[help] Unicomp membrane to controller contact issues
My Unicomp model m is having a rough time. The m key was the first to go, next were y and u, 6 and 7 have been flaky and the space bar is now in on it as well.
After opening up the keyboard and poking around a bit with the excellent r/mk wiki in hand, I seem to have located the source of the problem.
The controller at the top right of the keyboard is simply pressing down on the membrane in order to make contact.
When m is acting up, I've found that pressing down on the controller to improve its contact with the membrane fixes things. That is, until I stop pressing.
Pictures of the guts are as follows:
To my untrained eye, the membrane looks ok. The problem may rather be the tiny indentations in the controller. Or there may be a combination of both at play.
For the record, this keyboard has not even celebrated its tenth year of daily use yet.
The wiki refers to circuit pens, where you'd use a silver pen to improve or fix circuits on membrane. I'm not sure about efficacy here as there isn't a glaring circuit problem. Moreover, they aren't available where I am, so they'd be an international online order which would take time.
The alternative is to go to work with my soldering iron. I'm not afraid to use it (I have enough electrical waste floating around here to back that up, sadly).
My main question is to advice. This problem doesn't get mentioned in the wiki, but when I look at the way this is built, I'm not convinced this problem would be all that uncommon.
Posted Feb 8, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC
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