geekhack
geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: LazyAfternoons on Wed, 05 August 2020, 09:14:25
-
Hello, I hope this is the right section for this kind of things.
Long story short, I spilled some orange juice on my keyboard. I let it dry and it was functioning just fine but switches were sticky as hell. I decided to swap them and try to "save" the keyboard. I bought a temperature controller soldering iron, made some practice on scrap components and I started desoldering switches from my keyboard with a solder sucker.
I've just finished testing the PCB and everything looks fine except for the ESC key. When I touch the two pads with a piece of solder it just doesn't work. If I put the piece of solder inside the holes and I wiggle a bit, it seems to work just fine. I tried resoldering a switch and it straight up doesn't work with that. Did I mess up something? Pads look fine to me (macro mode makes it look worse) so I don't really understand what happened.
Any clues? Thank you!
-
You can see the trace to the left pin in the pic but nothing for the right one (at least I can't on my phone...) If so the connection for that pin is on the other side and that pad is probably damaged.
Post a pic of the surrounding switches and I'll put some coloured dots on it, it's fixable :)
-
You can see the trace to the left pin in the pic but nothing for the right one (at least I can't on my phone...) If so the connection for that pin is on the other side and that pad is probably damaged.
Post a pic of the surrounding switches and I'll put some coloured dots on it, it's fixable :)
I got rid of the plate to get better pictures for you. Thank you so much for the help!
-
Hmm... I'm not seeing any diodes and the pads on the other side look fine. Can you take a pic of the whole board?
-
Hmm... I'm not seeing any diodes and the pads on the other side look fine. Can you take a pic of the whole board?
I got you, are you talking about this diode? I'm also attaching pics of the whole PCB from both sides. The PCB is a bit dirty because of the orange juice, I already order some isopropyl alcohol to clean it. I also noticed I ripped off a few led pads (I wasn't going to resolder them anyway). This is my very first job so bear with me please. Thanks again for the help.
-
That's not bad for a first mod, factory solder is harder to work with and LEDs are never fun to desolder :thumb:
I have no idea what the job advert says for a professional PCB designer but 'likes to keep things simple' can't be a desirable characteristic as they do random things, like make really long traces to a diode for no reason. At least the matrix is sane on this one...
[attach=1]
If you short yellow to cyan you should get the Esc key registering - if not the diode is dead (not likely, they usually die letting current through) If that works either the connection between yellow and red or cyan and pink is broken.
Once you've soldered in the switches short yellow to pink - if that works you need to solder a wire between yellow and red. If not short cyan to red - if that works solder between cyan and pink. If neither work you managed to break both connections so solder both and it will work.
-
That's not bad for a first mod, factory solder is harder to work with and LEDs are never fun to desolder :thumb:
I have no idea what the job advert says for a professional PCB designer but 'likes to keep things simple' can't be a desirable characteristic as they do random things, like make really long traces to a diode for no reason. At least the matrix is sane on this one...
(Attachment Link)
If you short yellow to cyan you should get the Esc key registering - if not the diode is dead (not likely, they usually die letting current through) If that works either the connection between yellow and red or cyan and pink is broken.
Once you've soldered in the switches short yellow to pink - if that works you need to solder a wire between yellow and red. If not short cyan to red - if that works solder between cyan and pink. If neither work you managed to break both connections so solder both and it will work.
I tried shorting yellow to cyan but that doesn't work. I tried it between other keys too and they do not register at all (bare PCB). Am I doing something wrong? However soldering two wires as you told me seems to work just fine! Yellow to red and cyan to pink. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
I probably broke them while pulling out the switch .
-
I'm guessing the diode (yellow) is dead (try from the other side of it. In one pic is looks discolored around it, if that's where the juice got in it makes sense.
It may be dust but it looks like all the resistors around ESC are also corroded.
-
I'm guessing the diode (yellow) is dead (try from the other side of it. In one pic is looks discolored around it, if that's where the juice got in it makes sense.
It may be dust but it looks like all the resistors around ESC are also corroded.
I'm going to the test the diode with a multimeter just to be sure. The resistors for the LED of the ESC key is definitely corroded but I'm not going to solder LEDs again.
EDIT: Shorting the diode as suicidal_orange said seems to work just fine. I'm not sure why it wasn't working yesterday, maybe I was doing something wrong.
Again, thanks for your help guys.