone all the time.
Now, if we could only figure out how the cat mysteriously died...
[grin]
the ONLY way to properly wash a keyboard :
- disassemble (remove every key and unscrew the case)
- remove all electronics
- dump the plastics on water with soap
- rub each key and the case
- let it dry for a day on open air
- reassemble
a perfect project for a lonely Saturday night... perfect slashdot project
Your irresponsible lack of keyboard sanitisation will lead to the deaths of 2/3rds of the population of this planet - they will die from a disease caught from a dirty keyboard. The other 1/3rd, consisting of hairdressers and keyboard sanitisers and the like, will be shipped off to another planet where the answer to life, the universe and everything will be discovered.
Yeah, it's funny except I have seen one a cat waste away, unable to digest food anymore and on sedatives to take away the pain because of radiation poisoning from sitting on top of an old CRT. Sorry man, it'd be funny if it weren't true. I doubt my dad's cat at the time was the only one. Keep your pets away from those CRTs, there's a reason the glass in the front has a very high lead content.
Wow, thats a lot of work. I hope you are healthy. No flame intended, I would just like to engage you in a discussion about this. . . but I think that is going overboard. How do you know it "works pretty well" as in it keeps you from getting sick etc?
Well, the factory washed it in orange juice after the solder wave, so clean water should be fine.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
hot water will dissolve the protective layer of grease on the contacts (it's gets runny when hot). You severely degrade your keyboard's life by washing it in a dish washer.
I've washed keyboards before in the shower by hand (usually in response to spilling beer on them). this is preferable in my opinion. But some keyboard designs do not tolerate washing very well. For example my fairly pricey Sun keyboard was damaged with water because the watered corroded all the contacts (there were wide black streaks, making many of the keys unreliable). it took a good two hours with a pencil eraser to rub the corrosion off the contacts. although the stress or rubbing the corrosion off cracked one of the traces on the very fragile design, forcing me to buy a $15 conductive pen to repair it.
if you are going to washer it i would also recommend rinsing it with distilled water before letting it dry, a jug of that stuff is like a dollar. and possibly accelerate the drying process with a hair dryer on cold. not hot, unless you want to melt your keys, hair dryers usually get too hot too quickly.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I would question the actual point of the cleaning. Everything that makes it onto my keyboard is either my own skin particles or foodstuffs or dirt/dust out of the air. Sure if you pop the keys off its pretty disgusting in there, but its also fairly cheap to buy a new keyboard every few months (haha until I get a wolf-claw). For me, at least, I know I'm the one person in my house who rarely gets sick... this could just be an immune system thing or it could be my disgustingly grotty keyboard/mouse combination.
My $0.02 AU
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
indeed this process of rinsing with water, then alcohol, then evaporating the alcohol (not specially shaking, not specially cooking either, or not too hot just to accelerate drying) is really the standard in electronic board cleaning.
The only issue you may have is, in general you'll have *non-electronics* parts around your board, e. g. an LCD display whose nifty plastic surface may well crack when in contact with alcohol: this is the main issue to take care of.
Alcool is technically said to "reveal constraints" in ordinary plastics, so beware about this...
Herve S.
I've killed one with an air can. I'm not kidding. The first time it happened I was shocked but after a day it started to work again so I decided it was just something bizarre since I had been doing it for years with PCs. Well the same thing happened the second time I tried cleaning the same board only this time it was dead for all time. I've never tried it again. I didn't excessively spray it I was just trying to get out the dust. All I can think is it blew dust into the electronics. Never had this problem with a PC keyboard. I have had spilled drinks kill several so I'd hesitate to try a dishwasher. Part of the problem isn't the circuit board but the wiring and other components oxidizing. Decent keyboards are pretty cheap so I replace them several times a year, I wear them out fast. I usually keep a spare or two on hand as well.
One thing that troubled me a bit: she didn't feel a bit sorry. She didn't care she just ruined an expensive machine. She spent money like it wasn't hers. She just billed the clients a bit more and paid less overtime to her personnel.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
You're quite sure that this, and nothing else, could have been the cause? It's wasn't common feline leukemia? It wasn't radon? There is no other possible conclusion? What is the evidence? Lots of cats die that way.
If the evidence consisted of "the cat laid on the monitor, and then died of cancer (or X)", then that's not exactly what one might call conclusive evidence that a cat will die from sleeping on or near an operating CRT. It's also not evidence that the CRT was the cause of this particular cat's death.
I'm not saying it couldn't happen--just that unless you've got a lot more evidence than you posted, your dad's monitor is not to be blamed. Yet.
Torben
Hey, sometimes the keys just get... well, gunky. My keyboard at work is greasy as all hell, and considering it's a spiffy cordless one, not cheap enough to trash and replace on a regular basis.
Health concerns are valid, but I'd just like a good solid hour of coding without having three coats of grease on my fingers by the end of it.
my keyboard is now squeaky clean, too clean in fact... here's a picture
which version of the natural?
i had one of those that i tried to take apart (the thing was clogged with cat hair of all things), but i could never get it back together right.
a bunch of the the plastic molded things that held the screws down broke off when i attempted to remove the screws (they twisted free of the casing rather than the screws twisting free of them) and there wasn't any way i would get it to hold together properly.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I'm a little neurotic about asthetics, and I have a high skin-grease content (and I tend to drop food into the 'board; I work at home, so I eat lunch at my computer pretty often), and I smoke. As a result, my keys get unacceptably yellow/brown and sticky every two months or so. Nothing to do with bacteria, really, though it's good to know they're gone if they were there.
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Apart from all the weird ideas presented...
This assumes you have a keyboard that has removable caps. Take the caps off, throw them in a washing machine (in one of those knit bags of course) for a short cycle, wipe off the underlaying board and such, re-assemble, freshly cleaned board in 30 minutes.
Does throwing the whole keyboard into a dishwasher even clean underneath the caps?
A whole week, a whole day? When did common sense run out the window just to save a few minutes of manual labor, but then have to wait a freakin' week? If I took off the caps and washed each individually it would only probably take an hour or so.
Why not just hire someone to clean the damn thing for you?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The keys on most non-laptop keyboards can be popped off easily (be extra careful with the spacebar, tab, enter, backslash, and the three large keys on the numeric keypad). If the silverware holder in your dishwasher has a lid, put the keys in there, otherwise there are containers you can get for the top rack that are designed for washing small things without losing them. While the dishwasher is running, clean the rest of the keyboard with a damp washcloth. Use soap if necessary. If it's really gross, use rubbing alcohol.
When you pop the keys back on, consider teaching yourself the Dvorak layout. Just a thought.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Oh, and I like disassembling things. It's a hobby. Also, it's why I like Nokias; you can literally take them down to a circuit board and about 20 little chachkis before you'd have to start desoldering stuff to get it any further apart. You can hardly say that about a RAZR.
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Jeez, what a bunch of sissies. In Australia not only to we like our keyboards dirty, we breed out keyboard bacteria to be tough! If you use my keyboard, don't whinge if they rip yer bloody arms off.
"That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger."
