On Wed, 15 May 2002, Pete Turnbull wrote:
I wouldn't use a dishwasher. The water
temperature isn't a problem,
but the caps are just too small and light to stay where you put them,
and if one falls beside the heating element, it will be destroyed.
If all the proper precautions were taken (such as putting the keycaps in a
screen container, and turning off the heat-dry cycle), a dishwasher might
do fine. For a small number of keyboards, however it is easier to clean
them by hand. I do wash my day to day keyboard mechs and housings every
few years in the dishwasher, but their keys are more captive than those in
some of the earlier keyboard designs.
If I'm *really* lazy, I tie them up in a
pillowcase and put them in
the (clothes) washing machine, and follow up with the tumble drier.
That would likely be a bad idea, since the keys would scratch against each
other. Worst case, all of the lettering would be removed, and best case
would be a few scratches and dings.
No.1 tip: make a note of the layout before you take
the keycaps off.
It all looks very logical until you actually try to put *every one* of
the symbol keys back in the right place.
Or take a digital photo of the keyboard, or make sure you have an exact
duplicate keyboard. Grid/graph paper can be very helpful when writing down
a layout too.
-Toth