It's a dangerous world out there. Who knows what strange contaminants your precious might get if you don't use protection?!
That is, talking about one of these:
As some may know, beam springs typically come with a contamination shield. This was due to beam springs being rather prone to debris ingress that will easily prevent proper operation of the switch - and don't even think about liquids. Basically they were made to match each keyboard, with very thin membrane over each switch to not affect the operation and feel, and a thicker one over the rest of the metal. Over the 30+ years, the shields turn into something like this:
...yeah. So they basically disintegrate, and can actually contaminate the switch by doing so. But they generally do their job well, and after taking it off, you're left with what hopefully is a clean board:
...which is fine if you want to look at it from behind the glass in a museum. But what about actually using it, especially since
that's now possible? Can something be done to protect them, obviously considering the rarity and the need to preserve them?
Well, it's a little tricky, but here's what I came up with after a bit of a brainstorm with Soarer. Grab some poly, not too thin and not too thick. About 1-2 mil, ymmv:
Well that's all fine and good, but you can't just put the keycaps on that. If you do, then pushing down on one of the keycaps will push down all the ones around it as well. What you have to do is put them on in stages, pushing the poly down into the grooves between the switches. That way each switch gets its own little mound of poly, mimicking the original IBM membrane. This will take a few attempts to get right - good thing that poly sheets are dirt cheap. I found that the best way is to put the keycaps on from left to right. Don't skimp, and make sure that you have at least a foot or two of poly on left, top, and bottom of the board, and more than that on the right side as that's where most of the scrunching will come from. First attempt, where way too little poly left on the bottom:
Eventually, doing it slowly column by column, and using a paperclip to push the poly down on all sides of the switch:
You can see how I make the grooves in advance on all sides. Don't be tempted to do it by row, as then you won't have enough poly to cover the vertical grooves. Make sure to check each switch as you put on each keycap. It should not disturb any of the surrounding ones. After redoing it a few times where I forgot to scrunch the poly up for a switch or two, it will hopefully look like this:
Make sure that the feel of each switch and in general is unaffected. Cover on:
Now put that thing to use, boys and girls, and enjoy it!