I have cleaned keyboards in a dishwasher several times. In my experience, this this fine for the casing, but not for the keyboard itself. The problem is that keypresses are registrated on 2 thin plastic sheets, and once water has gotten between them, it is almost impossible to get it out again.
Microsoft Natural Keyboards seem to be much much better for cleaning that any other keyboard I've seen. I picked up a few at a garage sale, and by periodically popping the keys off and rubbing them down with a tissue or a rag, i've managed to keep the keyboard almost the same shade of white as when I got it. For some reason, doing this on some other models makes the keys not click back into their pins properly, and they dont depress correctly.
Leave the keyboards as they are , if I have not died no one will.
My Saitek Gaming Keyboard has a top that separates from the bottom by simply removing a few screws, and the top has no electronics and is sealed from the bottom part. So the top (key part) can be washed without the need to spend a week drying it. Pretty cool design in my opinion.
It might to you, but that's because you're an idiot.
A friend of mine recently dish-washed the white keys of his iMac G4 keyboard. They are now clean but also very yellow! So watch out for discolouring.
I did this on two first generation MS natural keyboards ran everything through the dishwasher except for the membranes, circuit boards and metal bits. didn't even do the air dry had it dry just like the dishes :) the membranes i let soak overnight in ordinary water and then air dried them by clipping them with a close pin to a cupboard ( very low tech but works ) the came out looking brand new and worked fine. have done it twice this way as those damn kids keep eating and dumping drinks on the keyboards of their computers.
I picked up one of these just over a year ago thinking it would be a disposable keyboard. It's made of soft rubber so it's quiet for heavy typers like me. It can roll up and be tucked in a backpack. But the bonus I didn't expect was that I can rinse it off under hot tap water and wipe it dry/clean with a cloth or paper towel. It takes me about 2 minutes to fully clean my keyboard so I don't mind doing it often. I now have two rubber keyboards because I liked it so much.
But there's always a catch... it does take some getting used to typing on it. First, it's flat - which is arguably ergonomic since I'm not flexing my wrists backward at all. The keys are also pretty bouncy, so you end up missing letters a lot at first. Once you get acclimatized to it though, these add up to a bonus as well: Nobody at my office likes to use it so they leave my desk alone ;)
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
The tap water in certain parts of Malaysia contain high chlorine content and other sediments. Would that have any corrosive effect on the keyboard circuit board when washed?
I broke my laptop by pouring salty miso soup in it. I think it rusted the motherboard inside.
Whats wrong with bacteria?
Chances are, if youre still breathing, there are millions of them inside you..
Most keyboards have their leads printed on flexible plastic sheets that are screwed together with a metal backpane. If water gets inbetween these, it *will* lead to shorts and burnt leads, and your keyboard *will not* function.
Ideally, what you want to do is take the front part of the keyboard off, remove the keyboard controller PCB (Usually just three screws and you can pull it and the cord off,) remove the plastic sheet and the metal plate, and then just scrub the thing down with whatever you're comfortable with. Dry it off traditionally with a hairdryer or similar device (being plastic, it doesn't take more than fifteen minutes,) and screw the sheets and the controller back into the keyboard.
Voilá. Clean keyboard in twenty minutes tops.
Give up smoking :-)
When friends with kids visit, my PC typically does the baby sitting. Any Star Wars game is good to glue the kids to the screen. Unfortunately, they drool, eat chocolate, etc. while gaming. So my keyboard and the mouse get the dishwasher treatment (coz I cannot do this with the kids). I let both dry out for two, three days and things work fine afterwards.
Toilet water the first time, clean water the second time.
Makes good sense to me.
Batteries and electronics don't break as easily under water as people think. There IS real hazards with electrocution and such, don't get me wrong, but a lot of these devices are built with at least some of the stupid things people can do to them in mind.
Omeg La. Rofl Leh.
Exactly, disassemble and wash the washable parts, not the electronics. Otherwise, I use a little Goo Gone on a rag to clean keys without taking anything apart and flip and pound on the keyboard to shake out the crap in it.
*smacks you*
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...accidentally one day while hiking. I didn't notice the problem until my friend pointed out that my backpack was slowly dripping, at which point I reached in, fished out my 30G iPod (yes, the one with a hard drive) from a nice pool of water, and shook it off in horror. For the next 12 hours all it would do is display a sad iPod face and the message "www.apple.com/support". After that it would attempt to play music, but it wouldn't make any sound at all.
:)
I stuck it out in full sun for a day (metal side UP, of course!) to dry it out. Since then it has worked perfectly. It seems that water is only bad for electronics while they're wet
HTH
Beauty is just a light switch away.
Maybe 8 or 9 years ago at work, we did this at work. Another company paid us to clean their keyboards and they would give them to us in moving-boxes. I don't recall how many, but it was something like 200 keyboards. We used our dishwasher to do 8-10 keyboards at a time. They where very clean when they got out and I think we killed 3-5% of the keyboards. Well, they might already have been dead before we washed them. We gave each keyboard a week or so to dry up, before we tested them and send them back. Just when we got the job to clean the keyboards, we washed them manually (not taking them apart) but we got the idea to use the dishwasher and the results was much better than we could do it. These where the old school IBM clicking keyboards.
Uptil recently, I had a old Compaq keyboard (the keyboard is from 94-95 i believe), and every now and then I disassembled it and put it in the dishwasher. all the keys, all the green rubber thingyes, the 3 plastic parts and the metal plate. worked like a charm. to clean the keymap/the plastic sheets with the key points,I used a rag with some soap to swipe off the dirt. the hardest keyboard to clean is the one in a laptop, if anyone has a clue about this, please, pm me ;)
A couple of year ago, a friend came to me with his disfunctional laptop. He had accidently spilled beer over its keyboard and the keyboard acted very weird now. Some keys didn't work at all, while others thought they were another key. :)
I took the laptop apart and, luckily for my friend, the beer had only spread over the keyboard pcb. I removed the keyboard and put it in a tub of warm (not hot) water and some detergent, and let it soak overnight. The next day I rinsed it off intensely with tepid water and air dried the keyboard for a week in a windowsill. Afterwards they keyboard worked perfectly again
Yeah, once I knew a guy who sat in front of a CRT and then he died.
It's a bit more complicated, but you can do that safely. I took all the keys off my keyboard, opened it up, took the logic & cable away, and put the keys and the body in the washing machine. (Actually, I put the keys in the _laundry_ machine in a pouch, and the body in the dishwasher.) Mine also had a pair of thin plastic sheets under the keys, with (probably) graphite criss-crossing circuits, and I washed that part by hand with soap for fear of breaking the traces.
;)
It air-dried just fine in a few hours, and worked just right after assembly. Only issue is that now it's _too_ squeaky-clean; either there's some calcareous deposit under the keys from the water, or there used to be some sort of lubricant that washed up. Anyway, they're literally squeaky sometimes
"I think I am a fallen star. I should wish on myself."
I wouldn't *dare* attempt this; all my keyboards are integrated with laptops. It seems like a great idea though for the grungiest of keyboards; but wouldn't it be safer to wash in a sink with cold water, gently rinse and then air dry?
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
I have to ask what you were doing with your keyboard in the bathroom while you shave. Are you really that addicted to Slashdot?!
