How to dry mechanical key caps in DRYER

[Alir]

I just individually washed and wiped my key caps extremely frustratingly tediously: done it several times - long story. When I do this, I feel like I'm going insane.

 

Back to sanity, this thread would probably be better named how to use a dryer. What is the highest setting I should use to dry my key caps in the dryer? I have chucked all those exciting keys in an empty pillow case and knotted the end.

 

I have read that when the key caps are introduced to boiling water (~100 degrees CELCIUS), they become hideous and deformed. So which setting should I choose?

 

Is the objective of the dryer to get the water out of the key stem by force or by evaporating the water?

[Fictionvl]

check on what mateial it uses, and then check how high of a temperature you can use on it, then see what temp your dryer uses then bam you're now scientifically drying keycaps

[Simon771]

I would prefer to just put them on flat surface and wait over night for those keycaps to dry out.

No way that I would put them in a dryer lol

[Enderman]

What type of dryer are you talking about...?

A hair dryer? Or a clothes dryer?

A clothes dryer will melt your key caps and tumble them around until they become blobs of useless plastic.

[Alir]

29 minutes ago, Fictionvl said:

check on what mateial it uses, and then check how high of a temperature you can use on it, then see what temp your dryer uses then bam you're now scientifically drying keycaps

 

How on Earth do I find that out? lol I have the corsair vengeance k65 and I'm using the default key caps. Image: 

29 minutes ago, Simon771 said:

I would prefer to just put them on flat surface and wait over night for those keycaps to dry out.

No way that I would put them in a dryer lol

 

When you say put them on a flat surface, do you mean upside down so the letters are facing down and the key stem is facing up? 

Last time I cleaned my keys, I put the letters facing up and the key stem facing down. Under the keys was a thick towel. After at least a day, I checked the inside of the stems with a flashlight and I noticed they were still wet.

 

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

What type of dryer are you talking about...?

A hair dryer? Or a clothes dryer?

A clothes dryer will melt your key caps and tumble them around until they become blobs of useless plastic.

 

Clothes dryer.

 

[Alir]

https://www.keychatter.com/2014/08/01/how-to-clean-keycaps/

 

"Step 6: Rinsing and drying keycaps. Have your caps soaked for at least 30-60 minutes? Great. Give the sealed container a good few shakes to dislodge any final crud, and pour out the old (maybe brown) water. Rinse a few times with clean water. Finally, shake each keycap one-by-one to get as much water as possible out of the stems. This is particularly important for buckling spring caps, which have deep crevices from which water does not easily evaporate. At this point, you have two options. You can air dry the caps overnight, or alternatively, tie them in a pillowcase and throw in your dryer on LOW heat for about 15 minutes."

 

Refer to bolded text.

What is "low" heat?

[Enderman]

6 minutes ago, Alir said:

 

Clothes dryer.

 

DO NOT put keycaps in there, you will completely ruin them.

Leave them out to dry in room temperature air, maybe put a fan blowing over them or at most use a hair dryer on low settings.

[Alir]

Just now, Enderman said:

DO NOT put keycaps in there, you will completely ruin them.

Leave them out to dry in room temperature air, maybe put a fan blowing over them or at most use a hair dryer on low settings.

 

5 minutes ago, Alir said:

https://www.keychatter.com/2014/08/01/how-to-clean-keycaps/

 

"Step 6: Rinsing and drying keycaps. Have your caps soaked for at least 30-60 minutes? Great. Give the sealed container a good few shakes to dislodge any final crud, and pour out the old (maybe brown) water. Rinse a few times with clean water. Finally, shake each keycap one-by-one to get as much water as possible out of the stems. This is particularly important for buckling spring caps, which have deep crevices from which water does not easily evaporate. At this point, you have two options. You can air dry the caps overnight, or alternatively, tie them in a pillowcase and throw in your dryer on LOW heat for about 15 minutes."

 

Refer to bolded text.

What is "low" heat?

 

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, Alir said:

What is "low" heat?

 

The opposite of high heat.

Do you not know how to turn the dial on a clothes dryer?? 

[Simon771]

11 minutes ago, Alir said:

When you say put them on a flat surface, do you mean upside down so the letters are facing down and the key stem is facing up? 

