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geekhack Community => Keyboards => Topic started by: Stratus Autra on Wed, 13 February 2019, 00:11:57

Title: Dry-lube and malfunctioning switches
Post by: Stratus Autra on Wed, 13 February 2019, 00:11:57

I have a Chicony 5181 with White Alps that I lubed recently. I remember it was working correctly before the cleaning that I did a few weeks ago. After I lubed the switches with a Teflon dry-lube, some of the switches stopped working or didn't work correctly. The left shift would only work for a half of the keys, the apostrpohe key stopped working completely, and other keys wouldn't register consistently.

I wonder if lubing the switches was what caused the switch failure. Using a Q-tip, I naively put lube on both sides of the slider, the click leaf, and the part of the switchplate that touches the slider. Thinking about it a bit more, it could have been the way I applied lube on the switches. If it's the lube, can I fix my switches with an ultrasonic clean?