I grew up working in audio and have worked my adult life (and then some) in computers. It's all just peices-parts, nothing special. I don't remember how many peices of equipment (mixers, mobos, etc) I've showered off. Mind you, I REALLY COULDN'T CARE LESS about the bacteria issue. 99% of the time, the issue was ages of dirt/food/etc or some secretary spilled her coffee. I was opening keyboards back in the day when those things cost $100 or more and every switch was a nightmare waiting to happen should a key fall off.
I never had a problem.
Soapless wash and complete rinse. Gentle blow-dry. Done. No waiting a week (???) or even 72 hours.
Then again, I've always been adverturous. Remember the first HDDs? I lost count of how many of those things I brought back to life by swapping drive packs and control boards, without a cleanroom!
It might take the whole quart to do a keyboard, but for cell phones and the like, I go to home depot and get a can of denatured alcohol in the paint thinner section. As long as it doesn't contain methyl ethyl ketone, it dries faster than water and gets more gunk out. I once spilled a full venti caramel macchiato on a laptop keyboard... disassembly and q-tips with denatured alcohol worked faster and better than plain H2O. YMMV
Plus you can set it on fire later...
I'm noticing all the "it worked fine for me, i'd highly recommend it" postings. What everyone fails to realise is that everyone who's washed their keyboard and had it ruined is obviously unable to follow up with a "it didn't work for me" post.
Therefore this survey is going to be a bit one sided...
water doesn't hurt electronics contrary to popular belief.. its powering them up when wet that does. and its not even shorting that does the damage when you do.. it electrolysis that kills them by damaging the circuit.
Or applying the fluid whilst the device is already powered up. Most beverages are a lot more destructive than water since they contain plenty of disolved salts. Half a cup of coffee will rapidly turn the average laptop into a set of spare parts.
when we assemble printed circuit boards the last step is to wash them in warm water to strip the flux used in the soldering process.
Much the same thing is done with industrial production, usually with de-ionised water though.
Is it safe for laptops too...?
I can remember ads nearly four decades back (good grief!) blithering on about killing germs. The scary thing from the distaff perspective is that the social structure on those ads has hardly changed. It's always the woman squirting the toilet cleaner, loading the dishwasher and pushing the squeegy mop.
Show me (randomized controlled evidence only please) that sticking a keyboard in a dishwasher reduces the incidence of GI, 'flu, and other disease outcomes, and then I'll consider it. Until then, the bacteria and I will peacefully coexist, and I will rejoice in my liberation from the squeegy mop!
Back in the early 90s my mentor taught me how to wash wyse keyboards in the sink. These were real keyboards with real switches, not membranes.
HOT HOT water. Non-ionizing soap. Let it soak a few minutes. Manipulate all the keys under water. Let soak some more. Then rinse with plenty of distilled water. Rinse more. Rinse more.
Now.... set the oven on warm, NOT HOT. Warm enough to evaporate the water. Put the keyboard in the oven for a while. When it comes out, test it. We made many keyboards that were destined for the garbage as good as new this way.
For MEMBRANE keyboards, take 'em apart and do the cotton/alcohol trick on the sheets and wash the plastic stuff however you feel.
It really works!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Last month I dove into the swimming with my Motorola cell phone in the pocket of my swim trunks. I would not turn on even when I switched batteries.
I removed the battery and laid it in the sun--in 36 hours it had dried completely and works perfectly.
That's great, now how do you clean a MacBook keyboard?
Had a girlfriend who did research at Vanderbilt University and once told me of a study on exactly what was on the tongs at the buffet table in a local Shoneys, among other places. The study basically revealed a "fecal fest". You nasty suckers who do not wash your hands, especially after using the bathroom, are really the genesis of why your keyboard ends up a bacteria trap.
1. Lean keyboard against leg of desk. 2. Spray with 409 cleaner. 3. Wipe with paper towel. 4. Spray again with 409. (excess 409 runs on floor) 5. Let air dry until I need to use the keyboard again. *All of this is more for the "look" of clean rather than hygenic purposes. Bacteria are cool.
Unless you're a true-geek, and have a very high-end keyboard...if you're worried about the grime and germs in your keyboard, why not simply buy a new one? The keyboard and mouse are user replaceable items, is there some reason, besides sentiment, we wouldn't want to replace them if we're uncertain of the germ content?
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
I have a gamut of computer keyboards, many have gone to the great computer graveyard, but others survived. The worst of the worst is getting an entire Mountain Dew knocked over onto the device, which seems to permeate every "nook and cranny" so to speak.
I had that happen to an old IBM 'tactile' keyboard, which I threw in the dishwasher (without the heat cycle) based on advice I gleaned from usenet. After a few days of drying (in an area with a lot of heat, either out in the sun or a very warm room) the water evaporated and left the keyboard quite usable without the sticky sugary mess the soda pop left behind.
I tried this with a newer keyboard I had, one of the Microsoft 'ergonomic' keyboards. Spilled a Pepsi in that one and put it through the wash cycle (remember to not use any dish soap or rinsers) and let it wait a couple days. It didn't work. Opening it up, I noticed the rubber membrane tying the keys to the circuit board still had water in it. I wiped it up and put it back together (be careful if you try to align it correctly) and it worked.
This happened again to my wife with the same type of keyboard and this time we didn't open the keyboard, we just waited a few weeks for all the water to evaporate (be bought a spare keyboard in the meantime) and after a few weeks, it functioned normally.
I used to recommend putting a keyboard in the dishwasher (I'm not sure about some of the new wireless keyboards), but I would also recommend that they wait quite some time before attempting to use it again. Having a "back-up" keyboard is almost as important as having a backup power-supply. However, it may be possible to revive a keyboard that had been inundated with liquid refreshment.
No battery-powered consumer electronics will electrocute you. The threshold voltage to stop the heart is a lot higher with DC and takes a lot longer exposure than with 50/60 Hz AC because you have to actually fatigue and stress the heart to make it stop. Plus you need to get conduction through the body across the heart to do it. Dropping cell phones, laptops, pagers or anything else of the sort into water is perfectly safe -- for the user. Not so safe for the electronics.
One other thing a lot of people here have missed about washing electronics is that some parts and pieces (microphones, piezo buzzers, switches, etc) are either not mounted and soldered until after the circuit board washing, or have a protective plastic cover that gets removed after the wash step. One particularly useful accessory when cleaning circuit boards is a can of spray air. The industry uses and air knife. But the idea is to blow off the solvent instead of letting it evaporate. Evaporation just re-deposits whatever gunk was dissolved. Blowing it off removes it completely.
But instead of having to let it dry for a week, I just took the keyboard apart.
Modern keyboards are not very complex. It's pretty easy to disassemble them into their individual parts and run through the wash.
Just make sure that you put the keys in a container with holes (like the containers used for washing baby bottle parts in a dishwasher). You don't want to lose any of those keys, or have them fall into the heating element and get melted.
The drying time here is a matter of hours rather than days.
And when you put it back together, you can be sure that the inside of the keyboard is as clean as the outside. Years of daily use can bring hair and other filth deep inside of a keyboard. Taking it apart and running it through the wash will clean it fully.
