I got a brand new CM Storm Quickfire Rapid keyboard a few days ago, and promptly spilled some Gatorade on it like an idiot. I'm normally careful and avoid having food or drink around my computer, but I made a dumb mistake. Only a few small drops got on the keyboard, and it didn't look like any of it actually got down into the board... it's amazing how much damage the tiniest bit of sugary liquid is able to do to these switches.
With 7 keys that would stick so badly they'd take about 5 seconds to rise after pressing them, I had an unusable keyboard. I tried putting a drop or two of 70% isopropyl alcohol into the switches, which worked great for a few minutes, but as soon as the alcohol dried the keys were gummy again.
I was advised to try DeOxit to clean and lubricate them, but didn't want to spend $18 on something that has a chance of not working at all. So I (maybe stupidly) decided to try a few ideas of my own, and if I ended up ruining my keyboard it would be a somewhat expensive science experiment at least.
I read about some people saving keyboards from disaster by submerging them in water, but I didn't really want to do that since most of my keyboard was perfect and brand new, including all of the letter keys. But I thought using water to clean out the insides (and dissolve the sugary gunk and wash it away) was the best plan, so I decided to find a way to wash out only the gummy switches. Here's what I went with:
1) Remove the keyboard from its case, set it at an angle by placing magazines underneath one end so the water will run out, place a towel underneath to absorb the water
2) Get some nice hot water (I stopped just short of boiling it)
3) Use a drinking straw to hold some of the water, about 4 drops worth
4) Position it over the sticky switch (ignore the missing switch, that's another story)
5) Place the straw down onto the switch, depressing it, and release your finger at the top of the straw, flooding the switch with hot water
6) Quickly and repeatedly press the switch with your finger, to make sure the water gets everywhere
7) Repeat the process about 10 times for each sticky switch, ensuring each one gets completely washed out and any residue is washed away
Use the straw one more time on each switch to apply a few drops of 70% isopropyl alcohol, to help ensure that no water remains inside the switch and that everything dries up inside
Twelve hours later, all of the switches had lost any gumminess or stickiness to them, and the Cherry MX Blues were clicking nicely again. They didn't seem quite as perfectly crisp and clicky as the unharmed keys, but it seemed like an extremely minor difference.
After 24 hours I plugged in the keyboard and everything works perfectly, I don't notice a thing wrong with it when typing. It has now been 48 hours and everything seems fine with it.
Anyway, just thought I'd take some pictures of the process and share the results on here, maybe it'll be helpful to someone, or at least interesting. And if I did anything stupid that could lead to future problems, I'd appreciate if someone could let me know.
