it's gonna get messy
my wife's keyboard has been acting up lately and that seems like a simple
enough fix i couldn't buy a new one right what no
this is an almost perfectly good keyboard it's got
keys on it that all work just fine so how hard could it be to replace one of
them yes well it's not that one it's this one actually this is getting harder
than i thought already pop off the keycap replace the key switch solder on
a new one and bippity snappidy it's off to the races right well
actually no not quite that simple this is a
pre-built keyboard that doesn't have hot swappable switch sockets these key
switches are soldered but don't fret while it might sound a little scary it's
actually pretty easy to replace a dead switch
it just means we're gonna have to get uh
intimate like i get intimate with our
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this steelseries 7g mechanical keyboard is my wife Yvonne's daily driver at home
where it has faithfully done its duty for many years and it is kind of old at
this point like baby Linus with frosted tips sold that's
right this bad boy this exact keyboard graced yield ncix casting couch over 11
years ago and look at us we've both come a long way since then
since that initial review it ended up bouncing around at the office before
eventually ending up back at my house for Yvonne's work and casual gaming use
and the reason for it is that it has this outstanding super gently sloped and
extra long wrist rest that she finds extra comfortable that's actually the
only thing that she really likes about it because she's not a huge fan of
cherry mx black mechanical switches when it launched it cost over 150 us
dollars and had cutting-edge features like usb and audio pass-through not to
mention that it has both a usb and ps2
interface so that you can plug it into that's right all the most modern
motherboards the only problem with it is that it's a
little tired and recently the e key has been acting up only registering key
presses about half of the time why well that could be any number of things dust
in the switch corrosion a lifted pcb trace we're not actually gonna know
until we crack it open but before we get to that we're gonna fire up qmk's
keyboard tester and check to make sure that all of the other keys actually work
it's not as bad as one in every two but i've missed two out of about 20 so i can
see why that would be bothering
her everything else looks good except she didn't even tell me that this one
was broken no it's not uh it's a function key that's
why i left the steel series logo one on there and this legend just doesn't have
the functions marked oh so it's just the e key that's the
only one we have to replace today okay well then my 102 key count is wrong it's
103 keys 103 keys that still work the best part of that is it takes our entire
keyboard repair cost from two dollars for two key switches to one dollar
plus shipping and the materials that we're going to need to perform the
repair so why don't we walk through what we're going to need first things first you'll need a soldering iron we're using
our hakko 888d but you don't need anything that's expensive and in fact
you probably don't need to buy one odds are if you're a big geek
which you are you're watching this video you've got a friend or a family member
who's got a soldering iron lying around and the odds of you damaging it doing something like this are extremely low so
i would just borrow one you'll also need a screwdriver or screwdrivers that match
the board in this case philips thank you steel series some flux core solder
leaded or unleaded we suggest the ladder if you want to be more environmentally
friendly or the former if you want it to be a little bit easier to work with along with some solder wick get the name
brand stuff from gootwick by the way trust me on this one and some flux for
keeping everything nice and clean and flowing we're using this mg chemicals no
clean flux because it comes in this convenient syringe but you can also go
full rosman and liberally douse the board where needed with any other kind
of flux that you like keep in mind that you want to clean up any excess after
your repair because flux is mildly corrosive so we're going to be using
what did you spray this with soap soap okay so yeah there you go also you might
want a keycap puller and we've also got a solder sucker as well this is a really
really low quality one and i wouldn't recommend using this one but basically
you preload a little thing you go and it theoretically sucks up the solder
i personally find wick works a lot better now it's time to snap a quick
pick of the keyboard for reference this is a slightly different layout than i'm used to and pull off all the keycaps so
that we can shame my wife for the state of her
of her keyboard you know what the f keys are not as dirty i suspect once we make our
way toward the middle of the board things are going to get kind of nasty though okay
i would strongly recommend not breathing in ladies and
gentlemen oh
oh it's everywhere oh gosh oh wow it's really still not that clean
you know what i think this is as clean as it's getting today
sorry hon got my screwdriver soon to blt store.com got my hydration LTT Store.com
got my work surface here okay it's a mousepad but lttstore.com in addition to
the uh four screws on the bottom they've got those little plastic tabs that you can
accidentally break off if you're not careful so we're just gonna
put our ifixit spudger in here just give it a little oh yeah there we
go by modern electronic standards this is
very openable and repairable oh wow there's a lot of crud inside it
too actually nope you're off the hook Yvonne i think a lot of this is just
dried glue or some kind of like manufacturing schmoo
you see that colin it looks like it's like uh some kind of maybe it used to be
glued together or it could be milk oh it's not milk it's only at the front and
it's white did you use that keyboard Linus no i never used this keyboard he
knows i'm a serial eater but no this was this was not me our next step is to pull
this baby up so you can see why
old mechanical keyboards had such a good reputation for being built like tanks
because there's a solid steel plate down the middle of this thing ah there we go
