Spilled soda on my Type Cover 2?

txDrum

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Hey so I spilled a bit of soda on my type cover 2 and as expected the keys are a bit sticky now. Does anybody know if it's safe to run some water on it and leave it to dry or anything? I haven't been able to find much on the internets and I don't want to just pry off the keys. Thanks!
 

MBytes

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Type Cover 2 works by electricity. It doesn't have a digestive system to convert delicious food into energy, sadly. Maybe TypeCover 3 :p

It is VERY tricky to clean the keyboard without being able to disassemble it. Assuming it bugs you that you are about to buy a new keyboard.
I would clean the keyboard using demilitarized liquid, such as fully distilled water.
Distilled water does not conduct electricity. However, you'll be mixing it with the soda as you try to dilute it. So, you'll need a lot of it. The problem is getting the water everywhere inside where the soda reached. Then I would leave the keyboard for 2 to 3 days for drying. putting it in a bag of rise will help the drying process as the rise grain will absorb the water and humility, and are large enough to not go in the device and cause another problem.

The problem we have, is that the keyboard circuitry is a membrane one.
Meaning you have 4 layers.
- First layer of printed circuit
- Second layer is a plane peace of plastic sheet with holes where the keys are.
- Third layer is a printed circuit.
Basically, the way it works is that you want the 2 layers of circuit to touch together to register for akey press. The second layer (the middle one of this sandwich) acts like a separator so that the 2 circuit does contact only when you do a key press.

Where is the fourth layer?
The fourth layer is a rubber domes which acts like spring to lift up the keys.

Liquid can penetrate on any of these layers. This is why I said that it would be much easier to clean if you can disassemble it, in which case you can use normal tap water to clean the keyboard as you'll be drying it easily with a nice cloth each part of the keyboard as you assemble it back.
 

txDrum

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Thanks for the detailed reply! I'm a bit annoyed at it as i only spilled some drops so I feel like it shouldn't be THAT bad. That said, maybe I can convince some friends of mine to sneak some distilled water from the chem lab. I'm normally okay with disassembling my gear, but I've seen a few people say they broke the keys trying to take them off so i'd rather try less dangerous options haha. Thanks for the help!
 

MBytes

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Ah just some drops. I thought it was a lot more. You can perhaps get away with rubbing alcohol ~60% or less.
Or if you have a steaming, that might work. (although if it's releasing burning hot steam, it might melt the plastic or glue.. so it depends on what you have as a steamer).

The good news is at least not a lot of soda and not on a laptop... then you would be in a big trouble. Here at absolute worst it's a 130$ loss, not 1000-1500$ loss.
 

txDrum

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How do I work with the rubbing alcohol? Just drop it beneath the keys and run it through like that?

Steaming? Like a steam room i.e. leave it for a while upside down or something? Thanks again!
 

MBytes

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How do I work with the rubbing alcohol? Just drop it beneath the keys and run it through like that?
yea. Rubbing alcohol drys fast and doesn't conduct electricity, to my knowledge. Do it in a ventilated area. It's not good inhaling that.

Steaming? Like a steam room i.e. leave it for a while upside down or something? Thanks again!
No. I mean this:
steam-cleaner---lakeland-handy-steamer-steam-cleaner-310608.jpg
 

txDrum

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Oh heh. I don't have one of those ^^ I'll stick with the alcohol.

We do have a heat gun in our research lab... but given that that has the propensity to melt silicon inside a computer chip, I think I'll stay away from that :)
 

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