I do this at work quite frequently. When a user complains their keyboard is too dirty or has sticky keys, I through it in the dishwasher friday afternoon, no heat and no soap, and give it back to them Monday morning.
Turn keyboard upside down and shake.
That is my way to clean my keyboards. If I need more of a sanitizing clean I just spray any cleaner I can get my hands on into a paper towel and wipe the keys. That keeps it hygenic.
-un
Yopu for you?
Your keyboard provides targets for your immune system to practice on and develop strategies against. This is important for survival of the species. I'm a fan of letting kids (and adults) eat the stuff they drop on the floor. Candy under the couch? Old sandwich? I eat that too. I stopped washing my hands as often during flu season too, and do not avoid touching my face either. germaphobes cheese me off, but luckily they will all die out.
Just use your dirty keyboard until it no longer works. Toss it in the landfill, get a new one. And any keyboard over $20 is a rip off. Life happens to keyboards. Pop, fried chicken breading, oil, dust, kids... As long as the keyboard does have ghosting issues with keys you use for gaming you're all set.
I've been doing it for years.
Seriously, in the past I've always managed to get nicotine and crumb infested keyboards like the m$ natural keyboard or the good old 1989 ibm ps/2 keyboard (aka emergency sledgehammer) for free. The former, you'll still have to pay money for, if you want it in a decent shape, the latter has become rare.
:)
Anyway: All of the keyboards I've gotten for free, I've simply taken apart (will take aboout 10 minutes, if not mechanically challenged...) and put everything, except for the electronics (and the conductive foils of course) into the dishwasher. The keys go into the basket for the cutlery, the rest of the frame goes into the place, where the plates should be - works just fine. You can even dry them and use the 70C program - so far I haven't encountered any problems with plastic melting or the labeling coming off. And with 70C and a Somat 5in1 Tab, even the dirtiest, nicotine-yellow keyboard looks as good as new again
Small Problem: The dishwasher removes the thin film of grease, that's leftover from the injection die casting process in which the keys were made. Thus, they'll require a little more force when being pressed. I've solved that by using a drop of teflon spray.
So, usually it takes about 30 minutes to take the keyboard apart and put it together again, plus time in the dishwasher. If you can get a decent keyboard for free that way, I think, it's time well invested.
Pure water will autoionize. Self-ionization of water
If it's still not dry, then a week in the sun, or a few hours to overnight in a 160 oven will drive out the water.
The latter works great for cell phones that have been caught in the rain or lightly dunked.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister
Wouldn't this UV Disinfectant Wand from ThinkGeek be a bit easier? Killing 99.9% of bugs with a 10 second clean cycle seems a bit more reasonable to me than a 7 day clean/dry cycle. Especially for those of us who work on a number of computers all day long.
-gary
A-ha! You said "pouring," implying that it wasn't an accident! Wait til your boss hears about this!
which version of the natural?
the second version, I believe. It was a bit smaller than the first version. I've since replaced it--oddly enough, some of the keys stopped working years after the wash-it incident--with the larger black natural keyboard with the extra buttons...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
I successfully cleaned several mice and keyboards with our regular household dishwasher.
:) )
Take them apart (be careful not to break to plastic hooks and latches while doing that) and then take out the electronics. My keyboards had a small PCB glued to plastic-wire-sheets under the keyboard rubber membrane. That was mounted with several screws and some cables going to the USB ports and could be separated very very easily from the casing which contained all the keycaps. Put the plastic top and bottom casing in the dishwasher, used the normal program (alone without any additional dishes) and then let it dry for several hours in the summer sun. Put it together, worked.
The keysprings in my rather cheap Cherry keyboards (http://www.cherrycorp.com/) were made of non-rusting spring steel, so there were no problems on that side.
The first time I did this, I took out all individual keycaps and put them between two metal kitchen sieves for the dishwashing part. But that wasn't necessary and it took half an hour to get all the keys back in afterwards. But it makes for the geek litmus-test to see if you know by heart which key goes where. (I didn't, but had another keyboard for reference
This also worked for mice and TV remotes, which usually get gunked up after some months or years of use. And no, the laser-engraved keymarkings didn't come off during the process, although I wouldn't bet on it for all dirt-cheap equipment. (TVs where the remote lost some markings after half a year of normal use)
One thing I forgot: Spray on some PTFE/Teflon dry-lube from the underside before putting all together again, so the keys slide in as smooth as possible. Silicone spray-on MAY be an alternative, but it attracts and binds dust. Larger keys (i.e ENTER and SPACE) usually have some guiding rods and special springs that should get a drop of thick silicone grease at the pivots and the guides.
It is sensible to clean keyboards because the dirt sometimes interferes with proper action. Your instructions are excellent for people who haven't cleaned electronic circuit boards before.
However, it is not sensible to worry about bacteria. There are bacteria everywhere, all the time. Whether there are 100,000 bacteria on every key or 1,000,000 makes little difference.
Slashdot editors seem to easily believe science fraud articles. Maybe they played with their Nintendo Game Boys in biology class, physics class, and, judging by the number of spelling and grammar errors, English class.
42
I do it the manual way, water, soap and any old unused toothbrush then I take out each key, rub it with the toothbrush then rinse it and put it aside, in the end dry all the keys and parts with a hairdryer, takes 1-2 hours but I get my keyboard shining for 4-5 months...
I'm not concerned about bacteria, but I do find a grubby keyboard unsightly and sometimes sticky.
My solution, rather than having to wait for a week for everything to dry after a sojourn in the dishwasher, is to take the back off the keyboard, allowing the actual key panels and the associated silicone or rubber film (the stuff through which the keys press on to the switches) to fall out. These may be easily scrubbed in the laundry trough with a brush and soapy water, then rinsed under the tap.
The excess water can then be towelled off before leaving the bits in a warm place for an hour or so to dry completely before putting it all back together.
We have seen three customers bring in keyboards that they have put in the dishwasher. All three were nonfunctional and had water inside them when disassembled.
There are three issues with washing electronics
1) rust and corrosion risk
2) creating damaging electrical paths when water is introduced while power is present (this can be in the form of a bios battery)
3) water that lingers after being washed
(1) we don't see so much with keyboards, but that's a very common issue when a laptop takes a drink. I believe this is mainly due to the customer not getting the bios and main batteries disconnected immediately, as corrosion is very rapid while power is present. There are key areas we examine in certain models of laptops where we suspect a liquid spill. Corrosion at those locations (certain chips and connectors) verifies liquid damage. Those machines typically don't even power on. The corrosion seen in many chips shorts their adjacent pins together, (looks a bit like green fuzz) and can either prevent the chip from operating or damage it outright when power is reapplied, even if all the water has been removed. Most of the laptops we get in that have experienced liquid spills have to be sent in for replacement of motherboard due to corrosion on chip pins.
(2) is releated to (1), either the result of lingering water or presense of corrosion when power is reapplied. Often causes permanent damage.
