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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Baneat on Sun, 08 April 2012, 22:08:01

Title: Acetone - usable solvent for switches?
Post by: Baneat on Sun, 08 April 2012, 22:08:01
I spilled a can of red bull in my green ALPS keyboard, pure water doesn't dissolve the gunk in the switches that make them non-functional. Can acetone be used for this or is it too aggressive to use on electronics? Pure alcohol is very difficult to come by, typically they'll pollute it deliberately for legal reasons. I have pure acetone though, so if that would work then hooray!
Title: Acetone - usable solvent for switches?
Post by: eyesnine on Sun, 08 April 2012, 22:18:27
99%+ purity Isopropyl alcohol is fairly easy to find, and is used to clean electronics.

Acetone is used as a plastics solvent (wikipedia) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetone#Solvent_use), so it's probably not a good idea to pour it on a keyboard.
Title: Acetone - usable solvent for switches?
Post by: Magna224 on Sun, 08 April 2012, 22:40:29
A cat spilled a smoothie on my 1087XM and I used rubbing alcohol and cue tips to clean it.
Title: Acetone - usable solvent for switches?
Post by: rknize on Mon, 09 April 2012, 21:48:16
Actually, that was a very helpful answer, ripster. :tongue:

To answer your question directly, acetone will happily dissolve ABS.  Probably not what you want.
Title: Acetone - usable solvent for switches?
Post by: 1391401 on Mon, 09 April 2012, 22:03:28
Alcohol is polluted a la "denatured" for the purposes of preventing consumption but I have certainly used a rubbing alcohol (Isopropyl) for purposes of cleansing surfaces of a multitude of contaminants sugar inclusive