Reviving my favorite mechanical keyboard - DIY Keyboard Repair

this is my keyboard there are many like it but this one specifically is mine I love this keyboard I've customized the key caps I have specific ones that I like in specific areas it's signed by people on the back including day9 husky guys from Team Liquid de nines mom which is probably the favorite signature that I've ever gotten on anything it has custom PB Tiki caps which I love in ninja printing which is my favorite it's clique is perfect perfect there's a little bit of inconsistency between cherry switches and I love this generation of cherry switches the clack is great the plastics and the structure in the keyboard is awesome this is a DK 9008 g2 it's a little old and it's technically broken and I really want it back so let's fix it intel brings ddr4 to the mainstream with their new core i7 6700 K and Core i5 6600 K processors check out the link in the video description to learn more so I love my keyboard and for many reasons I think it's just spiffy but to see if it's worth really fixing and not just sentimental reasons I'm going to take around see what people think about typing on it okay John try typing on the keyboard don't you think they travel really easily but they make a lot of the ways well this is VP Alegre clicking we're doing but they are too tight I like it because it's like just like you're breaking little glass guy only type with two fingers is it gonna do something no it's something I am not sure what you that seems fine okay so far people aren't quite as enthralled with it as I have liked it a lot kid a lot care at all Nick I take my keyboard do you think haha okay so people aren't quite as enthralled with it as I am except for maybe Colton but I'm gonna try to fix it anyways now I have a few broken keyboards having a broken keyboard is not odd for me this one unfortunately however had its USB receiver because it's a USB detachable keyboard fall inside of the casing now I haven't actually taken it apart yet so I don't know if it's as simple as some hot glue or if I'm gonna have to resolder the connection on the inside or if I'm gonna have to take like a USB extension and chop it and solder the wires in I have no idea let's go so first things first I'm just going to try to take apart the keyboard I've taken three screws out and that's all I can see in terms of screws now from there on it's probably prying the plastic so yeah that looks about right you can find everyone smile there I just hit one these clips so there are clips and I do need to get those off and then get a card down in there that can hold it open I'm going to try to find the next one here we go holding on on the sides but I don't see any clips ah there we go just one more then does that mean there's one more on this side yep okay no the top is off the bottom must have additional clips as well not completely bare as you can see but that top bezels off and that did reveal more screws so we can keep on working okay I think I have the OLT as you can see this is in our two parts so that tray is disgusting I will clean that out okay here's the back of the keyboard and here is the culprit and it actually looks like it straight-up broke these two plastic things right here are anchors that are supposed to be screwed on and holding it on and they actually broke right off of the plastic on the inside so I'm not sure what happened to the keyboard as I expected hot glue might actually be able to save it so I'm going to clean this disgusting thing out and maybe do some other cleaning around the board and then we're going to move on now that we're done cleaning these things a good idea would be to do some maintenance on your key caps in terms of cleaning it and cleaning the board and doing all that kind of stuff you want to check out maintenance and lubing techniques click up here for a previous video that we've done it's called the ultimate mechanical keyboard key cap guide and there's a table of contents thing you can jump to maintenance or lubing that would be a good time to check that out but I'm going to move on and start trying to fix things so the problem isn't that the hot glue cracked and broke off the problem isn't that the solder contacts broke the problem is that the plastic bits in here actually snapped right off in the mount gave away there were two screws going through it so I'm just going to move where those are oh so there's big screw holes here and here not in all four corners even though there's these two stands nothing screws into them this is probably a standard backboard for more than just this keyboards and I think we're back to the hot glue method I could do this with other types of adhesives but hot glue is easy to take back off so if this happens to not work I won't cause any permanent damage anything it's going to be fine I'm going to put a little dab right over top of where it was supposed to be screwed in I'm also going to put some along this line here which should in theory help keep it against the plastic and have it not fall back in okay so it actually seems to be in somewhat okay I can try it oh I'm bleeding um that's probably fine everything's okay anyways we can try to pull it up a little bit nothing really seems to happen and yeah seems pretty solid so I'm going to try to make sure that I've lined it up properly I'm just going to try to plug this cable in and it seems to be fine plug the connection in PC we didn't move at all I think we're good to go I'm going to plug this into the PCB and try to type something on it before putting it all back together properly if it works we're good to go I'll close up the case success if not I'll have to figure something out what am i screen goblak what the hell does that make any sense to you no doesn't oh I think there's some problems keyboard tester calm oh my goodness I think it works there's some weird things going on okay the weird things that were going on are no longer going on there was some crazy lag when I first typed it in or plugged it in after the driver was installed so I'm not sure what that was about but it does seem to work that's really exciting this keyboard got me through all of my post-secondary education and was there for the almost the entire time that I have a mineral oil rig and all that kind of stuff so I'm really happy to have it back okay let's put back together this is gonna be so annoying I have to pry all four eclipses up and then flip them over because they're stuck on a Ledge come on okay so after more effort that I would like to admit and Brandon's help we finally got the bezel thing on the trick was there was a guide rail on the inside so you had to slot it within the confines of the guide rail time to put the last final three screws inside one little Easter Egg that I noticed you can see just barely the voided warranty sticker that I pounded right through in order to hit that screw off nice little tidbit I like boarding warranties it's fun okay so it works due to the hot glue it kind of turned into more of a like home arts and crafts project than a hardcore soldering job that I thought it was going to oh well I'm happy my keyboard works hopefully you guys found that interesting moral of the story even if this wasn't all that complicated is if your stuff breaks and you're far outside of your warranty like I was with this just fix it if you can it might not be that complicated as we saw today not that bad at all the thing just came loose and fell backwards take your stuff apart check it out if you can't fix it you gained experience from taking it apart if you try to fix it and you fail well it was broken anyways yeah simple powerful beautiful Squarespace 24/7 live chat and sport just in case you don't know what you're doing it's only eight bucks a month just in case you don't have tons of money that comes to the free domain if you sign up for a year as responsive design cause I guess you want it to scale on any device there's a commerce module just encase you want to sell things cover pages just in case you need a job for a resume or something you can start now with no credit card required and start building your website immediately but don't forget to use offer code Lynas for 10% off of your first purchase thank you to swear space for supporting this perfect build it beautiful thanks for watching you want a cool t-shirt like this take the description down below we have a bunch of them there I don't know if you can get this one anymore nice uh limited edition but you know whatever consider using our Amazon affiliate code to buy things like keyboards just in case your favorite one in the whole entire world happens to die I don't know what else is here because all I really care about is my keyboard I go to our forum there's new forum software and it's awesome check it out consider becoming a contributor it helps us do things like roll out new forum software and yeah subscribe watch this video which is the ultimate key cap replacement guide that I referenced earlier in the video and I'll see you next time