(3) is what gets the keyboards. Most modern keyboards are collapsing membrane variety, and rely on a semiconductive plastic disc to be pressed down on a pad of exposed contacts. When water hits these contacts, it acts just as though the key were down, and produces stuck keys. Some keyboards can be taken apart to dry them out. The membranes are fairly well enclosed though - they have to be open to allow air in and out so they can collapse, but they are close to sealed, so once water gets in, it rarely evaporates out without help. Keyboards have electronics and can be damaged by (2) as well, but it's not very common. I suspet this is because they don't have very sensitive electronics. Motherboards are also heavily at risk here because of the intricate components on the board. Small chips that have dozens of pins on them hug the board, and create capilary action that draws water in between the pins and holds it there, creating a short. Sometimes this damages the chip, and sometimes it just prevents it from working. Other components are even more resistant to drying out, such as choke coils, but in many of those cases the water does not damage or interfere with them. The big thing is wet pins on the chips. Hitting a board with a hair dryer for a good 20 minutes can be enough to clear out all the lingering water.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Hell no, I'd never put my peripheral in the dishwasher.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
I think we all know the advice an Ask Slashdot would garner for that question:
Get a lawyer.
While I never tried it myself, keep in mind that some bad things can happen.
:)
I once spilled coffee on my keyboard and after cleaning it up a dozen or two of keys wouldn't work. After investigating, it turned out one of the plastic-embedded wires inside the keyboard was dead and I had to patch it with an electric wire and a piece of eraser (to hold the wire in place).
Apart from that, that keyboard was blessed. It survived more than a dozen years of harsh treatment (When I was using Windows and getting mad at it)! It received countless hits and flew over the room many times... It's still working but I changed it since the "[" key was starting fail (needed to press harder).
I don't hit my keyboard anymore since I exclusively use Linux.
I own several computers and have washed keyboards many times. Keyboards from brands from memorex, HP, Dell, keytronics, microsoft and logitech.
I have a keyboard I had since 1993 (keytronix) and retired it in 2003. That is 10 years, and washing it in the dishwasher almost yearly. Sure the ink on the keys wears out fast, but it saves you $80 http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/8396/
The 3 dangers are
Water: Be sure to let it dry.
Soap: can corrode metal and could leave a conductive film. Use a light amount of soup.
Heat: Use top shelf, and or turn of heat dry.
I usually take the face plate off when washing it, and let it dry for at least a week to a month. I also wash ~5 keyboards at a time and I use about 1/2 the soap, and turn head off. I use twisties to keep the cords in large loops. I have not washed a wireless keyboard in this fashion.
Please wash your keyboards!
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
I have washed motherboards in the kitchen sink with fairy, and hot air dried them in front of the heater, they worked a treat after, gets rid of all that human dust build up.
http://luckyredfish.com
I wash my Saitek Eclipse keyboard about every month. I unscrew it and wash only the key part (which contains no electronics or electric contact whatsoever.)
I don't know for other keyboards, but this one has a rubber part that separates the contacts from the keys. This rubber is made of one piece, i.e. dust and dirt are stopped by it, so there is little need to wash the other part.
my $.02
I spilled juice on my IBM x40, immediately flipped it upside down and let the juice spill off while turning it off at the same time. I took out the battery, and quickly removed the keyboard. I found that the keys were sticky, it was awful to type on. It did work though. So after a while I decided to put it in a tub of hot water, shake it around and hope that all the juice residue left. I did, and let it dry for a few hours. I plugged it in, and the keyboard worked perfectly, but the trackpoint didn't. I took it out and let it dry overnight, it was perfect in the morning.
After experimentally verifying that my cheap membrane keyboard is curry-safe, tea-safe, coffee-safe, icecream-safe, lemonade-safe, juice-safe and oh, I can't remember what else I've managed to get in there-safe, I'm not at all surprised to hear that it's dishwasher safe as well. Personally I prefer opening it up and cleaning it out, showering non-electronic components. Mainly because I live in Europe and thus don't have a dishwasher.
Yes, Cascade did the job with no water spots!
If I was deep this is would be profound, if smart then wise, if a poet then verse. Here it is, you judge!
Ok, the dishwasher is an easy solution, although maybe not the best other than using the wash and rinse cycles. And if you have really hard water, you might want to think twice.
:)
Other tips...
1) If you have bad/hard water avoid it, instead use filtered or store bought distilled/de-ionized water. Use a sink or tub and in place of running water, and shake the keyboard/device to ensure it is getting properly washed.
2) Some degreasing agents are ok, but they have to be thoroughly rinsed. (Common ones used in small shops are the chemicals in Windex, 409, etc. as they are designed to be easily rinsed or leave less residue.)
3) Drying: After rinsing electronics with clean water, if you can use an evaporation accelerator like rubbing alcohol or whatever would applicably be safe to the device. (i.e. rubbing alcohol is not good on LCDs) When you use an evaporation accelerator, you still need to give time for it to dry and placing in front of fan in a position it drains works well. This way you can avoid using heat and will also help push air through the device. I don't recommend heat unless you are also using a fan as just heat will not fully allow the water to escape as well as air flowing through the device will.
4) If the component originally had 'grease/lubricant' protecting parts of it, you will have to replace it. This can be from misting something as simple as vegetable oil if it isn't used in a dusty environment or using products like Duralube which will add the protecting lubricant and also help to keep contacts clean as well as protect them from water damage in the future.
5) Notice the mention of Duralube in the previous note. It can also be used to water proof electronics while helping keeping conductive parts clean. For example a telephone keypad, etc.
One old example I give techs: I have always installed outside gate and door phones, and instead of buying boxed phones or ugly water proof phones, I simply drench or immerse the phones in a product like Duralube. It will keep the phone water proof and working properly for years. This is also a good idea for telephone or network connectors that might get exposed to outside elements. - Test on cheap phones/equipment first as your results may vary.
6) For plastic finishes, use a misting of Endust, let dry partially, then lightly polish. For devices with screens, both Endust and Pledge type products can be used on scratched screen to remove the visual blemishes without harming the surface. According to the level of scratches, polish less to leave more 'product' on the screen to hide the scratches.
The main tricks are to clean so that you are aren't leaving dirt behind, and dry well and as fast as possible to avoid corrosion, and don't apply power until you are 100% certain there is no water inside.
If you are just trying to save a device from water damage, remove all power sources ASAP, and then rinse with clean water or drop them in rubbing alcohol, but only if alcohol is safe for the device.
I have dealt with devices rescued from floods and the first thing was to flush them in a vat of rubbing alcohol to clean and remove damage caused by water in addition to accelerating the evaporation process without using heat.
Good Luck and I make no guarantees or warranties on the methods discussed, implied or not.
Well, I have a generic laptop that gets reselled by many different companies under a brand name (An M59K if anyone cares) and my keyboard got egg drop soup spilled in it. Popped the bugger out, dishwashed it, let it dry for three days and it works perfectly. The tricky part for most laptops would be getting the keyboard out. (Mine has tiny catch releases on the top of it. Nice and easy)
but it was useful before i knew about this... http://trevorjmcmullin.com/articles/keyclean.html
I laughed so hard I almost peed.
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
I once spilled a whole can of coke into an Amiga 500. I just washed the whole thing out with water and let it dry suspended upside down so all the water came out. It only had to dry about 32 hours for me to use it again.
Yeah. but it still has a very high resistance, 10 MOhm is what we used to get routinely from our lab deionized water.
