Cleaning those rubber thingies

[Rob Hukin]

>Hello,
>
>Has anyone come up with *the* solution to clean those rubber pads under a
>synth-keyboard? My Roland SH-101 keeps getting dirty key contacts. And
>since I have a TV remote controller that has the same kind of rubber contacts
>and suffers from the same problem, it would be nice if someone had found a
>way to keep these darn things clean.

Hi Jeroen,

Your problem may not be that the contacts keep getting dirty as much as the
conductive layer on the rubber is gradually deteriorating. I find that
cleaning only really works the first couple of times.

The best thing i've found for refurbishing keyboard rubber contact strips
is some stuff called Circuit Works Rubber Keypad Repair kit. It's a 'two
part carbon/silver coating that cures to form a tough, flexible, wear
resistant surface which provides excellent adhesion and
electrical conductivity...Tesing has shown repairs can withstand over 500
000 simulated keystrokes' (from the literature that comes with it). It's
quite expensive (about 20ukp for a kit) and rather irritatingly comes in
two sets of two-part mixtures that have to be mixed all in one go, and will
only stay usable for 72 hours (less in my experience), so make sure you
have plenty to do to make it economical. It's made by a company called
Chemtronics Inc, Kennesaw, GA 30152-4370 USA, 800-645-5244. I've used it on
an HR-16, MMT-8 and my OB8 and it seems to work pretty well.

rob.