Dust, hair, hair, food, insects … Without regular maintenance, your computer equipment can really become squaring. We will see in this article how to thoroughly clean your gaming keyboard to restore it to like-new condition. This tutorial works just as well for membrane keyboards. Know that there are many ways to accomplish this task, I am showing you today the inexpensive method!
Here is a little video to clean your mechanical gaming keyboard !
How long can cleaning take?
Obviously, the cleaning time can vary greatly depending on your ability, however, allow between 1 hour and 1 hour and a half to do a clean job. As you will see later, the longest is to clean the keys one by one, if you are short of time, this step can be skipped, but it’s a shame!
Items to own
To properly clean your mechanical gaming keyboard, it is recommended to have some equipment:
• A “key extractor” to easily remove the keys from your keyboard (not compulsory)
• Cotton swabs
• Make-up remover or any other roughly equivalent product, water, and a bowl (for mixing)
• Paper towels, toilet paper, or handkerchiefs
• A vacuum cleaner
Remove and clean your keys
Remove them
To begin with, you will have to remove all of your keys. I’m not going to lie to you, if you don’t have a key puller it won’t be easy to remove the first ones. The little one usually costs less than 5 euros, so if you don’t want to worry about it, you know what to do!
Remove your keys with the key extractor. Paradoxically, once a few keys have been removed, it is faster to remove the following 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 you 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 sink will do the trick. Then, you can arrange them on paper towels to dry them.
Now is the time to prepare your mixture! In my case, I do it with makeup remover, but you can do it with an equivalent, a cleanser for example. Mix ¼ of makeup remover and ¾ of water in your bowl. Then mix.
We come to the longest and most annoying part, if you want to do a clean job, you are going to have to, using your paper towels and your cotton swabs, 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 has been done, rinse your keys and dry them again on paper towels.
Keyboard cleaning
We will first remove the larger one. Shake your keyboard over a sink, trash can, or toilet. You can also do it over a blank sheet of paper and admire what your keyboard can store! The goal of the process is to remove the larger unwanted pieces.
Between your keys
After that, using cotton swabs, pick up anything that has not fallen, in general: dust and hair.
As you do this task, with your other hand, vacuum just above, to pick up what the cotton swabs are loosening but not picking up.
Once done, there should normally only be a few dust residues left. Using a moistened cotton swab again, pick up any remaining small residue.
Outside of your keys
For the parts not being 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 created previously. Once this task is done, wipe everything with a dry paper towel.
Go back with a vacuum cleaner to remove the last residues.
You can now reposition your keys! For those who cannot remember their exact seats, 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 put your vacuum cleaner on full or blowhard, or knock like a nag on it to drop crumbs, apart from damaging your keyboard you will not harvest anything.
There are specialized products to replace the mixture of makeup remover and water, if you have the means, you can buy them all over the internet.
Conclusion
As we have seen, cleaning your mechanical gaming keyboard is not very complicated, but it does require being careful and devoting time to it. This task is to be carried out approximately every 6 months and helps to keep your equipment in good health. As long as you do, clean your mouse too!
