this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Mechanical Keyboards

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Fixing keyboard (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I built my first keyboard a few years ago. Love it. Though my cat knocked a drink over into it a year or so ago and i was too upset to see what did and didn’t work. Today I found the keyboard and decided to see if it works! Well it seems the space bar and H key are effed. I think the 3 keys on the right are also busted but I forget what they do lol. They don’t trigger anything on the keyboard tester.

I hoped that I could just hot swap some switches and be good but it seems H and space and whatever is on my bottom right corner do not work no matter the switch. I imagine that means the board is bad? Prob no fixing? At least it seems I can just swap the board and should be good to go. Thought I’d ask for tips..

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I'd do smth like this:

  1. Disassemble the poor bastard;
  2. photograph the board (knowing what was damaged helps in case you need to find dead components);
  3. Remove whatever is left from the liquid (there are specialized chemicals, but also some alcohol can work);
  4. Check if it works;

If it does not, check if the diodes are alive, then if some traces from keys in q-n are corroded. If so, replace the diodes or restore the traces with thin wire. I doubt there's something more complicated going on

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I'm no expert but have you taken the board out and checked it out? Might be some corrosion or bridging going on that's interfering with the connection. Might be worth trying to clean it up with some isopropyl alcohol if you're planning on swapping it out anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Make sure to fully clean the board. You may be able to make the dead keys work again by using a wire between switches to bypass the dead traces. This takes a lot of trial and error but I have fixed a keeboard where that I burnt the traces on by doing this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

One of the corner keys is shift duh.