Wash your hands!
; )
After you wash it, rinse it with Distilled Water. This will prevent damage due to soap, minerals, etc.
/. crowd...
An easier method would be to shower with it. This might be more appropriate for the
I tried a batch of about 5 keyboards in the dishwasher.
We used an air compressor to blow them dry then let them sti for a week.
I'm not sure whether they used the "heat dry cycle" cycle or not.
Some of the keyboards were fine afterwards. Others seemed to be more difficult to press keys afterwards. It's almost as if they lost a degree of lubrication.
I'm trying to recall if I used dish washing detergent or not.
-Joe Baker
This is largely true. I'm a retired US Navy Electronic Technician and we used to have a dishwasher in the shop solely for washing electronic circuit boards taken from electronic test equipment. Most equipment is not harmed by exposure to water IF there's no electricity applied. That being said, take care and use common sense,
I'm a female who now has basic knowledge of soap and water residue, not a lot of electronics experience. I have spent hours getting rid of water-mineral-soap-scum from everything including my peripherals. Be careful what you wash with, don't use certain cleaners or clean delicate surfaces too often. You'd be surprised what builds up just from cleaning when you live in an area with lots of minerals in the water. I don't completely and fully understand why but I ended up with problems getting the keys to make contact back with the keyboard because of this. (I didn't bother to try to understand fully either because if I wanted to be a chemist I would have followed that path.)
Now granted, I wasn't washing my keyboard as much as my hair, but I did start getting this residue from my desire to have cleaner periphals. I don't like to name brands or anything but I had to switch to something with "oxi" in the name to get the mineral residue off the keyboards, controllers, clothing, showerheads, etc. If you live in an area with "hard water", I am just suggesting don't "over do" it--once or twice a month at most, unless you get off on scrubbing and chiselling tiny areas.
Unfortunately, I think that is not often enough and gross. What I'd really like is an option for at work where I don't want to think about who else uses my keyboard and phone, what they do with it when I am not looking, and where I am not allowed to clean beyond some lysol and q-tips.
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
You're telling me that because you're a "real female" you don't know that you ought to use distilled water? What else do you put in your iron?
Now think about why.
I did that once. Shorted the battery, and because I didn't realize I should rinse it, I must have corroded the board, since it never quite worked right. Yours must have had a better casing or something.
Just after finishing art school, me and a few friends brought our Amigas to shed we rented from my aunt and started a video production company. One evening we needed a joint but we where out of hashish. Then i suddenly remembered how my colleague always rolled his joints on top of his keyboard while reviewing Dpaint animations. I got out a screwdriver and surely there was enough crumbs there to build a decent joint.
...and they still work.
Spilled coke on one and the other was just filthy, so I took them out the back and hosed them down and then left them to dry (for about a week).
Worked like a charm, but my boss thought I was mad.
There have been entire notebook computers that have been dishwasher safe for several years now,...
a recent experiment by a reporter who used a dishwasher to clean her keyboard
/., I guess I need a new laptop now .. ;-)
I tried it, now it doesn't work anymore. Damn
Georg
Does it cleans virii?
Blame Canada!
You should have thought ahead and not had your Treo anywhere near water and saved yourself the trouble and potential heartbreak of a valuable tech appliance ruined by a preventable accidental drop into a toilet.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Now think about why.
I was just trying to post useful information to a discussion and you are harrassing me and dragging out a topic into a non useful tangent. Maybe harrassing female posters who have zero interest in chemistry gets your rocks off, I don't know. If so, more power to you, but I'm not a good one to harrass because I'm going to vent back.
Please stop trying to save my unchemical soul and start some kind of 'you're not a real female because you never sweat with an iron campaign' and return to useful slashbotting. Sorry, I am a female who doesn't own an iron or a periodic table and proud of it. ~WBGG
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
I've left one in a pocket once, not sure how it survived the washer and the dryer but it did. Guess I got lucky :p
Yes, this is precisely why we don't use the alcohol process.. the displays we use are rated for immersion time for the cleaning process.. we just then afterwards bring them up to 100dec C for 2 min to dry
I did this to my old "Linux CoolKeyboard" about a year ago, as things were getting kinda gunky. A few days later, we bought a new dishwasher.
Unfortunately, you see, a few of the keys got wedged down into the drain-pump mechanism in the bottom, which we had to disassemble to get them out. Having so thoroughly taken it apart, I wasn't too sure of my ability to get it back together without causing flood damage downstairs. More importantly, neither was my wife. Hence, new dishwasher. (The old one had seen better days anyway.)
09
Nowadays, I can buy a new keyboard for US$3.99 at a computer store. If dirtiness is that big an issue, might it make more sense to just buy another keyboard every month or two, then donate your (barely used) keyboard to some local computer club or non-profit? Keyboards are so cheap these days I routinely keep one or two in a box in the closet in case one becomes difficult to use or acts funny.
--
Paul Robinson - My Blog
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
It's been 8 months, two days ago, since I've had a cigarette - no cheating - *sigh* you'd think it would get easier by now. Coincidently, I set up a slashdot account 8 months ago and have been reading/posting since then... never put my keyboard in a dishwasher though.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some idea balls to remove from a manatee tank.
Shouldn't we instead be making keyboard safe dishwashers?
It's not that cheap to buy a new keyboard if you're getting a good one. Model Ms aren't even available new, they're like $30-$40 used (so unlikely to be clean when you buy it anyway), and the closest new equivalent is over $100 (I think Lexmark still makes a keyboard they call "Model M" but they switched it from buckling sprint to some crap membrane setup like 10 years ago.. some other company makes a buckling spring keyboard though, whose name escapes me). If you don't know what I'm talking about, you simply must use a Model M sometime. Most keyboards are simply awful in comparison.
I started to say something about the feeling that you need to wash your peripherals so often. I really don't feel it is that necessary, but I discussed an idea with my boss the other day and thought it might be proper to run it by somebody more cleanliness minded than myself, so I'll focus on that instead.
Imagine you have a desk with no monitor perched on it but instead it IS a touch sensitive monitor. Yeah, a monitor the size and shape of your desk, an actual desktop computer. Your keyboard would be a displayed on the desktop as would your mouse, if you needed a mouse. Your writing would behave like papers that you could drag around to where they were handy or you could drop into your calendar for follow-up or drop into your filing cabinent to file away or drop into your outbox for sending. If you wanted to do both, you could drag the paper with two fingers to make a link between the two or double-tap then double tap somewhere else on your desk to make a copy. The desktop display would have to be tough enough to take a hot cup of coffee dropped on it, tough enough to take a heavy lysol spraying and have a pretty high resolution.. but we're getting there.
It's just a thought, but I wonder how appealing it is to everybody else. For me it would mean no more papers cluttering up corners. It would mean an awful lot less power lines cluttering up the place and a tremendous improvement in being able to work as a group on a project (no more hauling the projector out, or mirror monitors and eye contact with everyone in the office rather than staring through a monitor at the one (un?)lucky enough to be behind one of them.)
I'm primarily asking WannaBeGeekGirl, but anyone is welcome to chime in.
