One of my favorite keyboards, my AEK II with Salmon ALPs, started having an issue with the space bar. It would double register. I tried everything from cleaning the switch, doing the alcohol trick, bending the plate, reseat the assembly, etc. For a while, it would be good, but eventually, the double registering would return. Finally, this week, the situation returned and decided to desolder the switch and switch (no pun intended) it with a key that I rarely use, i.e., the F9 key. I had previously desoldered the "K" key on this keyboard and put a working switch without any difficulty. I thought this time, everything would go without issue.
To my dismay, the spacebar switch had bent pins. Damn, I hate when the manufacturer does this. I saw a post about heating the solder and using an instrument to bend while the solder was melted. I mistakenly used my chisel tip to both heat the solder and bend the pin. To my horror, I scraped the pad right off while pushing on the pin. On top of things, my desoldering pump was clogged with solder, which I was unaware of. I probably wasn't getting much vacuum, and probably heated the pin too many times and too long using a poorly functioning desolder pump. I even used solder wick, but don't think I did a good job. Somehow, I was able to desolder and remove the switch, and although the pad lifted, after putting a blob of solder on the pin, everything still worked. Later, when I disassembled the desoldering pump, a couple big plugs of solder came out, which likely affected getting sufficient vacuum. I also didn't do that great of a job with the F9 switch as well. Fortunately, I'm aware that I could have put a jumper wire, which would have been easy.
Lessons learned was to always make sure the desoldering pump is free of obstruction. Then, next to use another instrument to bend the pin. I'm not sure it's a good idea to use a hot soldering tip.
Maybe not that much of a horror story, but my OCD bugs me a little bit that my PCB looks ugly in those areas.