now that's something we're not going to want to break here man january 30th 2008
is the manufacturing date for this board in here for the pass-through usb and
pass-through front panel audio freaking love it and this is about as
far as we have to go here that's it that's the raw keyboard right there it's
got keys and it's a board one thing we have to be careful of is
these pins on the back if we want our front pass-throughs to work they're not super fragile though so i'm not too
worried about doing anything to them we just bend them back if we accidentally bend them and we could i think if we
really wanted to desolder every single key switch and then remove the steel
plate we could separate these two layers but they've been twisted into place with
little steel tabs probably for a reason and it doesn't look like we have to pull
them apart in order to replace just one key switch so let's go ahead and
have a look at which switch is coming out
it's going to be this one this guy right here
okay let's go ahead we're just gonna
hit these things here we go boys and
wick it up
now this is interesting steel series or whoever their oem is apparently saw fit
to bend over the little stems from the
key switches so i can't just pull it right out without
bending these little tabs back you know what it's also not quite there in terms
of being uh fully wicked i think we gotta yeah we gotta lift that oh
there it is there's our cherry mx black switch
that's right you've seen all 50 million of your keystrokes sorry buddy the
switch is definitely dead if it wasn't
which it was something that right in there
there see that's how it's supposed to work
you've probably seen diagrams of this online basically you've got your stem at
the top that's where your keycap mounts to so
you got little rails on the sides so that it slides vertically only
you got your spring this is what pops up the key switch when you are done
pressing it down this is also what controls how much tension there is like
how much force is required to push it down then right here
you got your contact points and you know what's funny i think cherry
told me these are gold-plated but that doesn't really look like gold it's
probably worn off by now i mean i guess it could be uh could be worn off or
something sending messengers across the atlantic
sorry let's grab one that is confirmed actually um working
and assembled correctly for this next part
oh wow yeah that one is borked
because here's how it's supposed to go down so it goes down there's your
tactile bump and then there's your contact point
right under it let's put on a new one shall we i keep trying to open this bag
and colin keeps not letting me do it can i open this bag yet we'll allow it now all right did we order these from
digikey yes we did all right so these are brand new cherry mx black
switches and in theory and we know this from our tour of cherry way back
a lot of years ago actually that the design of this could actually be subtly
different they have been revising silently their cherry mx lineup
constantly over the years but the goal is that whatever changes they make to
them the reliability the feel and the sound should all be the same
theoretically if i gave this keyboard to someone not telling them which one has
been swapped out with a switch from 10 to 12 years later they shouldn't be
able to tell now pop this on i
do not see any obvious difference in any
of the molding even though we know for a fact that they
would have had to redo their molds many many times since then molds don't last
forever oh this little bump here is higher you know what
i think the logo is high res
it is oh we need the microscope colin there we
go that's our new keycap
this is our old one see that so they're probably just at
different stages in their wear yeah that's that's just an
injector pin mark so it doesn't matter but it's interesting that it's changed
right so they've changed they've updated their mold design clearly absolutely
this cherry logo i am fairly certain that that logo is
significantly higher res now um
yeah it's really hard to tell because of that i can't hold it steady enough for
us to be able to tell and this mount is just not good enough we could just trust
you i can't tell to the touch
good let's solder it on then yep first things first i'm going to just
do what the original assemblers did and i'm going to bend these little
stems over now it's time to flux it up
you don't want to flex up this stage okay
i said sorry colin i can't resist yeah yeah technically you're supposed to heat
the thing not the solder but whatever deal with it
okay we've got a ball of solder on there oh we need more
okay and let's do the same thing again whoops
slipped a little there i don't think i did any worse than the original assembly
now it's time for a quick reassembly like not not full reassembly we're just
going to put the uh there we go the i o pass through board in place
and let's do a quick test run here
yay we did it freaking awesome now we can put the rest
of the board together i kind of feel like it should get a bit of a better cleaning before we formally put it
together should we just run it through the dishwasher no paul and i did a video
about that wow that was right when you started wasn't it it was two years ago
damn okay so one of those keyboards did eventually die colin daly drove it
multiple of them actually oh more than one just moisture in keyboard bad do not
do point is uh we're just gonna get some soap and water and clean the deck then
assemble it and after some deck swabbing and keycap cleaning and final reassembly
we're ready to show off
an old keyboard but one that performs as well as it did
when it was new and that will continue to soldier on for at least a few more
years and at what a great price right who wants to
spend a hundred dollars on a new mechanical keyboard and you can have a perfectly good one for
a dollar plus a little bit solder and some tools
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using the link in the video description if you guys enjoyed this video maybe go
watch our should you clean your keyboard in the dishwasher video
note by the way you probably don't want to do it turns out we had corrosion
issues maybe we could have done a better job of like drying them i don't know