Disclaimer: I'm not aware of anyone offering or who has patented anything like this concept, but I think it hardly qualifies as an original idea. As much as it does, presuming no previous patents, I hereby release anyone using this concept of any patent infringement onus, but retain all other rights of ownership, to be exercised by the Free Software Foundation in my absence. I have not at this time filed for any patent, nor do I intend to but do wish this post to be considered prior art as much as is possible.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
For people like you and me who, for various reasons, need just a standard no frills keyboard, a $3.99 piece would be just dandy. Others, on the other hand, may have a super wireless keyboard with special hotkeys and such. Keyboards like this could run $100. Sometimes they even pair with a mouse too. If I had that situation, I'd much rather wash it rather than buy a replacement. Though, back when I was really poor, I spilled a pepsi on my keyboard. I was so broke I couldn't afford another one, so I unscrewed it and cleaned out each key, the rubber mat below it, and reassembled it after everything was dry. Normally, I would've just ignored it but ants came into the house and decided the innards would suit well for a cafeteria so I had to clean it. I know, too much information.
Where's my sock? There it is...
That word is tchochkes.
(Meant as informative, not as a grammar nazi.)
$META_SIG_JOKE
I've never gotten sick from keyboards, but seriously I will never use some of my friends keyboards. Maybe I'll buy them a sealshield.
I should give my neat-freakness some reference and put it in context. I previously was located in a shared office for two with a guy who worked 5am-1:30pm. (Currently, I am on sick leave so who knows where my stuff sits.) The office was in between an IT mini-station and a confrence room designated for customer usage (mainly, we had overflow problems so other people used it too.) My workspace was closest to the door. My lovely, complicated, DoD, workspace, because of the type of work I do, requires the PC and my phone to be a certain distance away from the Solaris workstation I spend 70% of my day at on a normal day. Still the location of the entire workspace lends my phone, and both keyboards to the confrence room and IT guests. This is all despite my efforts to the naught. You'd think duct taping the phone receive down with a big sign that says "MINE" would work, someone still cut it loose while I was out. I had many signs over the area noting that it is a private workspace. I drew many arrows to the public workspace. People are lazy. Worse, type-A people wanting IT service get angry and really belligerant and will throw things too over the use of a keyboard. We are allowed to customize our workspace and mine was certainly unique. The company really has no defense. I was placed there because I had a broken foot, we were at max occupancy and they thought it was easier for me to get through two sets of fire doors than one on crutches. Yes, that didn't make sense to me either. My phone smelled, frankly, like men's cologne. I don't wear men's cologne, so I'm fairly sure someone else uses it on a regular basis--worse the same person. I know someone else uses the keyboards because there are orange glowy pieces in there and I don't eat anything neon or ATK.
I'm really not a genuine germ-a-phobe. I can't stand that crap you put on your hands that doesn't wash off. I'd rather just not touch my hands to anything than use it. I carry a wet-nap thing in my purse, but I'll be the first to admit its dry because its probably at least 5 years past due. I only wash my hands once, thorouly at each proper time, I just don't like that I'm somehow sharing peripherals with other people. I mean, I've been in restrooms and seen people not wash their hands. Thats gross, I don't care what you did in that stall. Unless you are Magneto, who shouldn't be in the girls bathroom, you still touched the door handle. That means you might pass along a cold or something that I would rather not get/spread. People also cough all over their hands, they chew on fingers, they pick their noses--can't deny that, I've busted some co-workers digging for gold. So its just that it boils down to...well, that whole grossness factor. That, and people lie.
I don't mean I have these huge mistrust issues, but have you seen the TV medical show House? One of Dr. House's diagnostic tools is that people always lie. I'm not really focusing on why they lie, though its an interesting question and great show. My point is whether or not they intend to, people are putting icky things in my peripherals. So I offered some advice about my experience and asked a question.
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Imagine you have a desk with no monitor perched on it but instead it IS a touch sensitive monitor. Yeah, a monitor the size and shape of your desk, an actual desktop computer. Your keyboard would be a displayed on the desktop as would your mouse, if you needed a mouse. Your writing would behave like papers that you could drag around to where they were handy or you could drop into your calendar for follow-up or drop into your filing cabinent to file away or drop into your outbox for sending. If you wanted to do both, you could drag the paper with two fingers to make a link between the two or double-tap then double tap somewhere else on your desk to make a copy. The desktop display would have to be tough enough to take a hot cup of coffee dropped on it, tough enough to take a heavy lysol spraying and have a pretty high resolution.. but we're getting there.
It's just a thought, but I wonder how appealing it is to everybody else. For me it would mean no more papers cluttering up corners. It would mean an awful lot less power lines cluttering up the place and a tremendous improvement in being able to work as a group on a project (no more hauling the projector out, or mirror monitors and eye contact with everyone in the office rather than staring through a monitor at the one (un?)lucky enough to be behind one of them.)
I hope you don't mind me not answering your questions one at a time, perhaps after more discussion and i feel like I'm on the same page as you, I can do so. For now, this is the best I have. As far as your virtual workspace...you know, the DoD contractor development world lags in desktop technology so badly that I'm still trying to take your idea in. The lag is there for security issues, red tape, and such. I came out of college in 96 all excited about this new Java stuff and had to take giant steps back drink a lot of the real java while waiting before we were allowed to even prototype with Java. Same with the big Oracle releseases and Solaris, etc... *lol* A free beer to anyone who's heard of ObjectStore. ~cringe~
I've been on medical leave for a possibly terminal condition for almost 4 years now, and its been so weird catching up. I honestly wish I could answer your question from a work point of view.
This is getting really OT, so I'll probably mod my karma down and go ahead and answer you this, which may be more or less or nothing of what you wanted to know:
A terminal disease changes your POV on life, and often if you recover or start to, like I am, you consider making some career changes as the news of your health gets better. Not totally dumping your career, but maybe merging it with something else more meaningful on a personal leve. I put my heart and soul in to Raytheon and they rewarded me with two trips overseas when I was young and the least senior because I could present without any fear and was willing to (hell I love to) teach. I was also single and had nothing to tie me down, so leaving on short notice working in my favor. Until the the illness struck. Then things changed, but the company, for all its problems stuck with me, becaues I do have talents and if I get well and come back... Well there are people that ask for me by name. I haven't done work for them in 4 years and they refuse to fire me. Go figure. I think because I did some really crappy stuff no one expected anyone would do. I did it well, and I saved some asses of supervisors and people who assumed because I was disabled I couldn't do anything. I don't believe in burning bridges. Raytheon is not the best company, but they have done me right, they haven't fired me, after being non-revenu for 4 years, they still pay my med bills. Thats loyalty. When I survive and beat this thing, I want to thank them before I finally move on.
Then I want to change careers to a writter or social worker and THAT would be when I could envision your virutal desktop being perfect for what I need. Because I take tons of paper notes and its har
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Then you pull the keycaps from the keyboard, fill the washroom sink with soapy water, and wash the keycaps. Dry 'em with a paper towel, and put them back on. The whole process, including making the keycap puller, takes about 20 minutes, and your keyboard is back in action. You can also dust out the guts better with the keycaps off.