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 1,388,523

Rating: 4.8825917 out of 5

Keywords: keyboard, repair, ducky, dk9008, replacement, hot glue, disassembly, assembly, computer, peripheral, component, gaming, mechanical

Id: Xv94up8fCOo

Length: 11min 12sec (672 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/holynub]

When I saw this pop up, I got really curious as to how this subreddit will respond to Luke working on his keyboard. Also, I kinda wanted the rest of the LTT team to be more enthusiastic about the keyboard.

[u/[deleted]]

Hey we're famous. He pulls up a thread on this sub. Still not enough keyboard science for my tastes but if I see it enough times maybe he'll think it's popular and move onto more science.

[u/2012riot]

"I only type with 2 fingers" Blasphemy!

[u/Josh1551]

Hope they put up more videos involving keyboards. We need more keyboard warriors

[u/[deleted]]

Is there anywhere I can buy that little bridge piece to make my Ducky Legends have removable USB?

[u/[deleted]]

Duckyyy

[u/dumbuglydragon]

Interesting. When I first got my Ducky Shine 3, on of the things I didn't like was that the USB port is placed too close to the body of the keyboard. It is so close that when I plug in the supplied USB cable, the body of the cable connector pulls the port away from the center of the keyboard. I kind of cringe every time I plug in the OEM cable and feel the port flexing on the board.

[u/RealHumanHere]

Can someone tell me if they're MX Blues? :(

[u/[deleted]]

What kind of switches?