Last time I cleaned my keys, I put the letters facing up and the key stem facing down. Under the keys was a thick towel. After at least a day, I checked the inside of the stems with a flashlight and I noticed they were still wet.

Put it however you like, and maybe use hairdryer from distance. Not 1cm away, but like blowing on keys from 20-30cm away so they won't melt.

In like 20 minutes of doing that, they should be completly dry.

At least that's my experience.

[Alir]

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

The opposite of high heat.

Do you not know how to turn the dial on a clothes dryer?? 

 

Of course I do!!!

 

Never actually used a dryer beyond the standard settings lel. Lets let today be a first. I usually just press On - Start.

 

My dryer doesn't have low-medium-high settings. It has numbers in tens - though doesn't explicitly state whether they are in celcius or if they are signs from an extraterrestrial civilization.

[Alir]

2 minutes ago, Simon771 said:

Put it however you like, and maybe use hairdryer from distance. Not 1cm away, but like blowing on keys from 20-30cm away so they won't melt.

In like 20 minutes of doing that, they should be completly dry.

At least that's my experience.

Did you check the inside of the stems and check if they were dry, preferably with a flashlight? Those stems are the worst things about mechanical keyboards. The stems could still have water inside them and you wouldn't be able to see unless you got a flashlight and looked inside the cross-void awkwardly.

[Simon771]

1 minute ago, Alir said:

Did you check the inside of the stems and check if they were dry, preferably with a flashlight? Those stems are the worst things about mechanical keyboards. The stems could still have water inside them and you wouldn't be able to see unless you got a flashlight and looked inside the cross-void awkwardly.

When I cleaned them few months ago, I didn't exactly look with flashlight if everything is dry, but it felt/seemd like it was.

And after few months everything is still working fine for me

 

Like I said, I would leave them overnight, then in the morning use hair-dryer for 20minutes or something like that. After that take your flashlight and go investiage every keycap. Could take some time, but at least you won't dammage your key caps that way.

[Alir]

7 minutes ago, Simon771 said:

When I cleaned them few months ago, I didn't exactly look with flashlight if everything is dry, but it felt/seemd like it was.

And after few months everything is still working fine for me

 

Like I said, I would leave them overnight, then in the morning use hair-dryer for 20minutes or something like that. After that take your flashlight and go investiage every keycap. Could take some time, but at least you won't dammage your key caps that way.

 

I'll try that now before bed. Should the letters on the key caps be facing up or down? I'd assumed last time gravity would help pull the water down to get absorbed by the towel but that didn't quite work. Could try it again unless you suggest letting the key stem face up?

[Alir]

19 minutes ago, Simon771 said:

When I cleaned them few months ago, I didn't exactly look with flashlight if everything is dry, but it felt/seemd like it was.

And after few months everything is still working fine for me

 

Like I said, I would leave them overnight, then in the morning use hair-dryer for 20minutes or something like that. After that take your flashlight and go investiage every keycap. Could take some time, but at least you won't dammage your key caps that way.

 

I just conducted a preliminary experiment.

 

Question.

 

How did you use the hairdryer for 20 min without the keys flying to the other end of the room?

[Enderman]

7 hours ago, Alir said:

 

Of course I do!!!

 

Never actually used a dryer beyond the standard settings lel. Lets let today be a first. I usually just press On - Start.

 

My dryer doesn't have low-medium-high settings. It has numbers in tens - though doesn't explicitly state whether they are in celcius or if they are signs from an extraterrestrial civilization.

It's probably how many minutes it runs for.

Sometimes cheap appliances don't give you many options for heat.

[Giga Otomia]

Noob to the scene here, in the process of drying my own caps. I threw them on a cookie sheet, set it on my toaster, and started toasting. I stopped it when I saw steam. Nothing looks warped so far. I'm gonna dry them on a towel next, stem down.

 

Fuck on-screen keyboards, btw.

 

Edit: My F5 key is slightly warped. It's one of those tiny keys, though - half the vertical size.

Edit2: Just put all my keycaps back on. U, both shift keys (especially right shift), escape, F5, F7, and F12 are visibly warped. Everything else is fine. However, the problem I took my keyboard apart to try to solve ended up being a ripped membrane, so there's nothing I can do about that. I'll keep using this one until it more actively craps out on me.

Edited May 27, 2023 by Giga Otomia