Dust, fur, hair, food, insects... Without regular maintenance, your computer equipment can really become square. We will see in this article how to thoroughly clean your gaming keyboard to make it like new. This tutorial works just as well for membrane keyboards. Know that there are many ways to accomplish this task, today I'm showing you the inexpensive method!
Here is a short video for cleaning your mechanical gaming keyboard !
How long can cleaning take?
Obviously, cleaning time can vary greatly depending on your ability, however, allow between 1 hour and 1 hour and a half to complete a clean job. As you will see later, the longest thing is to clean the keys one by one, if you are short on time, this step can be skipped, but that's a shame!
Things to have
To properly clean your mechanical gaming keyboard, it is recommended to have some equipment:
• A “key extractor” allowing you to easily remove the keys from your keyboard (not obligatory)
• Cotton swabs
• Make-up remover or any other approximately equivalent product, water and a bowl (for mixing)
• Paper towels, toilet paper or tissues
• A vacuum cleaner
Here is the complete kit to clean your mechanical keyboard like a pro!
Remove and clean your keys
Remove them
To start, you will have to remove all your keys.
I'm not going to lie to you, if you don't have a keycap puller, it's not going to be easy to remove the keycaps. The small one generally costs less than 5 euros, so if you don't want to take the hassle, you know what to do! Remove your keycaps with the keycap puller.
Paradoxically, once you have removed a few keys, it is quicker to remove the next ones directly with your fingers. Now that you have removed all your keys, you can see the disaster... If like me you only clean it every few months, or even have never cleaned it, you will think twice before eating in front of your computer
Wash them
To clean them, you will first put them in water.
A bucket or a sink does the trick. Then, you can place them on paper towel sheets to dry. Now it’s time to prepare your mixture!
In my case, I do it with makeup remover, but you can do it with an equivalent, a cleansing product for example. Mix ¼ makeup remover and ¾ water in your bowl. Then mix. We come to the longest and most annoying part, if you want to do a clean job, you will have to, using your paper towels and your cotton buds, clean each of the keys one by one. You can also let them soak in your solution, but the letters may disappear! Once this step is completed, rinse your keys and dry them again on paper towels.
Cleaning the keyboard
We'll remove the biggest one first. Shake your keyboard over a sink, trash can, or your toilet. You can also do it over a white sheet and admire everything your keyboard can store! The goal of the process is to remove the largest unwanted pieces.
Between your keys
After that, using cotton swabs, collect everything that has not fallen, in general: dust and hair.
At the same time as you do this task, with your other hand, vacuum just above it, to pick up what the cotton swabs loosen but don't pick up.
Once this is done, there should normally be only some residual dust remaining. Using a dampened cotton swab again, pick up any small remaining residue.
Outside of your keys
For the parts not between your keys (the visible part of your mechanical keyboard when it is not disassembled), make do with a paper towel soaked in the product previously created.
Once this task is completed, wipe everything with a dry paper towel. Vacuum again to remove the last residue.
You can now reposition your keys! For those who don't remember their exact places, you can use this image as a basis:
Some advice and contraindications
- If you use a lot of liquid, make sure everything is dry before reconnecting your device.
- No need to turn your vacuum cleaner on full blast or blow hard, or bang like a hammer on it to make crumbs fall, apart from damaging your keyboard you're not going to get anything.
- There are specialized products to replace the mix of makeup remover and water, if you can afford them, you can buy them almost everywhere on the internet.
Conclusion
As we have seen, cleaning your mechanical gaming keyboard is not very complicated, but it requires being careful and spending time. This task must be carried out approximately every 6 months and helps keep your equipment in good health. While you're at it, clean your mouse too!
