Guys, I just managed to spill a good bit of my drink (of course it was a beer, thanks for asking) on my mechanical computer keyboard – or half of it, as it’s an ergonomical split keyboard. I’m sure I can’t be the first elektronaut who did this to himself. Any tips for emergency interventions? I immediately unplugged it, removed the keycaps, cleaned of some of the gunk that had accumulated over the years with q-tips and alcohol wipes meant for corrective glasses and put it away upside down to dry. Anything else I could or should do? Should I go pick up something hygroscopic to dry it in?
Just let it dry. The switches are likely toast so order a pack. The PCB might be just fine.
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Annoyingly, it’s a keyboard with the switches soldered in place. So if any of the switches are damaged, this might just be the moment that forces me to buy a soldering iron and learn how to solder 
You probably will want to fully take it apart and clean the circuit board with alcohol… beer tends to dry sticky depending on the level of spill of course but yeah you could try it and see how gummy it is once it is dry, I had to fully clean a keystep a friend spilled beer on and it ended up being a full tear down to get it to act as new again.
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That’s a pretty big and finicky job. Maybe you can order that side of the keyboard separately … take the L if alcohol doesn’t work.
Yeah, fully disassemble and I’d probably use contact cleaner or 90%+ isopropyl. Beer will gum up the switches if they weren’t fried due to the incident.
Isopropyl is good for circuit boards and would be fine for everything really but will take longer to dry than contact cleaner and my concern would be getting the gunk out of the switch mechanisms as much as any residue on the pcb.
Good luck and sorry to hear about your beer, I hope it was at least half gone
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Thanks for all your tips. Will see that I pick up a bottle of 90+ isopropyl tomorrow (which appears more complicated than I would have expected, but should be doable in Berlin), probably useful to have around in any case.
Edit: And of course I will head out for a replacement beer now
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The reason you want isopropyl of a higher percentage (lab grade, even) is that it is less diluted with water so it will evaporate faster and clean more effectively. If you can’t find 90% you might still find 70% and I’m sure that with a few days drying time just to be cautious it would be fine.
I’d also look for a narrow toothbrush or something with a good reach which can scrub in hard to access areas without leaving fibers behind. Usually with a PCB you would dip the entire thing into rubbing alcohol, although sometimes with soldering the isopropyl is only used to clean up after flux residue, but if you read online about cleaning PCBs with rubbing alcohol you’ll see a lot of references to people submerging the entire thing in a container of isopropyl and letting it soak.
If it seems feasible to do that, it may be smart to do so, if it appears that the beer got deep into the switches. Just make sure that no moisture remains when you finally go to try it again with power.
I spilled some pot noodle on my keyboard earlier.
It hasn’t done any damage, but my space bar stinks of spicy chicken.
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Thanks for these detailed tips as well. As soon as I had disassembled it, I realized that the full bath would be the way to go – as I was never gonna see (and thus reach) the top of the PCB without unsoldering the switches. I let it soak for a few minutes, scrubbed the bottom of the PCB with a soft bristle toothbrush and gave every switch a few dozen activations while wet. Now it’s time for drying and hoping for the best in the meantime.
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This just made me think of a funny story from when I was a kid.
My brother spilled an entire cup of tea into our Commodore 64 computer. We thought it was probably game over but we just poured the tea out, dried the C64 on the radiator and it still worked.
I think the C64 may still be at home at my parent’s place somewhere and I think it still worked last time I checked.
Make sure to at least rinse both sides after the agitation of any gunk to rinse the residue away and then really make sure everything is dry before reassembly, even if it takes a few days. I hope it works out well for you! Good luck.