Of course, you have to remember which keys go where... :-)
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
I've been using the dishwasher (liquid soap only, top rack, no drying heat) to clean keyboards for quite a while now. Doesn't work so well with the grainy soap stuff.
GB
Maximum PC ran an article about cleaning your keyboard in a dishwasher a few months ago, and I learned you could do that from an IT buddy years ago. That was a standard practice at the university he went to. Did this reporter just hear about this from a friend who read the Maximum PC article? Or read it themselves and steal it? My past career in mass media leads me to think so. Not to mention, some of wording echos the forementioned article.
This is old hat. But a warning!! Make sure the keyboard is dryed for a week. If you are in a humid environment, ten days. If there's any water in it, things will get toasted. Want reload your hard drive from scratch. (That's if LUN 0 is targetable after your indescretion.)
I just find it really odd that you're so interested in cleaning things, and then claim that you need extensive chemistry knowledge to understand how that works.
And sorry, but being proud of not owning a periodic table? Isn't that a bad female stereotype?
I probably shouldn't have said anything, but I found your "oh, I couldn't possibly know anything" attitude offensive. Especially when you feel the need to point out that you're female in the 3rd word. And while I know guys with irons, and I don't use mine for much, I do happen to be female.
This subthread is a perfect example of the No True Scotsman logical fallacy...
I work in your typical IT support job, and deal with a LOT of dirty keyboards/mice. I would never put a keyboard into a dishwasher, both for the board and washer's sake, but I certainly welcome sanitization efforts. I've considered a spray bottle full of strong rubbing alcohol (BTW, if you try this, remember not to inhale it or let the mist get in your face!) For personal use, I have hope in the silver-based antibacterial coatings that are appearing on some peripherals and cel phones now, though even those would have to be cleaned occasionally...
John Sculley (then CEO of Apple) presented a video of something very much like this when he was a keynote speaker at UniForum in February of 1988. The video was quite well done, and very cool. IIRC, that was toward the beginning of Apple's use of Unix as a base for their OS. I'm not sure whether or not Apple ever took it any further.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
This will work for most keyboards. I used to work in the IT dept. of a lumber store chain, the PC's would come back to the store full of dust and dirt, there was a dishwasher there used only for those keyboards.
However, someone decided to try it with a DEC terminal keyboard and it no longer worked after a cycle.
I've washed two keyboards by putting them in a bathtub, and letting them air dry for a few days. They worked for years afterwards.
That said you probably shouldn't be sterilizing your keyboard. It's a good thing to keep bacteria around that gives your immune system a light workout, if you're working at a computer all day.
In the past I have used the wonders of a dishwasher to fix a computer component. I have also resorted to boiling a floppy controller to get it to work. I have also had to fix a non-working Apple //e by lifting the power supply side of the unit off the floor by a foot and letting it drop back to the floor. The trusty old upside down canister of compressed air to super cool an overheating chip as a part of trouble shooting an issue.
Why these solutions actually worked I couldn't tell you, I just know strange processes often have a way of working when all other avenues are having problems.
Regards,
Ryan Pritchard
Fun Extends All Basic Life Expectancies
I do this all the time to clean used keyboards in my computer shop before selling them (I buy a lot of surplus computers from our local university).
Hold the keyboard upside down, and give it a light spraying with Windex (or any other generic glass cleaner containing Ammonia, but not abrasives). Hold it for about 30 seconds to let the Windex work on the greasy fingerprints, then wipe down the keys with a nice soft terrycloth towel. Wipe from several different directions to get all sides of the keys.
Voila! Looks great. Holding it upside down keeps the Windex from running into the works where I suppose it would cause corrosion.
As far as other equipment go, I pretty routinely douse entire laptops in fresh water when they've had Cola, coffee or beer spilled into them (or in a couple of cases, they're back from Iraq, and full of sand and grit). I remove the keyboards, CDROMS and hard drives, along with the batteries and speakers, and stick them in the sink under warm water. After a good vigorous swishing, I rinse them with distilled water and use compressed air to blow out all the droplets possible.
Then I sit them under a fan for a couple of days, turning them every few hours to let trapped water drain out. After two day, reassemble and restart.
Works every time. I learned the basic principle as a RADAR technician in the Marine Corps. It was standard procedure for electronics that get splashed with salt water during carrier operations.
Fundamentalism is a crime against humanity
And sorry, but being proud of not owning a periodic table? Isn't that a bad female stereotype? Cleaning is different from ironing. I do enjoy cleaning as a way of mindlessly letting go of negative emotion. Baking does the same thing. When I moved to a high altitude location I didn't bother to learn the physics/chemistry or whatever is involved in the reason that I need to add more flour to my recipes. I just asked the guys at work how they keep their cakes from falling, they said to add 3 tablespoons of flour.
I don't think that being proud of not owning a period table is a bad female stereotype. I am proud of it because it was my choice to stop after Chem 101 and study coding. I sold my chemistry book back. I put my reasons for not having one in context too, by explaining that I chose a different career path in the previous post. Some of the greatest people on earth didn't own period tables.
And yes, I'm quite odd, something I'll never be apologetic for.
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
While I haven't cleaned keyboards in the dishwasher, I used to support a university in which students were always spilling things in laptops. With most laptops, I would remove the keyboard and spray it down with window cleaner. After all of the visible junk was off the keyboard, I'd soak it overnight in about 1 inch of water. The next morning, I'd shake the water out of the keyboard and set it on top of a CRT monitor, as a gentle heat source. I would leave the keyboard on the monitor for at least 24 hours, and verify that it was dry before re-installing it into the laptop. This worked for me over 50 times, with coffee, orange juice, Snapple, beer and mixed drinks. The key step, if you spill something in a keyboard, is to remove power from it immediately. You can remove power from a Desktop keyboard by just pulling the PS/2 plug from the back of the computer. To remove the power from a laptop, unplug it and remove the battery. Although it is tempting to jump the gun on trying the keyboard before it dries, this is a sure fire way to destroy it.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know. --Aldous Huxley
This keyboard I have doesn't suck: its batteries last well over a year, and I use it a lot. Not only that, but you can remove the frame with the keys where all the dirt gets stuck and wash it any way you want, then dry it and screw back onto the separate plate with all the electronics.
Keyboards are perfectly safe to clean in a dishwasher as long as they are dried completely before using.
I had just put two keyboards through the dishwasher yesterday and I can tell the one will be sticking for a while. This time I'm going to try some lubricant once the plastic dries. I have some 'Gunk, heavy duty Silicone Spray lubricant' that lists plastic. I would normally worry about puttying lubricant like that on something I would be around so much, but the label lists toys, it can't be much of a problem. I'll try a cotton ball or q-tip and see which works best, I didn't want to spray the entire back.
My keyboard hasn't hurt me yet, so I'm not too worried about it hurting me in the future.
Keyboards are fairly safe. The real civilization ending palgues come from unsanitized telephones.
I have used the same keyboard for 12 years.
One should throw away things only if they don't work or if you are getting something substantially better (and even then you may want to check if your old item is of use to anybody else).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I hope there is something better out there because I tried the silicone spray and it didn't help. The newly cleaned plastic just doesn't press as easy as it does before. Any other suggestions?