It’s probably good to clean your keyboard every now and again — I was suffering from stuck keys, so I endeavoured to give it a good scrub.
Materials Needed
- Mechanical Keyboard (mine was a Rosewill RK-9000)
- Keycap Puller (like these)
- Dish Soap
- Canned / Compressed Air
- Vacuum Cleaner
- A solvent (alcohol works well) and qtips
Step 1: Remove all the key caps
Using the keycap puller, gentle take off all of the key caps; work the two metal wires under either side of a key and give it a gentle yoink.
Step 2: Wash Your Key Caps
Get your dish soap, a bowl of hot water, and mix up a nice soapy bath — throw in the key caps, give it a few gentle stirs, and let it soak for a few hours. If it’s insufficient, you can also do some manual scrubbing — like washing dishes — and let them soak longer.
Once complete, rinse thoroughly with hot water until all the soap is removed, drain water, and set out to dry.
Step 3: Vacuum The Keyboard
Get your your hose attachment and vacuum up as much loose crud as you can; it should make a slight improvement:
Step 4: Loosen Stuck Gunk
Take your qtips and solvent, and loosen up all the gunk that is still stuck there. You can re-vacuum or hit it after with some compressed air, and shake it a bit upside down. Repeat until all the keyboard looks clean.
Step 5: Put the Keycaps back on
This is the easy part — just pop the keycaps back on in their positions. If you forgot where they go, google “108 key layout” or the respective for your keyboard, and you should be able to find a representative image.
Bonus Steps:
If like me your keycaps are themselves a bit worn, considering order new keycaps, say from AliExpress.
This is the store where I bought a set: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/2955117
