[sdiy] Why Acetone might actually be best for cleaning 'conductive rubber' contacts

[Bob Weigel]

Whichever.  Both of the methods below have been proven to work in a lot 
of cases.  I believe it's some kind of silicon rubber base indeed.  I 
don't know for sure why it works with it but it does.  I've been playing 
a split eight for instance for weeks now that I fixed using 1) below.  
It has the exposed metal trace type contacts though I should note and I 
think that does the deglazing abrasion job a lot better than the type 
that have the black smoother edged surface contacts.  But anyway the SCI 
board, before I did that, was absolutely useless.  Half a dozen notes 
would not trigger no matter how hard you hit them.  So....go figure I 
guess.  While my background wants me to go in and perform chemical 
analysis of the situation, another part of me says "it works....do it 
and move on :" :-)   -Bob

drheqx wrote:

>1) use as I do a lateral abrasion which levels the entire surface again 
>so that there is again an exposure of the conductive material or
>
>2) use a solvent that actually does briefly dissolve away some of the 
>non-conductive material but leaves the conductive alone.
>
>Well it would be pretty hard to dissolve carbon, so the target is the
>substrate. To my knowledge it is silicone, but it may be a urethane in
>some cases. 
>
>In some cases you can slice off the conductive tab from a cheapo switch
>and glue it into a faulty CR button. Old computer keyboards are the
>source.
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>heqx
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