Hey yall, I need some advice. I've dallied an NEC APC H412 with the blue oval switches for the past 4 years. I'm well aware of the short lifespan of these switches because mine are starting to go. The enter key switch gets jammed in the down position, even without a keycap on it, and the left arrow key is completely unresponsive.
Can someone who's more familiar with these boards give me some pointers as to how to repair them? Your input is greatly appreciated.
NEC Blue Oval Switch Repair
-
4_404
- Location: Brisbane, Australia
I've had pretty good results desoldering the switches and letting the whole switch sit in high purity isopropyl alcohol for a while, pressing them a lot while submerged. I had several of these boards all with faulty switches, which I desoldered to swap into the worst condition board. While they were out I tried this and all (about 15 switches) started working well again. I don't imagine this is great for the switches, but I had nothing to lose as they weren't working anyway. Pressing the switch a lot once you take it out seems to push most of the liquid out of them.
-
4_404
- Location: Brisbane, Australia
I found them pretty easy to desolder as the holes are really big (I am not too experienced and use a really cheap iron). To get them out of the plate, you can put a small flat head screwdriver into one of the notches on the top/bottom side of the switch where it clips into the plate (looking down from the plate/keycap side). You can also apply some pressure to the pins from the bottom as they're fairly strong, but this does risk bending them (I did this and had no issues). I think someone else on here posted a decent desoldering guide a while ago. If you don't want to desolder, you may get away with just dripping some IPA into the soldered switch, pressing it a bit and then flipping the board to drain it.